Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day

December 7, 1941-a date which will live in infamy…

(President Franklin D. Roosevelt)

Given President Obama’s fateful decision last week to escalate the war in Afghanistan, all Americans would do well to remember the sacrifices (in terms of human life and national treasure) that are necessary to wage war.

After all, far too many citizens and political leaders seem willfully ignorant of these sacrifices. Since only this can explain why citizens have not demanded the Draft and why political leaders have steadfastly rejected all legislative attempts to reinstate it. Never mind that the Draft would be the most objective way of ensuring shared sacrifice:

I am merely proffering the morally-imperative and self-evident truth that politicians would be more circumspect about sending Americans to war if their loved ones were obligated to serve.

[Support the draft to prevent stupid wars, TIJ, March 14, 2007]

And now Congress seems equally determined to reject proposed legislation to impose a war surtax on wealthy Americans. Never mind that this surtax would balance the human sacrifice being borne by poor Americans who comprise the vast majority of troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan:

If we have to pay for the health care bill, we should pay for the war as well … by having a war surtax… The problem in this country with this issue is that the only people that have to sacrifice are military families and they’ve had to go to the well again and again and again and again, and everybody else is blithely unaffected by the war.

This was the common-sense rationale Rep David Obey, D-Wis., chairman of the purse string-controlling House Appropriations Committee, proffered in support of legislation to impose a war surtax.  And, significantly, Sen Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has seconded this legislative initiative.

Unfortunately, Congressional priorities are so perverse these days that taxing the American people to bailout Wall Street is proclaimed a national emergency while the very notion of taxing them to fund a “necessary” war is declaimed a polarizing stunt.

But Congress’ well-earned reputation is such that this perversion should come as no surprise. What is surprising, however, is that even the preternaturally sensible Obama does have his priorities straight in this context.  For, even though the Draft and surtax are being championed by well-respected and principled Democrats, he too is treating them like the political plague.

So the next time you hear him trying to distinguish himself from Bush – who passed the buck on funding for his wars – just bear in mind that Obama has not only escalated US involvement in these wars without the Draft, but will end up passing the buck when it comes to paying from them as well.

Related commentaries:
Obama escalates Afghan war…
Support the draft