Archives for December 4, 2009

In addition to being hell, war is also expensive. The US has dumped about $1 trillion into the Afghanistan and Iraq wars already and current plans are to keep shoveling cash and lives into these pits.

Naturally, the money to pay for the wars has to come from somewhere. Like most federal spending, much of the war money has come from loans and deficit spending. It has also been proposed that there be a war tax (which has been done in the past). It is supposed to be relatively small, but is still a tax.

On the positive side, we will have to pay for the wars eventually and a good conservative would argue in favor of a pay as you go strategy. After all, why take out loans when we can save money by paying now?

On the negative side, the tax is a tax. While Democrats are cast as pro-tax people, they might well balk at a tax that supports wars. While Republicans like to present themselves as fiscal conservatives, they are also devoted to appearing to be anti-tax. Hence, they will tend to balk at a tax-even if it pays for the wars they started.

My view is that we should have never been involved in either war and throwing even more money into them can be seen as throwing good money after bad. But, of course, we are stuck in those pits and are thus obligated to get out in a way that is ethically correct and politically effective. That is, we need to resolve the conflicts and doing so would seem to involved restoring one country we broke and building a nation out of what seems to have never been much more than a loose collection of tribes.

Of course, we could help pay for the wars using the traditional methods developed by the Romans-make the conquered territories pay for their conquest and rebuilding. But, contrary to what our detractors say about us, we are not very good at being truly imperialistic and seem to have no stomach for empire. Just imagine, though, if we were as bad as they say we are…the wars would be done and paid for.