C.A.P.'s Larry Korb Goes All Out On "Wal-Mart &War"

By Steve Hynd

Lawrence Korb, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, is scathing about the lack of investment America is apparently willing to make for its foreign adventures. Korb notes the awful cost to U.S. servicemen: 5,000 dead, 50,000 wounded, 400,000 with mental problems and a wide trail of suicides, broken marriages and broken families. He writes:

The direct costs of funding these conflicts now totals about $1 trillion while the indirect costs will probably amount to $5 trillion when one adds in veterans benefits, long-term care of the physically and mentally wounded, and interest on the national debt. President Bush, who inherited a budget surplus from President Clinton, not only did not raise taxes, he cut them, and squandered the surplus while accumulating more debt that all of his 42 predecessors combined, almost all of which was borrowed from countries like China.

Not drafting people or raising taxes to pay for these conflicts is both a moral and a security failure. Not only is the current policy of not activating the selective service system unfair to today's volunteers, but running the wars on a credit card saddles future generations with the cost of paying for wars they had no part in deciding. Moreover, by borrowing money from a rising power like China, we have undermined our ability to balance its influence in the Middle East, Africa and East Asia.

Finally, because most Americans did not have to make any sacrifices to undertake these conflicts, they failed to ask the right questions or hold their leaders fully accountable for waging these wars. If, for example, before invading Iraq, President Bush had reinstituted conscription and levied a 10 percent income surtax, would 60 percent of Americans have supported the conflict without UN authorization and would only a handful of senators have read the whole National Intelligence Estimate, which showed that the case for invading Iraq was dubious at best?

When America goes to war it should not just be the military but the American people. Never again should we go to Wal-Mart while the soldiers go to battle. Paying for the increased force level in Afghanistan will be a step in the right direction.

Korb is leaving open the question of whether Afghanistan is a just war, although he obviously feels Iraq wasn't. But his argument inexorably leads to the posing the question: if Americans aren't prepared to make these sacrifices for a war - a draft and taxation to pay for the war - then how can that war possibly be a "war of neccesity?" And surely, he might continue, America shouldn't be waging any other kind of war.