After nearly 3 months, President Obama has decided that he will make a decision on troops increases in Afghanistan on December 1. Why has this taken so long? What do our soldiers/sailors/airmen/marines think of this? Commanders in the field have had to wait for month after month for personal to arrive. How many have died while they wait? Congress says they can’t pay for a troop surge. I wonder why? Maybe because of all of the domestic spending that they are doing? So, today Pelosi and company have decided that the War in Afghanistan cannot be paid for without a new tax.
David Obey, a Democrat from Wisconsin, said he is absolutely opposed to sending any more U.S. troops to Afghanistan and says if Obama decides to do that, he'll demand a new tax -- what he calls a "war surtax" -- to pay for it. Obey said that all taxpayers should pay the tax, with rates ranging from 1 percent for lower wage earners to 5 percent for the wealthy.
"I want the president and every American to think ahead of time about what it means if you do add to our involvement in Afghanistan," Obey told ABC News. (Is the punishment? Think ahead of time he says?) "I am no military strategist, but I don't believe we have the tools to accomplish our mission in Afghanistan because you have to have functioning, effective government and there isn't one in Afghanistan. There isn't one in Pakistan either." Well, shouldn’t a functioning government be there? I think that is why we are there, to establish a functioning government. Didn’t we see what a can and will happen if a radical government, like the Taliban, was in place in Afghanistan and other countries? He sites the Progressives’, Johnson’s (Great Society), and Truman’s (Fair Deal) programs were stopped by wars and the current Democrats plans should not be stopped by the War in Afghanistan.
Am I hearing this right? Is Rep. Obey saying that Korea, Vietnam, and World War I were the cause of the social/domestic problems we have today? Would our nation have been off if we hadn’t got involved in those wars and spend our money of social programs instead? I think we did both. We corrected many of the social wrongs of the time AND fought wars for the freedom others and ourselves. Korea and Vietnam were conflicts that were fueled by Communistic Containment. That policy may or may not have worked, that is a debate for another time. But calling out World War I as a cause to our current social problems is just plain wrong. World War I was an aggressive action against the West, mainly Britain and France. In Rep. Obey’s line of thinking, the Democrats of the past couldn’t have their socialist programs because the Republicans started a war to prevent it. I don’t agree with this at all. It’s crazy.
We have spent more dollars in stimulus money, auto bailouts, bank buyouts, and other social programs than we have spent on our military. If Rep. Obey and other Democrats say our military is the biggest budget item in our country that is ignoring a lot of programs that spend way more. Is this line of thinking, that Pelosi and company are pushing, a cover up for increasing taxes to spend on even more of their socialist programs? I certainly hope that our decision to go to war to protect our freedoms or the freedoms of others isn’t based the notion of “can we afford it?” I say can we afford NOT to?
Devem
No comments:
Post a Comment