Quote:
Originally Posted by kane
Rachel Madow has a book out right now that makes a very good point. I haven't read he book but she was on the The Daily Show talking about it. She says that the reason the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have gone on so long is because the American people are disconnected from them and I agree.
.5% of the population serves in our military so they and their families are really the only ones suffering for these wars. In WW2 just about everyone sacrificed in one way or another. They either had a family member or a close friend fighting in the war. They rationed many things from sugar to gas to building materials. They shut down Major League Baseball. Every night on the radio they gave news of war. The people were involved and they were on the government's ass to end it. In Vietnam there was a draft and major news coverage and people were on the governments ass to end it.
Now there is none of that. A small group of soldiers do all the fighting. Not only are we not asked to sacrifice anything for them, there was a tax cut given so we are actually asked to give less. You rarely hear anything on the news about it. We are completely disconnected from it. It is someone else's problem.
If they announced tomorrow that they were adding a 3% war tax to everyone's paycheck and they were starting draft I would bet the war would be over in no time. This November pretty much anyone who didn't want to get us out of there ASAP would be voted out of office.
|
That is actually the way the government prefers it. That way the American people really do not get involved, and military industrial complex/big government can more a less do what it wants. If you passed a war tax, and forced everyone to be involved (i.e. draft) you would see a whole different ballgame. There would not be 10 year wars, and I can assure you there would be people voting people out of office, marches, and all the rest.
In the past, wars had to be paid for with taxes and sacrifice. If you did not have them, you could not AFFORD to go to war in the first place. The government learned their lesson, and want to keep people on the sidelines. They have hired mercenaries and outsourced the war more a less.
