U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry gestures while speaking during a press conference at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad on Wednesday. Kerry is visiting Iraq to hold talks with the country’s new leaders on their role in a long-awaited strategy against Islamic State jihadists to be unveiled by President Barack Obama. (Brendan Smialowski, AFP/Getty Images)
If this country is about to embark on more war in the Middle East, itap time to start talking about a war tax to finance these campaigns in foreign lands. Americans have had it way too easy with the cost of war. The only ones to suffer have been service people and their families. Itap time to spread the pain.
As your editorial board starts interviewing candidates for federal office, if they’re all for going back into Iraq and pursuing the Islamic State in Syria, please ask them how they plan to pay for more war.
The United States and our allies may be justified and even strategically smart to go after the Islamic State hammer and tong. But citizens have to “buy in” to the effort and there’s no better way to bring the cost of war home than to ask people to pay for it.
A candidate who rattles sabers but won’t talk about paying the cost of war cannot be trusted.
Allan Ferguson, Denver
This letter was published in the Sept. 11 edition.
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