Who's paying for the war?

For all that the critics rail against the war in Iraq, surprisingly little time is given to decrying the sheer cost of it. Somebody, somewhere, was cluck-clucking about $87 billion back during the Democratic high jinks that preceded the ouster of Howard Dean and the anointment of John Kerry. We do hear of ancillary costs. For instance, with the call-up of the National Guard, the state governors are running out of the backup manpower they habitually look to for help with crime and fire-fighting. You can let crime slide for a while, but not forest fires. And that means extra expenses to lure men and women from retirement or to train recruits.

But how are we feeling the pinch of the direct expenses of the war? We coast along as if we can take care of that kind of thing simply by borrowing. In the last two years, our deficit spending has been in the neighborhood of $800 billion. If you are sitting at the national poker game you can get away with a fugitive smile by counting in current inflation. At 3 percent, we can figure that the $7 trillion national debt gives us back $210 billion, inflated away (whsk!). But reasoning along those lines wouldn't make much political headway in an election year. We need some straight talk, and straight talk speaks of impositions on U.S. citizens, foremost of which is -- taxation.

We have been waiting for word from Sen. Kerry. Here is his most recent on the subject: "George Bush wants to defend giving a tax cut that's permanent to people who earn more than $200,000 a year. I'm fighting to roll back George Bush's unaffordable tax cut for the wealthy and invest it in --" a new and better Army? a new fleet of aircraft carriers? a missile defense? increased pensions for soldiers?

Oh no: "-- invest it in health care, education, job creation, and to build America again." Therefore, raise taxes in order to increase social spending. That leaves -- untouched -- the expenses of this war and any correlative privations. Again, wars are free.