🚀 go-pugleaf

Relatively few Americans have been
asked to fight in Bush's war on terror.

Of those, too many have paid with their lives
or returned home physically and psychologically
crippled or maimed.

http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/10535584.htm
Posted on Sat, Jan. 01, 2005
KENTUCKY VOICES
War for energy independence

By Dan Carey
Americans take pride in fighting
their own fights and paying their
own way.

Right now, we face troubled times.

Unfortunately, for most of us,
someone else is fighting our
fight and paying our way.

In November,
Congress raised the federal debt limit,
allowing the government to take $8.2
trillion from our children -- 

$27,800 for each of us.

We send our children off to war and
then hand them the bill when they get home.

This is shameful.

Nearly two years ago, President Bush declared war on Iraq.

Thousands of families,
Iraqi and American,
have been destroyed.

Billions of dollars have been spent to destroy Iraq,
and billions will be needed to rebuild it.

The outlook for a democratic Iraq is not promising,
and the cause of Islamic radicalism has been strengthened.

Relatively few Americans have been
asked to fight in Bush's war on terror.

Of those, too many have paid with their lives
or returned home physically and psychologically
crippled or maimed.

The rest of us have been asked only to spend our tax refunds.

Many who will never fight at the battle
front think military force will bring us
victory.

Others think we must move beyond
violence to overcome terror and hatred.

Regardless of our belief,
we all want to share in the struggle;
we all want to pay our way.

Islamic radicals don't hate
us because we love freedom.

They hate us for decades of meddling in Mideast affairs,
for supporting a repressive regime in Saudi Arabia and
for establishing a permanent military presence in the
region after the Gulf War.

We did those things to protect our strategic interests:

containing communism and protecting our oil interests.

Communism is gone, but the oil remains.

As long as we have
troops in the Middle East,
there will be conflict.

As the failure of military power
becomes increasingly evident,
more and more Americans realize
that other strategies are needed.

Reducing our need for foreign oil would
let us begin finally to extricate ourselves
from the Middle East.

Such a reduction is inevitable;
it's only a matter of when and how.

Bush should enlist the American people
in a war for energy independence,

a war for freedom from the dictatorship of fossil fuels.

This war would be one we could all fight.

Every battle would be a constructive
investment in America's future.

Like the military struggle,
the war for energy independence
could be a long one,

but we know how to fight it.

We must begin.

What better way for us all to share
the burden than by paying the full
cost for oil?

According to the U.S. Department of Energy,
U.S. motor gasoline consumption is about
375 million gallons a day.

The cost of our military intervention
in the Middle East is $190 million a day.

A $1-a-gallon war tax on gasoline would
pay for our intervention in the Middle East
and a war for energy independence.

The cost of gasoline in the early 1980s
was $2.85 a gallon in current dollars.

So this war tax would not be onerous.

Instead of being disgruntled at the gas pump,

we could take patriotic pride in paying our
share and supporting our troops with more
than magnetic ribbons and flags.