Thanks
to The Washington Post's Sylvia Moreno, we learn that then-19-year-old
Marty G. Mortenson of Flagstaff, Ariz., enlisted in the Marine Corps in
May 2002. He would spend his 20th, 21st and 22nd birthdays on three separate
tours with the Marines in Iraq. During the Vietnam War -- when the American
Army had more three times as many soldiers under arms as it does today
-- Americans in the military were limited to one tour of duty in Southeast
Asia of 13 months.
Before his third tour, Marty Mortenson told a friend in California: "It's
like three strikes, you're out. I have a feeling I'm not going to come
home." On April 20, an IED (improvised explosive device) exploded
on the road to Ramadi near the Humvee in which both Lance Cpl. Marty Mortenson
and Cpl. Kelly M. Cannan, also on his third tour in Iraq, were riding.
Marines Mortenson and Cannan are now two of the more than 1,700 Americans
killed in Iraq.
On the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, President George W. Bush said,
"War has no certainty except the certainty of sacrifice." Since
the war began, the president has spoken repeatedly of the need to "honor
the sacrifice" of those who serve.
One week before the war began, House Majority Leader Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas,
in a speech to bankers declared, "Nothing is more important in the
face of war than cutting taxes."
At the start of the Nixon administration, Attorney General John Mitchell
urged reporters to, "Watch what we do, not what we say." On
any question of shared sacrifice in wartime, this Bush administration
has done exactly what Tom Delay told it to!
This is not in the great American tradition. The federal income tax and
inheritance tax -- the same one Bush and DeLay are now committed to repealing
-- were passed by Congress to pay for the Civil War and became law under
the signature of the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln. President
William McKinley, another Republican, increased federal taxes to cover
the costs of the Spanish-American War, just as President Woodrow Wilson,
a Democrat, would later do to pay for World War I. Generations of patriotic
Americans understood and accepted that there is truly no moral authority
like that of sacrifice.
In this war, the nation's leadership has asked everything of the brave
few who both serve and sacrifice -- and their loved ones -- while asking
almost nothing of everybody else. The United States has already spent
$192 billion on the war and, according to the Congressional Budget Office,
the continued occupation of Iraq for another eight years will cost an
additional $200 billion.
Faced with a far less serious deterioration in his budget situation in
1982, President Ronald W. Reagan cut back his tax cuts.
But not the Bush-Cheney-DeLay administration. Consider the two tax-cut
measures that will phase in starting next year. Both repeal taxes enacted
in 1990 during the administration of President George H.W. Bush, as part
of that year's bipartisan deficit reduction package, and dealt with limitations
on itemized deductions available to high-income taxpayers and personal
exemptions for households with very high incomes.
The Tax Policy Center of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution
estimates that a majority of the tax cuts -- 54 percent -- will go to
households with incomes of more than $1 million a year. That is the top
0.2 percent of households.
Another 43 percent of the tax-cut benefits go to the 3.5 percent of households
with income between $200,000 and $1 million.
You do the math: 97 percent of all the benefits will go to the richest
3.7 percent of American households. Today's grown-ups continue to shift
the heavy burden of paying for this war to the nation's children. Some
family values.
On April 27, five hundred mourners filled Flagstaff Christian Fellowship
for the funeral of Lance Cpl. Marty G. Mortenson. There were letters of
condolence for his family from local officials and the president. But
there is no record that anyone chose to quote the wisdom of Leader DeLay:
"Nothing is more important in the face of war than cutting taxes."
