In my simple mind, there are two ways that the U.S. commitment to the quagmire in Iraq can be ended: A) Reinstitute a draft, and require compulsory service of every warm body under the age of 25 years. No deferments or exceptions. B) Start making the beneficiaries of the war pay.
Since a draft is a non-starter in an election year, let's look at option B. Every couple of months for the past 3+ years, congress has been faced with approving a "supplemental" of 50 or 75 or $100 billion taxpayer dollars to support the war in Iraq. So here's a unique idea that I haven't seen floated elsewhere - it's time for a public / private partnership on the war, since private industry seems to be profiting handsomely from the war...
ConocoPhillips, which announced its results Wednesday, far surpassed Wall Street's expectations, and its shares climbed close to 2 percent.
The nation's third-largest oil company earned $5.18 billion in the April-June quarter -- a 65 percent increase from the $3.14 billion profit during the same period a year earlier.
Alrighty, then. Let's do a little math (and recall that Conoco-Phillips is only the third largest oil company). They earned $3.14 billion profit during the second quarter in 2005. So, we arbitrarily pick a decent revenue growth margin - say, 20% - and postulate that a $3.768 billion profit during the same period in 2006 would be pretty sweet growth for any company. Since their "actual" was $5.18 billion, and since the U.S. government's actions are non-arguably responsible for this obscene profit margin, let's say congress decided to make Conoco-Phillips (and other oil companies and defense contractors) pay its fair share of the cost of the war, and established a "war tax" for companies who profit from the war. For arbitrary number's sake, the war tax would amount to the difference between a company's last year's profit during a given quarter, plus 20% (for reasonable revenue growth) and this year's profit for the same quarter. In Concoco-Phillips' specific case, it would be $5.18 billion minus $3.768 billion.
How long do you think this war would last if Conoco-Phillips shareholders had to pony up $1.412 billion? Now, spread that over all of the oil companies and defense contractors who are seeing unreal profits rolling into the corporate coffers. And, for the sake of fair play, we'll say the federal government (you and me) makes up whatever shortfall there might be after all of the companies kicked in their fair share. Shoot, it wouldn't take that much on a quarterly basis to fund the war! And you know what?
If this financial scenario ever came to pass, the war would come to an end more quickly than if Jenna and Babs were drafted and were required to go fight in Baghdad.
(Ok, I freely admit I'm not a financial whiz. I have a hard time balancing the checkbook. I'm just trying to think out of the box a little bit...)