How can Congress stop the unwarranted escalation of troops in Iraq other than the by the straight-forward cutting of funds for our troops?
And perhaps more importantly, how do we put the skids on the impending threat of yet another unnecessary pre-emptive war in Iran?
Despite the fact that the majority in the Senate now deeply regrets their vote to toss GeeDubya the keys to the war machine, legislating an economic chokehold on Cheney's Business Venture is next to impossible due to PoxNews and the proparazzis' charges that "partisans in Congress who won't support the troops are unpatriotic". Face it. Limbaugh, Coulter and O'Reilley will undoubtedly attempt to make anyone trying to screw down the death count pay a steep political price for cutting their precious war profits.
But hold on a second. Who says that the next $100 billion has to come out of our pockets?
Back during WWII and WWI our government quite successfully sold war bonds to finance specific projects by calling on patriotic Americans to help pay for those ongoing wars. Which, by the way, were historically justifiable.
Yet there's apparently some obstacle preventing the Neocon funded war profiteering think tanks and their media minions from recalling the success of just war efforts from the past. Could perhaps be they now realize that someone might (in these modern times) require that those who sold us the war to actually pony up for it?
The mere thought of diverting funds from profiteers' present portfolios to pay for their pre-emptive policies may effectively dampen their zeal for throwing more troops into extending their bloody conflict.
Not to mention that if done wisely, there'd be a second huge dividend for requiring fiscal responsibility of a "PAYGO" plan for profiteers. Let's not overlook the effect it'd likely have on future policy papers peddled by the PNAC and their American Enterprise Institute - types.
The PAYGO for profiteers plan would require the entire war industry to kick in all their profits to help offset the next $100 billion dollars to be budgetted for their war. Otherwise they'd be required to discontinue their peacetime defense contracts altogether.
So if most in Congress are truly sorry they voted to invade Iraq, they should prove it by passing legislation making it impossible to profit from war. This isn't proposing to cut funds to the troops at all, but instead simply removes the profit intentive to push for war. One way might be to require contractors to deposit their entire wartime profits directly into the US Treasuries' general fund for future disbursements through normal legislative process. This wouldn't be a tax, but an emergency patriotic "peace bond" only engaged during times of war. And once the war had truly ended, Congress could then mandate that from that time on, all defense and rebuilding contracting could be conducted utilising normal existing competitively bid procedures, and the contractors could then be allowed to enjoy normal profit margins. At least until the next trumped-up pre-emptive strike.
This PAYGO peace plan might even produce the re-emergence of U.S. State Department which would truly seek diplomatic relations. Instead of being shoved aside by fearmongers in the War Department hellbent on drumming to initiate the type of pre-emptive PNAC boondoggle that former WWII General/ Republican President Dwight Eisenhower warned us about.