I HAVE A REAL PROBLEM WITH PEOPLE LIKE JAMES WOOLSEY who rake in the bucks from a war they helped promote while soldiers risk everything on behalf of their country.
I am working on a concept I am calling “Stock Options for Soldiers” in which patriotic corporations, particularly those whose stock keeps rising because of conflict, not only pay stock options to advisors like Richard Perle and James Woolsey but can contribute stock options to a pool divided and shared equally by all service men and women serving in combat.
At least, we’d be giving the people who have the most to lose some potential gain for their important sacrifice.
The American Prospect‘s Mark Goldberg writes a very enlightened piece,”Some Gratitude,” that argues that the Bush administration has consistently opposed bipartisan efforts that would ensure that National Guard service members have health insurance.
According to Goldberg:
About 20% of all deactivated National Guardsmen and Women are uninsured. This is appalling anyway you look at it, but given the fact that the National Guard makes up more than 40% of our fighting force in Iraq and are deployed to a degree not seen since the Korean war, the least the Bush administration could do is let them buy into the military’s low cost health care plan. But, alas, they will not. Though it would cost peanuts by the Pentagon’s standards, the DoD has “other budgetary priorities.”
With so much rampant war profiteering going on among defense intellectuals like Woolsey, it seems to me that in Thursday’s foreign policy debate, Kerry should suggest something like “Stock Options for Soldiers” — and health care too while we are at it.
And maybe a Harry Truman-like investigation of War Profiteering. Be imaginative, John Kerry.
— Steve Clemons
