January 3, 2018
Page 13
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O PINION
On the Verge of another Unnecessary War
Will government
leaders regret their
complicity?
l isa f uller
President Bill Clin-
ton’s greatest regret
was his failure to re-
spond to the Rwandan
genocide. He estimat-
ed that U.S. intervention could have
saved 300,000 lives.
The Vietnam War was former
Secretary of Defense Robert Mc-
Namara’s biggest regret. He wrote
an entire book to explain why he was
“terribly wrong.”
Former Senate Minority Leader
Harry Reid, Sen. Tom Harkin, and
Sen. Walter Jones have all said that
they deeply regret authorizing the
war in Iraq. Jones once lamented, “I
helped kill 4,000 Americans, and I
will go to my grave regretting that.”
In each case, government leaders
regretted their complicity in hun-
dreds of thousands of deaths. In each
case, they had chosen to prioritize
by
politics above ethics. Today’s po-
litical leaders are about to make the
same mistake.
We are now on the verge of another
unnecessary war — this time with
North Korea — and it is likely to
wreak more havoc than Vietnam,
Iraq and Rwanda combined.
Top nuclear security expert
Scott Sagan warns that the risk of
war is far higher than during the
Cuban Missile Crisis, and predicts
that one million people could die on
the first day - a figure that exceeds the
death toll of the entire Rwandan geno-
cide. Even more worryingly, Russia
and China are making military prepa-
rations, suggesting that a Korean war
could quickly escalate into a world
war.
Despite this horrific scenario, Pres-
ident Trump continues to ratchet up
tensions by issuing bombastic threats
and overseeing provocative military
exercises. He is increasingly keen to
launch a “preventative” strike, and
there are multiple indications that he
plans to do so within the next three
months unless North Korea agrees to
denuclearize. At the same time, he is
forbidding diplomacy, blocking any
possibility of a peaceful solution to
the crisis.
Put simply, war could be inevitable
if Trump remains in power. Govern-
ment leaders therefore have an ethical
obligation to remove him from office
before he fulfills his dream of using
nuclear weapons.
Impeachment, however, is no lon-
ger a viable solution- the impeach-
ment process takes several months,
whereas Trump is reportedly looking
to drop the first bomb by March.
Congress or Trump’s Cabinet will
therefore need to invoke the 25th
Amendment, which would immedi-
ately suspend Trump’s presidential
authority on the grounds that he is
“unable to discharge the powers and
duties of his office.” While the amend-
ment can be invoked on political
grounds alone, Trump’s behavior sug-
gests he has a cognitive inability to do
his job: Neurologists warn that Trump
is displaying symptoms of dementia,
while prominent psychiatrists have ar-
gued that Trump’s particular brand of
mental instability poses a grave risk to
national security.
There are, however, measures short
of dethroning Trump that would be
helpful. Congress could pass legisla-
tion such as the Preventing Preemp-
tive War in North Korea Act, the Re-
stricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons
Act or the No First Use Bill. All three
bills would constrain the President
— be it Trump or any of his succes-
sors — from unilaterally launching a
pre-emptive nuclear strike. Congress
has yet to prioritize any of these bills,
and they have all remained at a stand-
still since they were introduced.
Finally, government officials should
follow the leads of lawmakers like
Sen. Chris Murphy and Rep. Ted Lieu
and speak out frequently and loudly to
mobilize public opposition to a poten-
tial war.
Political leaders who muster the
courage to act may be taking a politi-
cal risk, but they will save themselves
from the prospect of spending the rest
of their lives wondering if they could
have prevented a historic tragedy.
Lisa Fuller is a former civilian
peacekeeper who worked in war zones
such as Iraq, South Sudan, and Sri
Lanka.
Help for Struggling Millionaires Is On the Way
Gutting the
estate tax is a
bad idea
c huck c ollins
It isn’t easy being
a millionaire these
days, especially if
you’ve got less than
$20 million. Fortu-
nately, Congress is watching
out for you.
Yes, the Republican tax cut
bonanza targets lower end
millionaires for special relief.
Now those struggling to scrape
by with $15 million or $20
million can breathe more easi-
ly. And even lowly billionaires
will be able to keep more of
their wealth.
Why? Because Congress
just increased the amount of
wealth exempted by the estate
tax, our nation’s only levy on
inherited wealth.
In the bad old days, a fam-
ily had to have $11 million in
by
wealth before they were subject
to the tax. This exempted the
99.8 percent of undisciplined
taxpayers who, in the words
of Iowa Sen. Chuck
Grassley, had squan-
dered their wealth on
“booze, women, and
movies.”
Now no family with
less than $22 million
will pay it (or indi-
viduals with less than $10.9
million). This gift to “grate-
ful heirs” will cost $83 billion
over the next decade.
Gutting the estate tax is a
bad idea — it raises substan-
tial revenue from those with
the greatest capacity to pay.
Even in a weakened state, it
would have raised over $260
billion over the next decade.
The estate tax was estab-
lished a century ago during
the first Gilded Age, a peri-
od of grotesque inequality.
Champions of establishing a
tax on inherited wealth includ-
ed President Theodore Roos-
evelt and industrialist Andrew
Carnegie, who viewed it as a
brake on the concentration of
wealth and power.
Modern Republicans, how-
ever, paint the tyrannical
“death tax” as an unfair pen-
alty on small businesses and
family farmers. But that’s a
myth.
The most vocal champion
of estate tax repeal is Rep.
Kristi Noem, a South Dakota
Republican who became the
GOP poster child for farm-
ers touched by the estate tax.
House Speaker Paul Ryan ap-
pointed her on the tax confer-
ence committee to advocate
for estate tax repeal because
of her compelling story.
Noem says her family was
subject to the tax after her fa-
ther died in a farm accident in
1994, a story she repeats con-
stantly.
The only problem, as jour-
nalists recently discovered, is
that her family paid the tax
only because of a fluke in
South Dakota law that was
changed in 1995. Her expe-
rience has little to do with
the federal estate tax, which
has been substantially scaled
down in recent decades.
And while Noem was com-
plaining about government
taxes, the family ranch has
collected over $3.7 million in
taxpayer funded farm subsi-
dies since 1995.
Noem attacked the reporting
as “fake news,” even though it
was based on legal documents
she filed herself.
The reality is that the small
number of estate tax benefi-
ciaries aren’t farmers at all.
They’re mostly wealthy city
dwellers.
Still, the fact that the estate
tax lives on creates an oppor-
tunity to make it better.
Lawmakers should insti-
tute a graduated rate struc-
ture, so that billionaires pay
a higher estate tax rate than
families with a “mere” $22
million. And loopholes should
be closed so they can’t pay
wealth managers to hide their
wealth in complicated trusts
and offshore tax havens.
Estate tax revenue could be
dedicated to something that
clearly expands opportunity
for everyone else.
Bill Gates Sr. argues that the
estate tax should fund “a GI
bill for the next generation.”
In exchange for military and
community service, young
adults should be able to get
substantial tuition assistance
for higher education or voca-
tional training, paid for by a
progressive estate tax.
If Congress were concerned
about the middle class, that’s
the kind of proposal that
would become the law of the
land.
Chuck Collins directs the
Program on Inequality and the
Common Good at the Institute
for Policy Studies.He’s the au-
thor of the recent book Born
on Third Base. Distributed by
OtherWords.org.