Citing potential losses totaling $10.7 billion this year because of the war, the airline industry is asking lawmakers to suspend several taxes, pick up the costs of heightened security, permanently underwrite war-risk insurance and tap oil reserves to help bring down the price of jet fuel.
In Iraq, which possesses the world's second-largest proven oil reserves, Saddam Hussein used his country's windfall to underwrite wars against Iran and Kuwait.
American taxation became even more progressive during the two world wars, when Congress and liberal presidents assiduously turned to the tax system to underwrite the war efforts.
Asked if we should give up the tax cut to underwrite the war, the president demurred, replying, "Americans are paying the bill".
Meanwhile, President George W. Bush cut taxes at a more than peacetime pace and borrowed like an addicted gambler on a losing streak to underwrite his wars of choice, including his Global War on Terror.
In fact, since 9/11, taxpayers have been remarkably stalwart in underwriting massive war-fighting increases.
New York is the chief example of the Bush administration's failure to underwrite the grass-roots war on terror.
Pakistan's leaders underwrite America's missile war in the tribal areas – whose civilian casualties, President Asif Zardari said, according to Bob Woodward's latest book, "do not worry me".
But, what did happen, in the case of Vietnam, and continues to happen with every other war we underwrite, is that we dispense the currency of our ideals, draining the treasury of our souls.
Even today, World War II helps underwrite our claim to that moral difference.
Kitchener was in fact a child of Boot's first Industrial Revolution, a cousin to U. S. Grant and William Sherman, who waged offensive wars underwritten by strengths logistical as well as tactical.
