The war Affects People

The other day I was in a cool little dive bar in Dallas called The Windmill Lounge with two of my friends. We were all having many beverages and several different conversations were being spun throughout the course of the evening.
These two friends of mine are liberal and democratic, which can be a dangerous situation when you infuse alcohol and one stubborn, opinionated, non-democrat (me) into the mix.

Of course the war in Iraq gets brought up and one of these people indicates to me that people aren’t affected by the war. Wait a minute. What do you mean people aren’t affected? They indicated in any capacity, financial or otherwise.

I had to disagree. And I was referring to a predominantly non-financial perspective. I fly all over the country and I see first-hand people that are affected by the war in one way or another. I see people thanking soldiers all over the airport. I have given up a first class ticket, and seen others do the same thing for those in uniform. I’ve had great conversations with the men and women serving our country while on a flight. I’ve bought them drinks at the bar, or breakfast on an early morning. I’ve met people who have friends, brothers, sisters, cousins, sons and daughters in the war and they are all affected by it. Unlike Vietnam, which I am too young to really remember, I see people that have a deep appreciation and respect for the men and women fighting for us.

Now from a financial impact, perhaps they are absolutely correct. It was pointed out to me that this was the first war in American history in which we had tax-breaks. I have not confirmed this (dad, are you out there somewhere?). But I can say that I personally don’t feel like I’ve been affected in a financial perspective from this war.
My question is, is this a bad thing? I do take issue when I hear that there isn’t enough monies being allocated to the soldiers to be properly protected. Could I make a difference if I was financially affected? Perhaps, but the actual allocation of funding is substantially beyond my control. I can’t say that I have looked into the financial implications of this enough to know the answer or what a good or effective solution might be.

One of these same peoples said something that I agree with to a large extent, and I’ll paraphrase for lack of exact recall (blame the vodka): “If you say you know exactly how to fix something, or what the answer is, you probably haven’t looked into it enough.”