In a recent column on healthcare, David Brooks wrote: “Reform would make us a more decent society, but also a less vibrant one. It would ease the anxiety of millions at the cost of future growth. It would heal a wound in the social fabric while piling another expensive and untouchable promise on top of the many such promises we’ve already made. America would be a less youthful, ragged and unforgiving nation, and a more middle-aged, civilized and sedate one.”

The column seems to offer a reasoned assessment of the choice facing lawmakers, but at the end it is clear that Brooks has set up and “either/or” dichotomy between healthcare and economic growth when a “both/and” is just as plausible. His scenario is based on the fact that at the moment we are spending a million dollars a day on two wars, neither of which will determine our future security and both will eventually be abandoned because of the lack of public support that will intensify as they drag on. Republicans have become predictable in whining about deficit spending and economic stagnation without lamenting the fact that they got us into these wars and cut taxes while doing so. Brooks was fully supportive of both at the time. His description of the “values” choice we now face as a nation is at bottom an example of hypocrisy masking as serious reflection.

I say this because he has yet to argue that the only sane choice President Obama faces in regard to Afghanistan is to get out troops out as soon a possible. The call in Congress for a "war tax” to pay for any expansion is the first honest admission about the financial costs war involves. The human toll is tragic, and not to be forgotten for even a minute. It alone should have been enough to cause Americans to demand an end to Iraq and Afghanistan and the insane notion that our nation’s foreign policy should be waging constant war, as Andrew Bacevich suggests it now is. It hasn’t. But the economic drain on our economy will. Money always gets our attention. The war tax, even if it never becomes law, is the perfect way to raise the conscious level of all Americans to the reality that wars costs money as well as lives.

Brooks’ view on the choice we face on healthcare assumes we will continue to spend money we don’t have on war and also continue the foolish and immoral tax cuts Bush put into place. He is probably correct that as things now stand, the savings the current bills propose will not be sufficient to halt the rise in healthcare costs. That, however, simply strengthens the argument for getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan without delay and raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans. If Brooks wants to write about the actual values choice we face as a nation, this is it. We should not have to choose between a just healthcare system and economic growth. But we should face up to the choice the fighting of unnecessary wars puts before us.