If the cost of this War is 90 billion bucks, then we still have 130 billion left over from the tobacco settlement  before anyone besides the smokers has to pay one red penny.  This country owes the smoker one gigantic thank-you for financing this war for them. Asking only 25 percent of the population to finance a major war is a bit extreme, but smokers are the best, and we are up to it.

I suggest that one of the tobacco companies come out with a new brand called " WAR BUTTS", then everyone will understand who is paying for what in this country.

Bob

Dear Bob,

The tobacco companies should indeed do that – if they had a pair instead of being a defeated bunch of executives in disarray and with a stockholders problem -- and being poorly counselled by very expensive PR firms that cannot begin to understand the conmanship of “public health”, so they will simply bleed them until they die instead.

Concerning the cost of the war, of course it is paid by smokers. In all ages there have been entire classes of disposable citizens, who were exploited while being despised, thus fulfilling an imposed social function by becoming the focus of hatred, and other negative emotions. The perpetrators took all the fruits of the wealth produced by those disposable citizens – and the credit too – while covering themselves with spiritual, moral, and social nobility and righteousness.

Jews and blacks are just two examples. Today, however, we have become more sophisticated, and we have shifted those focuses from race and religion to lifestyle and personal choices, to find substrata of disposable people across all races and religions -- to be fair to all – and also to better disguise the exploitation: just think that some of the blacks and Jews are rabid antismokers -- and realise how well the health masquerade works!

An observation, however, is inescapable: Jews and blacks eventually used force to make themselves respected (and they achieved nothing as long as they only sang beautiful songs describing their pain, as it was the case of the blues in the black culture).

So, here comes the simple, uncomfortable  question: what are we prepared to do? 

Regards,