Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin has shown an uncanny ability to be wrong about almost every issue involving Iraq and Afghanistan in the last decade. This weekend, he’s come up with another doozy.

According to Bloomberg, the Michigan Democrat is proposing a tax on higher earners – say it with me now, individuals earning more than $200,000 a year and couples making more than $250,000 – to pay for increased military action in Afghanistan.

How many projects do Democrats think higher-earning Americans can pay for? For that matter, how many higher-earning Americans do Democrats think there are?

The top tax rate is already going to increase in 2011. The Democrats’ health care debacle will pile on an income surtax or Medicare tax (why not both!), should it pass. And higher taxes for higher earners are proposed to “fix” everything from Social Security to school loans to energy consumption. If Democrats stay in office a few more years, they may be able to crank that top rate to about 114%.

These taxes on “the rich” are the grease for the Democrats’ gravy train – the means by which they can dole out more and more subsidies and goodies to key constituencies under the illusion that it’s all free. What’s most galling about Levin’s proposal is that it supposes “the rich” have more to gain from America’s national security than the rest of us. Why should a small fraction of Americans pay for military operations that are supposed to keep us all safe?

There’s a solid case to be made for a war-related surtax paid by rich and poor alike. National security should be the national government’s top priority, and the benefits of a strong defense accrue to everyone. But turning military action into one more battle in the Democrats’ ongoing class war demonstrates a fundamentally misguided view of both national security and tax policy.

In other words, exactly what we’ve come to expect from Carl Levin.