Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You

From Sunday's New York Times:

The Bush administration's rallying call that America is a nation at war is increasingly ringing hollow to men and women in uniform, who argue in frustration that America is not a nation at war, but a nation with only its military at war.

From bases in Iraq and across the United States to the Pentagon and the military's war colleges, officers and enlisted personnel quietly raise a question for political leaders: if America is truly on a war footing, why is so little sacrifice asked of the nation at large?

There is no serious talk of a draft to share the burden of fighting across the broad citizenry, and neither Republicans nor Democrats are pressing for a tax increase to force Americans to cover the $5 billion a month in costs from Iraq, Afghanistan and new counterterrorism missions.

There are not even concerted efforts like the savings-bond drives or gasoline rationing that helped to unite the country behind its fighting forces in wars past.

This was a major issue for me last November when I argued against President Bush's re-election:

During the dark days of September, 2001 - with 3,000 of our own citizens dead - we Americans were desperate for true leadership. We wished for a president who, in the spirit of Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, would rally the nation to our new calling. Instead, all we got from President Bush was a request to "go shopping." As an American, I couldn't have been more insulted. As a member of the world community, I couldn't have been more embarrassed.

Of course it is hard to rally a nation to the cause when you ship their sons and daughters around the globe to fight a war based on bogus claims.

But even before Iraq, Mr. Bush never stepped up to the plate. Columnist Thomas Friedman sums it up in his latest book, "The World Is Flat":

When we got hit with 9/11, it was a once-in-a-generation opportunity to summon the nation to sacrifice, to address some of its pressing fiscal, energy, science, and education shortfalls - all things that we had let slide. But our president did not summon us to sacrifice. He summoned us to go shopping.

Mr. Bush's lack of vision, among many other things, will not serve his legacy well. America deserves better.