We're at War, You Say?

The American Enterprise Online ^ | May 17, 2006 | Joseph Knippenberg

[neverdem]

We're at War, You Say? By Joseph Knippenberg This past Sunday, a long article about Iraq war veterans caught my eye. The conclusion was especially powerful, with one officer reporting the following reaction to dining at a restaurant with his family: He looked across the restaurant and saw everyone stuffing their faces with pasta and drinking wine. “And everyone’s kind of just sitting there doing it,” he said. Which is really sort of extraordinary, he said. The country is at war. People are fighting at this very moment. Don’t these people know what’s going on? Don’t they care? No, he decided. They have no appreciation for their easy, gluttonous lives and don't deserve the freedom, prosperity and contentment he was fighting to protect. He wanted to yell, “You don’t know what you have! You don’t appreciate it! You don’t care!” He is, I fear, onto something. We’re at war, our President keeps telling us, and yet our daily lives don’t seem all that different from what they were before September 2001 or March 2003. Oh, gas is more expensive. Air travel is a tad less convenient. And a few buildings are less readily accessible than they used to be. For a while there, the American flag was everywhere, but now it’s just flying where you expect to see it. (I have nothing at the moment to say about immigration demonstrations.) What, then, does being “at war” mean? It surely doesn’t mean having a larger military establishment. In 1952, at the peak of the Korean War, we had over 3.6 million men and women under arms, out of a population of a little over 150 million. In 1968, at the height of our involvement in Vietnam, the number hovered around 3.5 million, out of a population of around 200 million. At the end of 2005, the number was slightly less than 1.4 million—virtually unchanged from the idyllic post-Cold War era—out of a population of close to 300 million. Stated in another way, a rough back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that today we’re only one sixth as likely to encounter a serviceman or woman as we were in 1950. My own experience bears that out. Living in the South, reputedly the most “militaristic” region of the country, I know only two young people currently deployed in Iraq and just a handful more who are serving or have served in the military. That’s partly a product of the circles in which I typically move—middle- and upper-middle-class suburbanites are relatively underrepresented in the military by comparison with their rural and working-class brethren. But it’s even more a product of the fact that our leaders do not regard the challenges we face as calling for a major military mobilization. Fair enough. Robert Kaplan has certainly convinced me that not every projection of U.S. force and influence has to be massive and heavy-handed. And I’m open to the argument that our force levels in Afghanistan and Iraq are adequate, though I do wonder what might have happened if we’d been willing (and able?) to deploy more troops in the early months of the Iraq war. But my purpose here is not to debate force structure or military doctrine. Rather, it’s to consider the place of this war, and national defense in general, in the hearts and minds of the American people. Let me begin with a truism. In World War II, virtually all families were personally touched by the war. Almost everyone had a close relative who was in the service. Everyone made sacrifices and endured hardships to support the war effort. Much was demanded of, and much delivered by, a nation at war. What about now? We put magnetic yellow ribbons on the backs of our cars (some of us at least) and assemble packages full of goodies to send to troops we don’t know. We applaud soldiers in airport departure lounges and clap when the humvee rolls by in the Fourth of July parade. In these ways, we symbolically support our troops and express our solidarity with them. But it’s a sympathy and solidarity that, for the vast majority of us, operates at one remove. These are our countrymen and women, our neighbors perhaps, but seldom our sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers. As a result, the war can feel just a little remote—not as remote as one fought by other countries, but still fought by other people. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not calling for a draft just so that everyone can share more vividly in a sense of national solidarity. But if the stakes are as high and the goal as important as we’ve been told, shouldn’t we be asked to make a few sacrifices? Shouldn’t we honor the sacrifices of our servicemen and women with something more than a few gestures? Shouldn’t our lives somehow be altered by our sharing in the effort our nation is putting forth? In the aftermath of September 11th, President Bush made a start, offering this in his 2002 State of the Union Address: For too long our culture has said, “If it feels good, do it.” Now America is embracing a new ethic and a new creed: “Let’s roll.” In the sacrifice of soldiers, the fierce brotherhood of firefighters, and the bravery and generosity of ordinary citizens, we have glimpsed what a new culture of responsibility could look like. We want to be a nation that serves goals larger than self. We’ve been offered a unique opportunity, and we must not let this moment pass. My call tonight is for every American to commit at least two years—4,000 hours over the rest of your lifetime—to the service of your neighbors and your nation. Many are already serving, and I thank you. If you aren’t sure how to help, I’ve got a good place to start. To sustain and extend the best that has emerged in America, I invite you to join the new USA Freedom Corps. The Freedom Corps will focus on three areas of need: responding in case of crisis at home; rebuilding our communities; and extending American compassion throughout the world. One purpose of the USA Freedom Corps will be homeland security. America needs retired doctors and nurses who can be mobilized in major emergencies; volunteers to help police and fire departments; transportation and utility workers well-trained in spotting danger. Our country also needs citizens working to rebuild our communities. We need mentors to love children, especially children whose parents are in prison. And we need more talented teachers in troubled schools. USA Freedom Corps will expand and improve the good efforts of AmeriCorps and Senior Corps to recruit more than 200,000 new volunteers. And America needs citizens to extend the compassion of our country to every part of the world. So we will renew the promise of the Peace Corps, double its volunteers over the next five years and ask it to join a new effort to encourage development and education and opportunity in the Islamic world. This time of adversity offers a unique moment of opportunity—a moment we must seize to change our culture. Through the gathering momentum of millions of acts of service and decency and kindness, I know we can overcome evil with greater good. And we have a great opportunity during this time of war to lead the world toward the values that will bring lasting peace. The President and First Lady highlighted volunteerism and service in recent commencement addresses at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College and Vanderbilt University. Last month, during National Volunteer Week, members of the Bush administration undertook an impressive array of activities to demonstrate further this commitment. A study released last December by the Bureau of Labor Statistics suggests that such efforts have been successful: over the year beginning in September 2004, almost 65.4 million Americans (six million more than before the President’s call) performed voluntary service at least once. Schools and religious organizations were the principal beneficiaries of these efforts. If I had to guess, I’d say the typical volunteer was a college-educated stay-at-home mom who worked in her children’s school, or an older American who worked in his or her church. I’m not complaining. The impulse behind President Bush’s call was to mobilize our civic spirit to make this a better country. By taking responsibility for and acting to ameliorate our national ills, we help our neighbors while also improving ourselves. Still, this probably isn’t what the soldier quoted above had in mind. I can read a book to my child’s class or teach Sunday school and still enjoy myself at the local bistro on Friday night. Even President Bush would have to admit that he was interested in promoting volunteerism long before September 11th, as was his father (remember the Thousand Points of Light?). In other words, this sort of sacrificial activity, good and praiseworthy as it is, has little or nothing to do with the war on terror. Well, then, what might he have had in mind? Short of a d---- (I daren’t even utter the word), there are two sorts of measures we could take to demonstrate the seriousness of our commitment to victory in the global war on terror. First, there’s reducing our “addiction,” as President Bush calls it, to imported oil. So long as we’re heavily dependent upon oil produced by our enemies or by those who finance our enemies, we’re not doing all we can to assure our national security. While I’m sure that some of our current and future needs can be met, under certain circumstances, by domestic sources, conservation is also part of the solution. Exhortation to conserve is surely a necessary step, but I expect that behavior will change more in response to prices than to Presidential addresses. Our political leaders should certainly resist the temptation to relieve price pressure by reducing gas taxes. But maybe—and here I commit conservative, or at least Republican, heresy—they should even consider raising those taxes. This brings me to my second suggestion. The global war on terror is expensive, with defense spending (not including intelligence costs) coming in at around $500 billion this year. Our annual budget deficits are running at roughly $400 billion, give or take. We consume a little less than 400 million gallons of gasoline a day. Do the math: a nominal additional gasoline tax—say, ten cents a gallon—would put a substantial dent in the budget deficit, cutting it by around 30%. This is more heresy, I know. You don’t win elections by proposing to raise taxes. You don’t reduce the size of government by adding new revenues. Or do you? People smarter than I am disagree about this. Economist William Niskanen argues that “the demand for federal spending by current voters declines with the amount of this spending that is financed by current taxes.” Blogger Jon Henke has his doubts: if it were true that higher taxes led to demand for smaller government, why don’t we see Europeans vociferously demanding less of what they have in spades? I’m not an economist, but I do know a thing or two about civic virtue. One of its aspects is taking responsibility. One aspect of taking responsibility is paying for the benefits you receive. It is highly irresponsible routinely to demand and consume government benefits for which we expect someone else to pay, whether it be the proverbial “rich” or our grandchildren and great-grandchildren. We have, of course, been doing this for years. I’m not proposing that we abandon our profligate ways all at once, but I am suggesting that we can begin to take modest steps toward paying for what we want. That’s the way of civic virtue and responsibility. That’s the kind of sacrifice that our men and women in uniform would presumably appreciate. Wouldn’t it be refreshing for a political leader to stand up and say, “We’re going to meet the challenge of our generation like responsible grown-ups. Some of you will serve in our armed forces, risking your all so that we can continue to enjoy the fruits of liberty. Others will contribute by helping our schools, churches, and communities to be the best they can be. While liberty may be a gift of God, we maintain it at great expense. Honoring God’s gift, honoring the men and women who risk everything to keep us free, and upholding our responsibility to and for our children, we will assume the financial burdens associated with this war.” If we can’t or don’t respond to this kind of appeal, we don’t deserve our liberty. Joseph Knippenberg is a professor of politics and associate provost for student achievement at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta. He is a weekly columnist for The American Enterprise Online and a contributing blogger at No Left Turns.

Posted:  May 17, 2006

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[neverdem]

You can be fiscally conservative by increasing taxes or decreasing spending. You can't be fiscally conservative by increasing debt and deficit spending. It shouldn't be a mystery that the government has stopped publishing M3, the gross supply of currency and liquid assets, IIRC. It shouldn't be a mystery that, "The Dollar/Oil-Price Connection The greenback has a role in today’s high pump prices." It's economic common sense, and the GOP in Congress better buy a clue before the coming general election.

[A CA Guy]

I long for those determined Republicans we had who gave us the Contract with America.

That is what we need today IMO.

Americans also have a very short memory sad to say, and out of sight, out of mind.

[leadpenny]

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not calling for a draft just so that everyone can share more vividly in a sense of national solidarity.

It's too late anyway, professor. The country is too divided now, and the window of opportunity closed within weeks after 9-11. That was the time for the President to call for national service, which could have included the authority to draft.

But if the stakes are as high and the goal as important as we’ve been told, shouldn’t we be asked to make a few sacrifices?

Yes, we should have been asked 4 1/2 years ago.

Shouldn’t we honor the sacrifices of our servicemen and women with something more than a few gestures? Shouldn’t our lives somehow be altered by our sharing in the effort our nation is putting forth?

Yes and yes.

[Darkwolf377]

I'm so sick of this site becoming the "You'd better watch it or I won't vote Republican in November!" site.

[kinoxi]

:)

[leadpenny]

Is that a pre emptive strike or are you just hijacking the thread?

[kinoxi]

sounded pre emptive to me, but it is late...

[Rome2000]

The fact that people are not acting like there is a war on is because the POTUS and his buddies are just plain lousy at PR

This President has demonstrated that he is absoulutely clueless when it comes to dealing with his domestic enemies on the left, de facto allies of the ragheads in that they are more effective at destroying our will to fight than some smelly one eyed subhuman towelhead camel jockey could ever hope to be.

Hard to believe that it has been less than 5 years since 9/11 and more than half of the population want us out of Iraq and Afghanistan and believe that there were no WMD.

The propaganda of the left has been unbelievably effective, they are running around with straight faces saying Iraq has nothing to do with the WOT, and people are buying into it.


The American left should be assailed by this President, its political leaders shamed and silenced and its propagandists in the press jailed .

The enemy knows that the left is its biggest ally and is acting accordingly.

W will do nothing.

[A CA Guy]

I agree in that the POTUS has not driven the fact we are at a real war all that well. He has allowed the people to go on with daily life without enough attention to what we are fighting.

All that gets press is what the buddies of the press want to push, which is antiwar propaganda.

[Dr. Frank fan]

We’re at war, our President keeps telling us,

I'm not sure where he gets this. When does Bush "keep" telling us that we're at war?

and yet our daily lives don’t seem all that different from what they were before September 2001 or March 2003.

And that's a bad thing? I will never understand this bizarre attitude that it's somehow bad that we can wage war in a way that doesn't really touch most of us. Would he prefer rationing, conscription, conversion of factories to war-machinery? Why?

And I’m open to the argument that our force levels in Afghanistan and Iraq are adequate

He's "open to the argument that" force levels are adequate? Gee, that's generous of him. But why would he think they aren't? Because of the military sizes in the 50s and 60s? Should we swell the military just to match those numbers and for no other reason? Ideally, someone would have an actual argument for why force levels supposedly aren't adequate - not just posture as being "open to the argument that they are".

I do wonder what might have happened if we’d been willing (and able?) to deploy more troops in the early months of the Iraq war.

I wonder what it might be like to fly.

(We weren't able.)

But my purpose here is not to debate force structure or military doctrine.

Ah, hence the lack of argument thus far.

But if the stakes are as high and the goal as important as we’ve been told, shouldn’t we be asked to make a few sacrifices?

We should, if it's necessary and will help. It has not proved necessary (who knows what the future will bring), and there's very little that the average person could "sacrifice" in a way that would affect the war effort in the first place.

Shouldn’t we honor the sacrifices of our servicemen and women with something more than a few gestures?

Such as?

Shouldn’t our lives somehow be altered by our sharing in the effort our nation is putting forth?

For most people, no. Most people are not skilled in the field of warmaking and related fields, and thus, their "sharing in the effort" would be an inefficiency at best. If someone is trained as an accountant let him continue to be an accountant and pay taxes; let those taxes be used to purchase war materiel. And so on. This is a more efficient use of our national resources anyway than insisting that we all alter our lives to "share in the effort".

I’m not complaining.

Oh. Well, that's good.

First, there’s reducing our “addiction,” as President Bush calls it, to imported oil. So long as we’re heavily dependent upon oil produced by our enemies or by those who finance our enemies, we’re not doing all we can to assure our national security.

If this means drilling domestically, I'm all for it. Direct this complaint to enviro-nuts who prevent us from doing so for magical-religious reasons.

While I’m sure that some of our current and future needs can be met, under certain circumstances, by domestic sources, conservation is also part of the solution.

"Conservation" - i.e., artificially reducing our demand for oil - is most certainly not part of a solution to the problem, "a large percentage of our oil comes from foreign sources". I don't know where people get this. We can suppress our demand for oil, which will lower prices, which will mean a barrier to entry for new (domestic) oil sources. How exactly does this reduce the % of oil we import from established oil-producing countries? Does the opposite.

Our political leaders should certainly resist the temptation to relieve price pressure by reducing gas taxes. But maybe—and here I commit conservative, or at least Republican, heresy—they should even consider raising those taxes.

For what purpose? He doesn't know. This is magical thinking. Somehow taxing ourselves more will magically harm the Iranians and Saudis.

I’m not an economist, but I do know a thing or two about civic virtue. One of its aspects is taking responsibility.

Unfortunately, if he were an economist, he'd know that taking responsibility means making decisions based on more than just magical thinking.

One aspect of taking responsibility is paying for the benefits you receive. It is highly irresponsible routinely to demand and consume government benefits for which we expect someone else to pay, whether it be the proverbial “rich” or our grandchildren and great-grandchildren. We have, of course, been doing this for years.

Ok, so is the answer Social Security reform? Fine, sign me up.

I'm all for balancing the budget though, and I have plenty of suggestions of my own for things that can be cut.

[Allegra]

It is weird when I go home on leave, it's like the war just disappears. And I was in England the last couple of weeks and you couldn't tell they were involved in a war, either.

Of course, it's kind of nice for me and probably for the troops on leave that the war becomes invisible when you're away from it. We really do get a break from it.

I'm curious....are there any people here who remember life in the U.S. during the Vietnam war? Was there a sense of war in the U.S. then? Were things very different from how they are now? I was too young to remember any of that.

[kinoxi]

guy's got a big job(president) two wars, dealing with congress, liable for everything. the actions that he has taken i generally agree with. i think his trip to the border might at least portend a fat band aid where it's needed

[leadpenny]

Yes, I remember. I was in the military before, during and after Vietnam. Initially, there was indifference, or maybe tacit support. But, under LBJ, it became clear the Vietnam War was unnecessary and prosecuted badly. Tet68 really was the dividing line between indifference and protest.

The WOT is supposed to be as valid as WWII but it has not been sold to the country that way. I think what you have experienced back in the world and in England is due to that poor salesmanship.

[Allegra]

I think what you have experienced back in the world and in England is due to that poor salesmanship.

Last year when I was home for a bit, I was at a gathering. A friend of a friend asked me where I work and I said "Iraq."

He looked perplexed and said "Oh. So what's going on there that Americans like yourself would be working there?"

Then I was the one to look perplexed.

[Darkwolf377]

Is that a pre emptive strike or are you just hijacking the thread?

How can I hijack a thread that began with the exact threat I'm talking about?

the GOP in Congress better buy a clue before the coming general election.

Nice try, though.

[leadpenny]

"Oh. So what's going on there that Americans like yourself would be working there?"

That kind of comment in a setting like that probably would have been uncommon in WWII?

I had been AD from 61-64. Got out for a year and got restless. Went to flight school in late 65. When I got home from my first tour in early 68, I ran into someone who was not aware I had gone back on AD. I told him what I had done and where I'd been and he said something like, "Why would you want to do something like that?" I didn't have an answer.

[Darkwolf377]

I will never understand this bizarre attitude that it's somehow bad that we can wage war in a way that doesn't really touch most of us. Would he prefer rationing, conscription, conversion of factories to war-machinery? Why?

Probably because if there is more suffering people will want it to end faster.

There is this bizarre idea that the suffering should be "spread around" which makes absolutely zero sense.

Those who are suffering in this war are the soldiers and their loved ones.

OK, we agree on that?

Now, let's say we have rationing, the draft, high inflation, misery, etc. back home.

That in now way "spreads around" the misery the soldiers and their families are experiencing.

The article starts off with a bizarre rant about people "stuffing their faces" while a war is on. I have nothing but respect for the soldier who feels this way, but I have to ask, what does he expect, that we not eat while the war is on? That we live on bread and water, that kids never go out? Why? What will that do to lessen the impact on our fighting men and women?

If someone can explain how making more people miserable while doing NOTHING to comfort those in most, true pain during war helps anyone, anywhere, I'm willing to listen.

[Brit_Guy]

"The WOT is supposed to be as valid as WWII but it has not been sold to the country that way. I think what you have experienced back in the world and in England is due to that poor salesmanship."

I'm kind of at a loss as to what the author of the article is arguing. I kind of like the idea that we are capable of waging war without demanding significant sacrifice from the citizenry. Would it really be a good thing if 20 odd under-educated cult following savages with box cutters were able to bring Western Civilisation into a state of total war (re conscription, diversion of usual economic activity to military activity, suspenision of normal civil domestic legal code for military legal code, rationing etc.). If they achieved any of that then frankly they won. Hey, the news is we have the military might to fight them in our place of choosing (Iraq and Afgahnistan - for now), in our time of choosing - and all without a any citizen being inconvienced one iota. To me that's kind of a big finger to the rag heads.

[leadpenny]

neverdem can speak for him/herself, but I don't view it as a threat anymore than I view Paul Revere's ride as a threat. It's still a long time until November but, as things stand now, I think W will lose at least one House to the dems.

I do admit I thought you were talking about the professor's piece.

[Darkwolf377]

I think W will lose at least one House to the dems.

I might have agreed with you last week, but not anymore. Michael Barone, btw, wrote a great piece, and there was another here this week, that points out that the only polls showing Republicans losing the Congress--either house--are generic polls; on the state-by-state level, in individual races, there's not a lot of evidence of it.

And the Republicans in most danger are apparently the most conservative. I doubt those who want to sit it out in Nov. will do so if they see their conservative reps in trouble.

More to the point, I don't think the WOT will be a drag. in fact, I think election night we will see what I and many others predicted in the past 2 elections: 9/11 is STILL the #1 issue with voters. They just don't want to risk giving the Dems veto power over our WOT.