Will Americans Sacrifice?

The Bush administration has embarked on two wars (and a so called war on terrorism) without asking the American public to sacrifice current consumption to pay for the wars. I suspect that decision, combined with an excessive ideological commitment to unregulated capitalism and an excessive faith that environmental problems are overestimated or can be solved, has led to the current complex of problems facing the United States and the burden this administration has placed on future generations.

I was a child during World War II, but I remember taking my little money to school and buying saving stamps to support the government's costs of the war. I remember paper drives and saving tin foil and rubber bands to help the war effort. There was rationing of gasoline and food. A large portion of the male population joined the military, and an unprecedented portion of the female population went to work, taking jobs in factories as well as offices and shops. Everyone, children and adults, men and women, worked to help the nation to win the war.

My earliest memory is December 7, 1941 and the attack on Pearl Harbor. September 11, 2001 was a comparable affront to American sensibility, and Americans would have united to support the government in any effort required to retaliate against the terrorists and prevent future similar attacks. Indeed, if asked I think the public would have mobilized to support wars on Iraq and Afghanistan under the impression that they were responsible for 9/11. Of course, had the public devoted itself comparably to these wars, when their justification proved false the backlash would have been more like the antiwar movement of the Vietnam years than has been the pallid movement of today. But then, we might have sent enough troops to keep the peace in Iraq, and enough troops and aid to help build and sustain a better society in Afghanistan, and not been in the difficulties we find today.