Sacrifice, That Pesky Idea

The Sunday New York Times had an interesting article called All Quiet on the Home Front, and Some Soldiers Are Asking Why. The second paragraph of the article raises the question:

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?

The article goes on to discuss how the “nation at war” of 2005 bears no resemblance to the behavior of either the government or the citizenry during World War II.* Americans are not being asked to sacrifice in any way, except to perhaps send a care package or two to the troops to ostensibly boost morale. There is no serious talk of a draft (though the liberal blogosphere seems to have its suspicions), and in fact, Americans are even being explicitly told to continue living life as normal to “not to give terrorists a moral victory by giving in to the fear of violence.”

This is psychologically damaging to the troops. According to the article, soldiers are sensing that the regular citizen’s level of committment to this war is pretty weak. Says David C. Hendrickson of Colorado College, “Bush understands that the support of the public for war – especially the war in Iraq – is conditioned on demanding little of the public.”

More discussion of sacrifice (the comments to this post are very good) after the jump at The Oil Drum.