Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 22, 1991 TAG: 9102220625
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: PAXTON DAVIS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The enthusiasm is inversely proportionate to the demands war makes on your ordinary life. If you neither have to fight nor risk having to fight; if your accustomed amenities continue without interruption or difficulty; if your income remains as high as ever; and if you make no emotional, physical or immediate moral sacrifices, you may well discover that war provides the means of staging a bender.
The United States is on such a bender now. The bender is fueled by the relentless propaganda of President George Bush and his minions as well as by the media of mass communication, which serve up an uninterrupted daily menu of images and words implicitly demonstrating the "justness" of the American cause in the Persian Gulf and the depravity of its enemies - and the apparent bloodlessness of the American way of fighting the war. Images of the slaughter visited upon the unfortunate Iraqis who happened to be in one Baghdad bunker created a momentary pause for reflection, but once the images passed so did the reflection.
The point - George Bush's point - is to portray the war on Iraq as a moral imperative that also costs Americans nothing, or costs them so little they are, for all practical purposes, unaffected by it.
So far this has worked. But it is - to borrow Bush's term for Saddam Hussein's peace feeler last week - a "cruel hoax."
The hoax is that the war is bloodless and will continue to be bloodless for Americans, who are, after all, the only human beings fighting in the Persian Gulf; that it costs nothing either financially, physically or morally; and that at last the world has discovered a way to make an omelette without breaking eggs.
An apparently overwhelming majority of Americans, easily persuaded anyway and softened up by years of deceit from the political leadership of their country, has seized upon these rationalizations as a reason to go on an emotional war binge - the likes of which I have never seen. They call themselves "patriotic" and believe they are saying something when they claim to "support the troops." They fly yellow ribbons and damn war protesters for "failing to back the president."
This latter-day jingoism might wane quickly if the real costs of the war were brought home to them directly. If servicemen begin to come home in body bags; if goods and services suddenly become scarce; above all, if the financial obligations of the war, inevitable anyway, are made clear to American citizens, it is impossible to believe that the jingoism will last.
For that reason, and for a lot more, it is desirable for Bush to bring the burden of the war home to Americans of all classes. If we want the war we are so certain is in the interest of the extending "democracy," then let us share it democratically.
Here are steps the president could and should take:
Impose a war tax on the incomes and cars of all citizens. A war already costing more than half a billion dollars a day, an amount certain to rise sharply when the war becomes a land war, may be kept "off-budget" by a cunning president and frightened legislators. But the money must and will be paid.
Raise taxes on all forms of oil products to a point that will discourage promiscuous driving, the use of excess energy otherwise and the waste of a finite resource, as well as encourage conservation. If the war is to protect access to oil, then let us diminish our dependence on imported oil. Stock-car races, already an energy disgrace, would be forbidden.
Ration raw materials and products needed for war purposes, from steel and nylon to meat and beer, and including all oil and its derivatives.
And above all:
Reinstitute the draft.
The Bush administration maintains that our present all-volunteer services are "working." Perhaps they are, but the claim is a convenient smoke screen that allows politicians to keep the war at arm's length. A true draft that spares no race, no class, no sex and no vocation would help rectify what is now a shameful cruelty to the black and the poor. Let us draft all four of Bush's own sons. (All four of Franklin Roosevelt's sons served in combat in World War II.) Let us draft all congressional sons of fighting age. Let us see to it that draft exemption be possible only for the unfit.
None of this will be done, of course. Bush knows better than to risk his present popularity, and Congress fears electoral defeat worse than anthrax. But the bill will be paid, in innumerable ways, and we all will pay it.
Meanwhile let us hear less about "patriotism," which is cheap, and more about citizenship, which requires thought, courage, commitment, sacrifice and costs money.
by CNB