Moral logic of common sacrifice - Mark Shields

[madinmaryland]

WASHINGTON (Creators Syndicate) -- In his landmark book on the infantryman, "Mud Soldiers," George Wilson quoted Col. Steve Siegfried, a combat veteran, on why the United States must reinstate the military draft in wartime: "Armies don't fight wars. Countries fight wars. I hope to hell we learned that in Vietnam. ... A country fights a war. If it doesn't, then we shouldn't send an army."

The current war in Iraq is the first since the war with Mexico in 1846 that the United States has waged without a draft or tax increases.

War demands equality of sacrifice. Nobody knows that hard truth better than Jim Webb. Long before he was secretary of the navy in the Reagan administration, Webb was a 1968 graduate of the Naval Academy.

As a Marine platoon leader and company commander in Vietnam, he earned the Navy Cross, a Silver Star, two Bronze Stars, two Purple Hearts and, after multiple surgeries, a medical discharge.

..snip

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/08/08/sacrifice/index.html

An excellent commentary on the lack of sacrifice by the American people for this "war".

Mark Shields is a vereran of the Marines.

[Demeter]

1. We've Given Up Our Liberties, Our Economy, and Our Sanity

I think we've made enormous sacrifices, but they are the wrong ones. Those sacrifices were made to appease the crazy among us and feed the evil, not to fight insanity and win against evil.

[Larkspur]

2. Excellent commentary Here's the 2 paragraphs I liked from this op ed

Moral logic tells us that when the nation legally goes to war, it is everybody's war and it must be everybody's risk. But the elite of the country seeks to make war little more than a spectator sport.
Brilliant observation!!

Spectator sport is exactly how the Corporate Media portrayed this war.

I have no love for the Chickenhawk Repubkes, but what ticks me off about Dems, like "Holy Joe" Lieberman and "Holy" Hillary Clinton, both of whom voted for the Iraq war, is that they are too concerned with video game violence and not with real violence in war, especially in a war launched on lies and greed. Neither of these 2 Dem senators have sacrificed their children to the military and their war god, but they have no qualms about supporting legislation that increases the size of the Army and Marines. Who do they think they will recruit into the Army and Marines when recruiters are already saying that the Iraq war is the main obstacle to attracting qualified recruits? Maybe they hope to mine the prison system for recruits.

And this paragraph

"Only when the privileged classes perform military service, only when elite youth are on the firing line, does the country define the cause as worth young peoples' blood and do war losses become acceptable," observes Moskos, adding that "the answer to what constitutes vital national interests is found not so much on the cause, itself, but in who is willing to die for that cause."

As I recall, FDR's kids served in the military during WW II. I don't know if they were on the firing line or not, but at least they served.

Remember, Bush told us our moral duty after 9/11/01 was to go shopping, so it should be no surprise that equality of sharing the burden of war does not exist.