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We're at War, You Say?
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. 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. |
