Inactive Rebunk
America’s greatest sacrifice for Iraq? Press conferences that occasionally disrupt local programming
Of all of the problems I had with Bush’s speech, perhaps the following line was the most divorced from reality:
“America and our friends are in a conflict that demands much of us.” Bush then recalled the Revolutionary war, the Civil War, and “the hard-fought battles against tyranny in the 20th century” as evidence of our ability to remain dedicated to a moral objective.
The problem is that this conflict does not demand much from us at all, quite the opposite. Other than the military personnel doing the fighting and their families, what demands does this conflict make of us? No one is being told to cut back on anything (like oil, fuel, etc.), there are no war bonds people can purchase, in fact people have been told by the administration to go out and buy CD’s and clothing, to go to the movies or on vacation. In other words, while the administration tells us how demanding this conflict has been, it also tells us that we should go on with our lives as if nothing is happening, and indeed we are.
Congressman Strickland of Ohio expressed this reality last year , when he made the following statement:
“We are not paying a price. We are not even paying for this war. The cost of this war is being passed on to the children and the grandchildren that will follow us. They are the ones being asked to pay the cost of this war. What did the President asked us to do to sacrifice for this war? He told us to go shopping. He told us to go shopping. Where is the sacrifice other than those who are at this very moment risking their lives for us, the moms and dads who are grieving and will grieve for the rest of their lives over the loss of their son or daughter, the husbands and the wives and the children who will live out the rest of their lives without their loved one because of the miscalculation of this administration and their unwillingness to even recognize what they have done?
That is what bothers me. We all should be sacrificing and sharing in the sacrifice, but we are not being asked to do so. Go out and live our life. Go shopping, go to the ballgames, spend money, do what we want to do, and let someone else's kid fight this war for the Iraqi Interim Government. That is totally unacceptable.”
The reason Bush has hesitated asking anything of the American people is partly ideological, in my opinion, but even more political. Ideologically, he is convinced that tax cuts are the ends to which any means possible must strive towards, and that the American economy depends on it. He believes that wars in the 21st century need to be fought quickly and inexpensively because we may have to be fighting a lot of them in the future. Politically, this conflict was never overwhelmingly popular with the American people until shortly after it was waged, and asking them to pay anything for it would make it far less popular than it is already.
Because of this, the war in Iraq is barely even noticed by Americans (judging from its minimal coverage on the national media networks) let alone sacrificed for. Apparently, supporting the troops and buying an American flag is all that constitutes sacrifice today. Despite the mounting debt this administration has incurred, and our addiction to foreign oil that shows no signs of abetting, Bush’s conservative political agenda remains unchanged since before 9/11.
The sole sacrifice Americans are being asked to pay is the surrendering of their civil liberties through the PATRIOT Act, which has done a wonderful job of keeping the homeless out of train stations , or monitoring what I read from my local library , but whose actual effectiveness or necessity in fighting terrorism remains controversial.
Perhaps there is no need to rethink any of Bush’s policies and perhaps this war is best fought far away, by other people, and we’ll just have our children pick up the tab. But I do wish politicians would stop making such lofty and inaccurate statements about the sacrifice of the American people that simply does not exist in any systematic fashion.
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