We don't fight our own battles anymore

[Shallah Kali]

http://cincinnati.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/stories/2005/04/11/editorial3.html

I've mentioned it before in this space, but these "Support Our Troops" car magnets make me crazy. Especially on gas guzzlers. Who are these messages meant for? Other motorists? The driver? And how exactly is he supporting our troops? By buying the magnet? Driving an SUV?

Support our troops? Who's doing that? What sacrifices are we making as a country? What are we going without? Nothing that I can see. For those of us lucky enough not to have a loved one in Iraq, this war has exactly zero impact on our lives. Zero. We haven't been asked to sacrifice anything.

Europeans wonder how Americans can so easily support the war in Iraq, and people here can't understand why Europeans are so vocal in their opposition. We see them as soft. But it's all about sacrifice. France had 6 million casualties in World War I. That was 15 percent of its population. Germany had 5.7 million casualties in WWI and another 7 million in World War II. Pretty much, every male in Germany born between 1895 and 1930 was either wounded or died as the result of war. No, Europe's been there, done that.

The more you suffer, the more you sacrifice, the more life means. Would Americans still support the war in Iraq if there was a draft? If we had to stop buying cars and milk, like in WWII? If our taxes went up? I'm not optimistic. To do without has become un-American.

[MADem]

1. What an interesting observation

Bill Maher did a few posters in that book of his on this very subject.

It would be interesting to see how Americans would react to meat coupons, butter rationing, mixing the yellow into your margerine, coupons for clothing (no stockings for the gals) and shoes, walking everywhere because you needed a card for your car and the ration coupons to buy the gas, metal drives, victory gardens...to say nothing of seeing all of the neighborhood young marching off to war.

And it would, of course, be ten times more personal if you had memory of, or heard family stories about, people getting tossed out of their homes because they were appropriated by troops, or hiding from them as they came through town, or watching your neighbors get rounded up...

Where folks stand depends alot of where they sit. And if they are sitting pretty, they tend not to care.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

4. Most notably (paraphrase):

Put a ribbon on your automobile. It's literally the least you can do.

[coloradodem2005]

2. How true.

[Daphne08]

3. "For those of us lucky enough...

not to have a loved one in Iraq, this war has exactly zero impact on our lives. Zero. We haven't been asked to sacrifice anything."

The writer is correct. This is the reason why there remains any support at all for this war in Iraq. It hasn't personally affected enough Americans yet.