The President and the " S " Word

In the 32nd — and next-to-last — paragraph of his 16th prime-time address to the nation, president George W. Bush actually used the " S" word in speaking to us, his "fellow citizens," about this nation's bloody and unpopular occupation of Iraq: "The year ahead will demand more patience, sacrifice and resolve."

Pardon me, Mr. President, but all the U.S. sacrifice throughout the last four years of the war in Iraq has been made exclusively by the four-tenths of one percent of Americans who serve in this nation's military — and by those who love and know them. It has been their blood that has been spilt. It is their limbs that have been lost. It is at their funerals where broken-hearted parents bury the child.

To all the rest of us out of uniform, sacrifice remains a totally alien concept. Our president has asked us to pay no price, to bear no burden. Instead, we are told — and we have selfishly acquiesced in the fraud — that "patriotism" requires us to accept, while paying hypocritical lip-service to family values, a series of unearned tax-cuts so we can transfer the entire cost of the war onto our children and grandchildren ... whom we profess to love.

In earlier, and more noble, times, Americans really did believe that war demanded equality of sacrifice. We collected wastepaper, scrap metal, aluminum, tin cans, foil and cooking fat. We planted 20 million "victory gardens' in backyards, empty lots and playgrounds, which were able to raise one-third of all the fruits and vegetables consumed on the home front. We limited ourselves to three gallons of gasoline a week, accepted the rationing of sugar, butter, cigarettes and alcohol, and endured meatless weekdays. Since 2001, too many civilians have not stopped griping, loudly, about the extra time caused by security procedures at the airport.

But you still see the Old Glory lapel pins and the "We Support Our Troops" stickers on the gas-guzzling SUVs in a display of what the nation's pre-eminent military sociologist, Charles Moskos, has so aptly named "patriotism light." Moskos, who served in the Army during the Cold War as an enlisted man after graduating from Princeton, has long favored the reinstatement of the draft and backs the latest legislative initiative by Rep.

Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., to do that.

But Moskos is not optimistic. He knows that for both liberals and conservatives, the reinstatement of the draft — not Social Security — has become the real Third Rail of American politics. Overlooked or deliberately ignored by the political and media elites are the facts that the desertion rate among draftees through World War II, Korea and Vietnam was lower than that of volunteers. In the all-volunteer military, one out of three recruits fails to complete his initial enlistment; among draftees, one out of 10 failed to do so.

Iraq has made the recruiters' job much tougher. According to Pentagon figures compiled by the National Priorities Project, a research group, the number of those joining the military who are high school grads has dropped significantly. The percentage of new soldiers with a GED — instead of a high-school diploma — doubled (to 26.7 percent) between 2004 and 2006. Recruits with misdemeanors on their records increased by 44 percent and waivers extended to recruits guilty of previous "serious misconduct" — which includes criminal acts, chemical or alcohol abuse, or wrongdoing with weapons — jumped from 630 to 1,017.

Moskos, a student and admirer of those who do volunteer and sacrifice in the military, does not spare the civilians who endorse the arrangement by which all the nation's fighting and dying will continue to be done by the children of Americans who do not "summer" on Martha's Vineyard, who do not ski at Vail and who don't have a favorite spot in Tuscany.

He says: "They call this an all-volunteer military. But in the U.S., we're willing to pay people to die for us. That doesn't reflect very well on the character of our society." Amen.

In all debates and discussions involving Iraq, can we agree to eliminate any mention of sacrifice not directly involving military personnel?

To find out more about Mark Shields and read his past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

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COPYRIGHT 2007 MARK SHIELDS