Let's roll

President Kennedy once declared that triumph in "a long, twilight struggle," would come at a steep "price," impose a heavy "burden," and entail genuine "hardship." So why is it that the government has refused to ask Americans to sacrifice for victory in this war? The standard retort is that it doesn't need to, that the wealth of America's treasury allows it to deliver both guns and butter. But by now, it is plain that America's war footing at home or, to be coldly honest, the lack of one, is undercutting its war abroad. \nFollowing Sept. 11, President Bush asserted, "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.'"This point was so potent because of the previous decade, marked as it was by an obsession with individualism. Are we really incapable of seeing a national duty when it arises, and, like the Greatest Generation, behaving accordingly?\nTo fund World War II, the United States appreciably expanded and raised taxes. Moreover, Americans bought $185 billion worth of war bonds. Between 1939 and 1944, FDR slashed non-defense spending by 20 percent. This shift in the budget's trajectory occurred because political leaders recognized, as ours seem not to, the prospect of defeat.\nThe government must cut America's consumption of oil. It should provide greater incentives for enlistment in national service. But these measures would only scratch the surface. This great cause requires the industry of Americans in order to move away from our short-term appetites and toward our long-term interests.\nBumper sticker proposals to support our troops are fruitless without a corresponding avowal to support their mission. Even worse is the leftist catchphrase so ill-suited to our current station, "dissent is the highest form of patriotism." Don't make me laugh. Defending your country is the highest form of patriotism. The options are boundless, including training as a teacher, enlisting in the National Guard or joining the Peace Corps. There are many ways to exhibit love of one's country, but hoisting the image of its enemies, as protesters recently did in Washington, is not one of them. Michael Moore and Cindy Sheehan have both attacked President Bush as the world's leading terrorist and declared their sympathy for "martyrdom operations" in Iraq. How did the lunatic fringe gain such a reverential place, or a place at all, in the Democratic party?\nThe presidency is, as Theodore Roosevelt said, a "bully pulpit." Now is the time to use it. To say this, I recognize, violates all norms of political correctness. But a prolonged global war, and the sacrifices this will entail, requires a sturdy grounding that has not yet even begun to be laid.\nFormer Secretary of State Dean Rusk summarized America's failure in Vietnam by saying, "We tried to do in cold blood what perhaps can only be done in hot blood." If the national leadership remains adrift and the citizenry remains disengaged, it might also be a fitting epilogue for America's defeat -- in Baghdad and beyond.