American Dialogue: The Founders and Us

by Joseph J. Ellis

Nor was any public sacrifice required. Since President Richard Nixon ended the draft in 1973, the burden of military service has fallen on a small minority of working-class men and women. Nothing like the mass protests against the Vietnam War occurred in the post–Cold War era, for the simple reason that two generations of middle-class, college-age citizens have never had to factor military service into their personal agendas. A serious but unspoken moral dilemma lurks beneath this convenient arrangement, when the chief beneficiaries of America’s status as the dominant world power are immunized from obligations that come with those benefits. An analogous disconnect has also been institutionalized by concealing the costs of war. The budget for the military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, was kept on a separate ledger, as if on a credit card. Instead of a tax increase to cover a portion of the costs, President Bush pushed through a major reduction in taxes, thereby passing the bill (or buck) to posterity. Such financial and accounting chicanery reinforced the larger pattern of deception in the post–Cold War era, making war almost painless: it is not declared, few have to fight, and no one has to pay. Only a small group of veterans, who are currently committing suicide in record numbers, experience firsthand that the United States is engaged in a perpetual war.