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Townhall
The Latest War
Will Not Be Free
Steve Chapman
Sep 28, 2014
Young people may find it hard to believe, but going to war used to be a
big deal. When the United States started bombing Iraq in January 1991,
Americans somberly watched President George H.W. Bush address the
nation, followed by live video of Baghdad being bombed. The Bush
address drew the biggest audience TV had ever had.
This past week, by contrast, life went on normally as U.S. warplanes
and Tomahawk missiles destroyed targets in Syria and Iraq in a new war,
which has no clear goal or time limit. As our leaders took us into a
conflict fraught with peril, most people yawned. We're at war again?
Oh, right -- and rain is still wet.
Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. has been at war two out of
every three years. Remember Somalia? Bosnia? Kosovo? It's hard to
decide whether this is our third war in Iraq or a continuation of our
second, which began when Johnny Manziel was in the fourth grade. Our
fight in Afghanistan has been going on for 13 years, five years longer
than the Vietnam War.
This one, Secretary of State John Kerry said, could last two or three
years. He doesn't appear to worry that the American people's patience
will run out before the administration leaves office. Though they
occasionally get weary of particular conflicts, they rarely evince
strong resistance to new ones.
There are many reasons for that. The 1973 abolition of the draft was a
worthwhile achievement with an unfortunate effect: divorcing most
people from the tangible consequences of war.
A lot of parents would be warier of Obama's bombing campaign if they
had to contemplate that one day, the gods of war would demand the
healthy bodies of their sons and daughters. Young people would be
likelier to march in protest if they feared being sent to Syria against
their will and returned home in coffins...
Read the rest of the article at Townhall
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