A good column by Mark Shields

can be found here. It's called the Moral Logic of Common Sacrifice.

"The current war in Iraq is the first since the war with Mexico in 1846 that the United States has waged without a draft or tax increases."

...


"[Former Secretary of Navy and Vietnam Veteran Jim] Webb once [commented]: "You don't use 'force,' you send people. You send young people who have dreams, who want a future." The people who make the fateful decision for the nation to go to war are, themselves, subject to no personal consequences. Their children and the children of their friends are not at risk. Without apparent embarrassment, they champion a policy of military escalation with no personal participation. As of this writing, 1,827 Americans have been killed in Iraq -- 1,686 of those deaths have occurred since President George W. Bush landed on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln under a banner proclaiming, "Mission Accomplished.""

...

""Only when the privileged classes perform military service, only when elite youth are on the firing line, does the country define the cause as worth young peoples' blood and do war losses become acceptable," observes Moskos, adding that "the answer to what constitutes vital national interests is found not so much on the cause, itself, but in who is willing to die for that cause.""

Ask yourself what sacrifices you've made in the "War" on terror (or the Global Struggle against Islamic Extremists or whatever the PR gurus in the highest levels of our government are calling it) then ask yourself whether you'd be as gung-ho about this war if it was your son, your spouse, your father, your best friend, who was one of the 1,827. It's worth it to those who made the decision, because they've borne no sacrifice for it.

And I guess "freedom" is what we're fighting for, or at least what we've been told we're fighting for. But what kind of "freedom" is this? The kind of freedom championed and celebrated by a "Freedom Walk" sponsored by your Department of Defense that commemorates the barbaric attacks of 9/11?

In this "Freedom Walk" you actually have to REGISTER to walk for freedom in our country's capital, on public streets in between public momuments. You MUST register, with the government, before enjoying your "freedom" to walk along public streets. That doesn't sound like freedom to me......

Amendment I - Freedom of Religion, Press, Expression.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.