[Vision2020] The Reality of Sacrifice

[Tom Hansen]

>From Bob Schieffer's commentary on today's (December 24, 2006) "Face the
Nation" -

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The Reality of Sacrifice
By Bob Schieffer

In the midst of the debate over sending more troops to Iraq, former
Secretary of State Colin Powell probably surprised some people when he said
our military is about broken. I say that because in these days of the
all-volunteer force, most of America has lost touch with our military. 

They're a community apart. Many Americans no longer even know someone who 
serves. Except for the one-half of 1 percent of Americans who do serve in
the military, the war has made little difference in our lives: No tax
increases, no rationing, no real hardship. 

We tell ourselves people serve in the all-volunteer force because they want
to. We forget the specific promises we have made them - that they would
serve for a specific period of time, that there would be a specific period
of months between combat assignments. 

We may not even know that as the war has dragged on, those promises have
been broken. 

To hold down costs and to play down the difficulty of the war, over and
over, enlistments have been extended, the time between combat tours reduced
and some troops are now heading back to Iraq for the fourth time. As the
holiday season approaches, we always talk about remembering our troops and
their families, but the talk rings hollow if we fail to understand what we
have been putting them through. 

Whatever our future policy, if it is going to require a larger army, we must
acknowledge that and pay for it. We cannot ask more of our military than we
are already asking. Our troops deserve better.

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

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"Seldom, if ever, has a war ended leaving the victors with such a sense of
uncertainty and fear -- with such a realization that the future is obscure
and that survival is not assured."

- Edward R. Murrow

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