What show did you watch during the war, Daddy? (Rall)

<snip> The war divided families, destroyed relationships, even prompted the vandalism of cars adorned with the wrong bumper sticker--but that was then, back in 2004, during a hotly-contested election campaign featuring a warmongering draft dodger challenged by a peacenik Vietnam vet. Iraq has faded from the top headlines, its daily agony of dead, wounded and bombing victims downgraded to the dismal, gray status of a daily box score. It has been replaced by fresher outrages--the government's non-response to Hurricane Katrina, skyrocketing gas prices, rising unemployment, white collar criminals subjected to excessive prison sentences on a par with those received by druggies. Waiting in the wings: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby, depending on what acts of state treason prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald managed to dig up over summer vacation.

The fighting over the war is over. Long live the war.

Television and its 24-hour news cycle may be the poisonous root causes of national ADD, but our growing disinterest in Iraq also owes a lot to the polarization that has characterized reaction to this war ever since it was conceived in Dick Cheney's executive suite. Americans remained focused on World War II through four tough years partly because the war effort required a wholesale transformation of the economy and everyday life, but also because its initial popularity--affirmed by a legal, Congressional declaration of war--amounted to society's tacit commitment to endure the inevitable ups and downs. By contrast, Americans' initial support of intervention in Vietnam proved wide but thin after the growing cost reminded them that the endeavor had been optional from the start.

As Gordon Goldstein, national security advisor to JFK and LBJ, said in 2003: "There was no strategy to generate public support for an engagement that would be long and costly and difficult. They didn't sell it that way in Vietnam and they haven't sold it that way in Iraq." <snip>

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ucru/20050921/cm_ucru/whatshowdidyouwatchduringthewardaddy;_ylt=A86.I06lwDBDdacAVRH9wxIF;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl

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