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Mark Shields, nationally known columnist and commentator, is the moderator of CNN's The Capital Gang

Mark Shields: A much different war for a changed nation

WASHINGTON (Creators Syndicate, Inc.) -- In his uncompromising condemnation of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, President Bush has no more reliable and important supporter than his erstwhile political foe Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona.

John McCain, an authentic American hero who knows firsthand the pain of combat, has said: "War is awful. Nothing, not the valor with which it is fought nor the nobility of the cause it serves, can glorify war. War is wretched beyond description and only a fool or a fraud could sentimentalize its cruel reality. Whatever is won in war, it is loss the veteran remembers."

Our leaders insist that the United States has changed profoundly and permanently in the last year. For evidence, we are reminded that our society's icons and idols have been changed.

Instead of some post-pubescent, dot.com gazillionaire closing the biggest deal this side of the international dateline, our new heroes have become firefighters, police officers and emergency workers who -- because they honored the vows they had taken -- marched into burning buildings on a mission to save the lives of strangers.

There is not a politician in shoe leather who has not welcomed the photo op with firefighters and cops. Let's not kid ourselves. If these blue-collar workers and dues-paying union members were truly the new American heroes and idols, then why has their place in the economic pecking order not changed for the better in the last year?

Why do fewer employers today provide their workers health insurance? Why has there been no increase in the minimum wage? Why cannot firefighters even get a raise?

On the verge of war, Americans must confront a changed reality about ourselves: John McCain's America, the culture of heroism and sacrifice, is very much in decline. Institutions that imposed and honored sacrifice -- the military draft, traditional morality, the church, among others -- have either been rejected or discredited.

In the judgment of University of Massachusetts wise man Ralph Whitehead, the contemporary American culture's devaluing of individual sacrifice for the common good, along with its refusal to recognize citizens' reciprocal civic obligations to each other, make it difficult for leadership to summon a united nation to prolonged sacrifice.

Over the last generation, according to Whitehead, "politically, liberals have 'deregulated' the nation's culture while conservatives have 'deregulated' the nation's economy."

An almost implicit libertarian consensus has emerged between the two camps: I won't meddle too much with your personal lifestyle if you don't meddle too much with my free market.

The inevitable result, nonjudgmental tolerance, becomes a paramount virtue. What emerges is a society where individual autonomy and self-expression are revered and where an individual's dominant obligation is to himself.

Of course, an individual is free, even encouraged, to sacrifice -- on the jogging trail or in the health club -- in pursuit of the higher value of self-improvement. This might help explain why President George W. Bush over the last year has repeatedly urged his fellow citizens to volunteer, to mentor and to tutor, but why in no speech has the commander in chief asked young Americans to join the United States military.

It's all about individual choice. This will be the first war the United States has fought in for almost a century and a half with a tax cut and without a military draft. In 2002, the American establishment -- political, economic and journalistic -- has no personal stake in the armed forces of the United States.

In proudly classless America, the nation's uniformed defenders come overwhelmingly from America's working families. These are Americans who do not get invited to White House dinners. Their fathers do not host soft-money fund-raisers. Their mothers have never worn a designer original. These brave Americans do not have family trust funds, roman numerals after their names or a summer place on the Vineyard.

Because the values of duty and sacrifice are no longer honored by this society, this war will mean the complete separation of people in power in Washington from the people at peril in the Persian Gulf.


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