Editorial: A shared sacrifice

Tuesday, April 27, 2004 | 8:37 a.m.

Last week Pat Tillman, the former Arizona Cardinals' safety who gave up a multimillion-dollar contract to become a U.S. Army ranger, was killed during an ambush in Afghanistan. A frequent comment heard after Tillman's death was how remarkable it was that he willingly passed up a lucrative career as a professional athlete to serve his country following the 9-11 terrorist attacks, but that sentiment might say more about the rest of us than it does about Tillman.

The fact is that young men and women who are wealthy, or who come from privileged backgrounds, aren't as likely to put themselves in harm's way by joining the military. Just after the start of the Iraq war last year, the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune reported that of the 535 members of Congress, fewer than a dozen had children in the military who were fighting in Iraq. The lack of shared sacrifice, along with a U.S. military that already is being stretched thin by fighting two wars at once, is so pronounced that it has even led for calls to renew the military draft.

President Bush has done little to call upon Americans, outside of those in the military, to make sacrifices since the 9-11 terrorist attacks. For instance, Bush wants to make permanent huge tax cuts that mostly benefit the wealthy, even though in doing so the national debt will balloon and will saddle future generations with the responsibility of paying it off. The president also is afraid to upset all those Americans who drive gas-guzzling vehicles by requiring greater fuel efficiency -- even though tougher government standards in the long run would decrease our dependence on Middle East oil. The president hasn't exactly been a profile in courage.

We hope that Tillman's death, and the extraordinary love he had for his country, will cause the kind of introspection about the meaning of shared sacrifice that too many other Americans have put off.

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