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

Mark Shields: Bush's 'ouchless' war against Saddam Hussein

WASHINGTON (Creators Syndicate, Inc.) -- Northwestern University military sociologist -- and ex-Army draftee during the Cold War -- Charlie Moskos points out how the contemporary press in its 25th anniversary stories about the death of Elvis Presley overlooks "one of the most significant features of his life," which would be that "the leading pop music star of all time served in the U.S. Army."

"Not only did The King accept his obligations as a draftee," Moskos reminds us, "but he also served as an enlisted man in Germany 1958 to '59," just like Moskos did. What makes this important today, as well as interesting, adds Moskos, is that "in all this talk about the war against terrorism, no one is asking privileged youth to serve in our military as ordinary soldiers.

Welcome to George W. Bush's ouchless, painless war against Saddam Hussein. Not since the Mexican-American War nearly a century and a half ago has the United States entered a war without either a military draft to provide manpower or a tax increase to pay the costs, or both. This president asks us at home to pay no price, to bear no burden, to accept no hardship other than -- in the noble spirit of high national purpose -- to accept tax cuts.

"War," writes the conservative scholar Michael Barone, "demands equality of sacrifice." Sadly, that was not true in the U.S. war in Vietnam, when this nation's unjust policy imposed, as Paul Starr wrote, "an enormous, disproportionate sacrifice" in which "a few have been asked to die," while "virtually nothing had been asked of anybody else."

Armies, the people of this country so painfully learned from the tragedy that was Vietnam, don't fight wars. Countries fight wars. If the country is not willing to shoulder the sacrifice, then we should never send an army.

That is not the message from those now so loudly beating the drums of war, who ask of us what Moskos calls, "patriotism-lite." You know: Put flags on your SUV. Feature a flag prominently on your lapel. Obey the commander in chief's directive to support and accept more and deeper tax cuts.

In the front ranks of the war drum-beaters are to be seen, says Charlie Moskos, "the latest appearance of the 'chicken hawks.'" Chicken hawks were the young, educated males during the Vietnam era whose testosterone gland began pumping after age 26, when their own personal exposure to the nation's military draft ended. Most billed themselves as dedicated anti-communists and viewed the U.S. military commitment in Vietnam as critical to stopping the Red Tide. But almost without exception, those cold warriors endorsed a U.S. policy of military escalation absent their own personal participation.

In George W. Bush's America, those civilian leaders who advocate, plan and ultimately vote for war are personally insulated from the pain and loss that war may bring. Of the 1,155,315 enlisted men and women in the U.S. military today, only one -- Sergeant Brooks Johnson, the son of Sen. Tim and Barbara Johnson, D-South Dakota -- is the child or brother or sister of any United States senator.

Sen. Chuck Hagel, the Nebraska Republican, himself an ex-Army sergeant and dedicated combat veteran of Vietnam, cautions against the rush to U.S. war against Iraq before a full, frank and free debate about the cost, the mission and the public commitment involved in such an effort. No hawk has been more noisy in calling for immediate military action against Saddam Hussein than non-veteran Richard Perle, who was Ronald Reagan's assistant secretary of defense. "Maybe," observed Hagel, "Richard Perle would like to be in the first wave of those going to Baghdad.

Bush has to understand that war is and cannot be a spectator sport, where the nation's privileged elites and their families, at a safe remove, look on while fellow citizens they do not know -- and will never meet -- do the fighting and the dying. Barone is right: War truly does demand equality of sacrifice.