http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2003/09/10/money_for_war_but_not_much_else/TWICE IN HIS ADDRESS to ask for a fresh $87 billion for the occupation and restoration of Iraq, President Bush used the most useless word of his presidency: sacrifice. He opened his speech by saying, "These months have been a time of new responsibilities and sacrifice and national resolve and great progress." Later, he said, "This will take time and require sacrifice. Yet we will do what is necessary, we will spend what is necessary, to achieve this essential victory in the war on terror, to promote freedom and to make our own nation more secure."
Bush has not asked civilians to sacrifice a thing since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The heaviest lifting he asked us to do was haul our luggage to the airport. Or perhaps you forgot his speech at Chicago's O'Hare Airport two weeks after the attacks where he said, "Get on the airlines. Get about the business of America . . . Get down to Disney World."
It was Freudian for Bush to invoke Disney, as in the two years since, he has produced several blockbuster fantasies. He gave us trillion dollar tax cuts and 93,000 jobs were still cut last month. He gave us an invasion of Iraq over weapons of mass destruction and none have been found, despite the sacrifice of nearly 300 American soldiers and thousands of Iraqi soldiers and civilians.
Bush gave us permission to plunder the present and sacrifice the future. Making the nation more "secure" has become a euphemism for making it safe for our 5 percent of the world's population to consume a quarter of the world's oil.
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