The problem with Iraq is that people are getting tired of it but

[Jackpine Radical]

for most Americans it's just not quite painful enough to get us really mad enough to demand an end to it. The average American, especially the average urban American, can go for long periods of time without giving any attention whatsoever to the war.

In Vietnam, at the height of the war, by comparison, we were losing 50 or more soldiers a day, and another 150-200 wounded instead of the 4 or 5 KIA per day in the present war. Also, the wounded, who are a much larger number, are pretty much hidden from us. We don't have legless vets on the street corners selling pencils. Also of course in Vietnam the press actually covered the war. The destruction was harder to hide from, because kindly Uncle Walter was bringing it into your living room every night. And yes, I know about the much larger numbers of Iraqis paying the ultimate price every day because of our adventurism, but the dismal truth is that Iraqis don't count in the calculus of American irritation with the war.

The daily impact of Vietnam was about 1 order of magnitude greater than Iraq in every way except for dollars spent. That war lasted for 10 or 12 years before people finally got angry enough to shut it down. The intensity of combat in Iraq, on the other hand, seems to be rather carefully regulated to stay below the home-front rage threshold. If Vietnam finally became an agonizing abscessed tooth we couldn't ignore, Iraq is more of an annoying occasional twinge in a molar that just isn't quite bad enough to drive us to the dentist yet.

Yes, the people spoke in 2006, and yes, they elected Dem majorities in Congress (barely so in the case of the Senate), but they only spoke; they didn't scream. So Congress thinks they have time--that we care about ending the war, but not all that much. And so the war goes on.

[catmandu57]

1. Most people haven't a personal stake in Iraq

If there was a draft going on right now, we'de be seing a very different attitude towards Iraq. They've been very careful about what the lapdog media can let out, controling the airwaves with an iron fist, if people had a very real chance of losing a son or daughter, husband, wife, etc.. and there was real news coverage then people would pay attention.
As it is though, Americans seem to be mire than happy to stick their heads in the sand and let someone else do the thinking.

[Jackpine Radical]

3. Yeah. Exactly.

Which is why we don't have a draft--and why Charlie Rangel proposed one.

Like I say, they seem able to keep the intensity of the whole thing titrated to a level that keeps America below the boiling point.

[Ilsa]

2. A bill for the war to every address might do the trick if they can't

see how their neighbor's son or daughter or other loved one might be in peril from DimSon's folly.