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ever income tax to fund the Civil War, to the
war bonds and industrial mobilization of World
War II. In the past, a blend of taxation and con-
scription meant it was difficult for us to sustain
a war beyond several years. Neither citizens nor
citizen soldiers had much patience for command-
ers, or Commanders in Chief, who muddled
along. Take, for example, Washington reading
Thomas Paine’s The American Crisis as a plea to
his disbanding army before it famously crossed
the Delaware (“These are the times that try men’s
souls.. .”) or Lincoln, whose perceived misman-
agement of the Civil War made his defeat in the
1864 presidential election a foregone conclusion
(until Atlanta fell to the Union two months before
the vote). The history of American warfare—even
the “good” wars—is a history of our leaders des-
perately trying to preserve the requisite national
will because Americans would not abide a costly,
protracted war. This is no longer true.
Today the way we wage war is ahistorical—
and seemingly without end. Never before has
America engaged in a protracted conflict with an
all- volunteer military that was funded primarily
through deficit spending. Of our current $22 tril-
lion national debt, approximately $6 trillion is a
bill for the post-9/11 wars. These have become
America’s longest, surpassing Vietnam by 12
years. And it’s been by design. In the aftermath of
9/11, there was virtually no serious public debate
about a war tax or a draft. Our leaders responded
to those attacks by mobilizing our government
and military, but when it came to citizens, Presi-
dent George W. Bush said, “I have urged our fel-
low Americans to go about their lives.” And so,
the war effort moved to the shopping mall.
In fairness to Bush, when read as a response to a
terrorist attack designed to disrupt American life,
his remarks are understandable. However, when
read in the context of what would become a two-
decade military quagmire, those same remarks
seem negligent, even calculated. This is particu-
larly true for a generation of leaders (both Repub-
lican and Democrat) who came of age in Vietnam,
when indignation at the draft mobilized the boomer
generation to end the war, one that otherwise might
have festered on like the wars today.
If after 9/11 we had implemented a draft and
a war tax, it seems doubtful that the millennial
generation would’ve abided 18 successive years
of their draft numbers being called, or that their
boomer parents would’ve abided a higher tax rate
to, say, ensure that the Afghan National Army
could rely on U.S. troops for one last fighting sea-
son in the Hindu Kush. Instead, deficit spending
along with an all-volunteer military has given
three successive administrations a blank check
with which to wage war.