Dan Rather
AND SO we celebrate another Fourth of July with our nation at war. Will this Independence Day feel different from any other? Chances are that it will not, unless yours is one of the military families whom President Bush thanked in his recent address from Fort Bragg, saying that "The burden of war falls especially hard on you."
This is certainly true, but these words could be amended to "The burden of war falls almost exclusively on you" and be no less true.
Because, more than two years after the invasion of Iraq and nearly four years into the broader war on terrorism, our nation's fighting men and women are at war, but our nation still is not.
Forgive a member of an earlier generation his memories, but during World War II, while our soldiers were fighting overseas, our regular citizens were taking measures to ensure that the war would be won, and to keep the war in the forefront of American minds. During the Vietnam War, the home front did not undergo a similar mobilisation - but it did undergo a military draft, and it was certainly clear, from the protests and society-wide debates, that the war was very much in the forefront of the public mind.
Our leaders compare the current war to the 20th century's great fights against tyranny, but they make no commensurate call on all for sacrifice.
In Iraq, more than 1,700 of our military men and women have been killed. Large-scale combat operations remain under way. And yet there is very little in our public life that bears witness to these facts. You don't see it in major pieces of legislation, you don't see it in large-scale government-sponsored citizen campaigns, and you don't see it in widespread protest.
One sees it in the news, yes, but there are times when news from Iraq - and, lest we forget, Afghanistan - can seem like a drop in a vast sea of information ranging from the vital to the utterly trivial.
Is it in danger of becoming - to borrow a phrase from yet another war - the war that is "over there", and over there alone?
Whether one was for or against the initial invasion, and no matter one's opinion on the best way forward now that the United States is in Iraq, one must also realise that, whatever the plan, the heavy lifting will be done by soldiers, sailors, fliers and Marines.
In his Fort Bragg speech, President Bush asked us to remember this, too, on this wartime Fourth of July - and asked us to thank the men and women who are defending America overseas. He urged his fellow citizens to show their support "by flying the flag, sending letters to our troops in the field or helping the military family down the street."
And he gave out a Web address - AmericaSupportsYou.mil - where one can learn more about local, private efforts to show appreciation for the troops.
These things seem like the very least we can do for those who toil night and day under the same flag we will salute with fireworks on the Fourth. Small acts to let those who are familiar with far deadlier explosions know that they are not forgotten, and that the nation fights with them.
They represent an important first step, for those of us back home, in a war on which we have staked so much of our national treasure - our young men and women - and our treasury. But in Iraq, we are told, there is still a long way to go. On the home front, meantime, we should not let this first step be our last.
Dan Rather is a television broadcaster.
