What Does "At War" Really Mean?

I noticed this in the first gulf war, also. The biggest thing Americans were asked to do was to keep spending, so that 1. we would not go into a recession and 2. we could keep giving the government money so they could buy stuff.

Perhaps that is one big difference--during WW2, the government did not already have the machinery in place to support the troops. Peacetime industries had to be converted to military producers. Today, we have military producers all the time, more than we need for this level of warfare.

I was thinking that also in WW2 we were directly attacked, but on second thought, we lost more people, more money, and especially more civilians on 9/11.

One of the problems I've noticed with this war is that our military is so well-equipped that all they want is our tax money. I will have more on this later, but it is quite clear that the American people pay far more in taxes today than we did in the 1940's, and some of that money goes to our military. There is no longer much need for Americans to "pitch in" to support our soldiers - and as a result we no longer feel very involved in our wars overseas. This provides all the more reason for our leaders to get serious about helping us find ways we too can be involved in the war; without them, we just do not take it seriously enough. A very occasional major terrorist attack is simply not enough to keep us conscious of what this war is all about, and of what the price will be if we lose.