What American sacrifice?
FOUR YEARS after the invasion of Iraq, Americans still behave as if there is no war at all.
President Bush marked the Iraq anniversary by saying, "It can be tempting to look at the challenges in Iraq and conclude our best option is to pack up and go home." He warned, "The terrorists could emerge from the chaos with a safe haven in Iraq."
The level to which Bush can say this without being impeached is directly related to the depths that Americans delude ourselves daily in supposed safe havens of monstrous SUVs, McMansions, "man caves" and mega televisions.
The fourth year of the Iraq war has been more bloody for Iraqi civilians than Year 2 and Year 3 combined, with 26,540 deaths, according to Iraq Body Count. The last 15 months of occupation have been nearly eight times more bloody for US soldiers than the invasion itself, and has now claimed more than 3,200 lives.
Yet, who would know? The carnage of Iraqis and the coffins of US soldiers have not yet merited a single national call to sacrifice by Bush.
It is a classic sign of the times that The
No one is claiming such lost worker productivity paying attention to the news on Iraq.
People are at least aware enough of the war to sink Bush in the polls and even throw the Republicans out of majority control of Congress. But there is no hint that awareness is changing our culture.
Before the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the false-pretense Iraq war, the American way of life was already a global symbol of gluttony. If anything, the post-9/11 period has resulted in even more hoarding. In 2000, the size of the average American home was 2,266 square feet. Now it is 2,434 square feet, according to Census data, with the highest regional average right here in the Northeast at 2,556 square feet. Our homes are on average double the size of those in other Top 10 richest nations such as Japan or Switzerland according to the
In 1988, 25 percent of new homes in the United States were 2,400 square feet or more. By 2000, the figure reached 35 percent. In the post 9/11 period, the figure reached 42 percent. In the Northeast, nearly half of all new homes -- 47 percent -- are 2,400 square feet and beyond. In a National Public Radio feature last summer on the exploding size of the American home, a Long Island architect said, "No one knows when the next 9/11 will happen. And these houses represent safety. And the bigger the house, the bigger the fortress."
Needless to say, these fallout shelters are stocked with more than water and crackers. War used to be a time you would ration supplies. In the modern American war, where victory is assured without sacrifice, American households throw out nearly 500 pounds of food a year, according to food loss specialist Timothy Jones of the University of Arizona. A significant percentage of food and other trash is generated as we collectively sink into the couch for the two months from Thanksgiving to the Super Bowl. In 2000, Americans spent $97 billion on consumer electronics. In 2005, three years after 9/11, Americans spent $126 billion.
And the soldiers recuperate with cockroaches as roommates.
This does not even get into SUVs, which need no introduction. It all adds up to a nation that was sucking a quarter of the world's energy and spewing out a quarter of its global warming gases with only 5 percent of the planet's population. We consume more oil than all of the European Union or as much as China, Japan, Germany, Russia, and India combined. But the hot news is not a federal plan to curb our addictions. It is 50-inch high-definition televisions and shootings, muggings and stampedes last November for the new
Bush says we cannot leave Iraq because terrorists will emerge from the chaos. He can only say this because Americans have yet to emerge from our caves of consumption.
Derrick Z. Jackson's e-mail address is jackson@globe.com. 
