Throw the SUVs overboard!
President Bush has been far too timid about asking Americans for wartime sacrifices. He should start by calling on patriots to wean themselves from foreign oil.

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By Jennifer Foote Sweeney

Nov. 14, 2001 | When he surfaced in Atlanta Friday to tell Americans the ways in which their lives as citizens could be different in the wake of the terrorist attacks, President Bush might as well have pulled up a tiny chair and read "The Very Hungry Caterpillar." His simplistic plan for a civic war effort suggested a response so remedial that it was hard not to be insulted, as well as disappointed.

The president's exhortations, which added up to a kindly prescription worthy of Mister Rogers, overlooked the complexity of our trauma, ignored the need of many Americans to actively express their patriotism, and failed to acknowledge the rare opportunity Bush now has to propose a national war effort that could tap our fear and anger in ways that cripple our enemies, unite hawks and doves, and preserve the foundation -- freedom, independence, ingenuity, resolve -- of America's power.

The great abyss between the gravity of the nation's crisis and the banality of Bush's address brought to mind the 1863 dispatch of American diplomat Charles Francis Adams to blue-blood Earl Russell: "It would be superfluous in me to point out to your Lordship that this is war."

It would be sad, but not surprising, to find that President Bush is unaware of his blunder. But it is frustrating to consider the truth: The national war effort with the greatest potential impact and the most lasting effect demands the kind of change and commitment that Americans are ready for, but it is precisely the one that the president and many of his closest advisors are most loath to suggest. And their silence does not reflect a wish to protect us; it belies a need to protect themselves. Because the civilian war effort that makes the most sense threatens the economic serenity of oil companies and their supporters in public office: It is a campaign to reduce energy consumption, a war on just one drug -- fossil fuel -- that could have a geopolitical impact that even bombing cannot achieve.
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