Three weeks ago, President George W. Bush asked Congress for another $108 billion to fund the Iraq war -- on top of the $500 billion spent since "Mission Accomplished" five years ago.
It's costing us a whopping $255 million a day.
Who's paying? The answer is, in large part, our children and grandchildren.
About 40 percent of our war expenses comes from money our government borrows from foreign countries, most notably China.
Unlike other wars we've fought, taxes have not been raised to help pay the bill.
They have been lowered.
There's been no fuel rationing, no new benefits for veterans, no call to purchase war bonds.
President Bush regularly thanks our brave soldiers for their noble service, yet refuses to ask Americans at home to share in the sacrifice. After 9/11, he told us to go shopping.
There's been a strategic shielding of most voters from any financial sacrifice, effectively limiting motivation to end the war. For an administration whose members break all previous records for draft deferments, it's easy to have other people "stay the course."
With war news off the front pages, those of us without family members fighting in Iraq are lulled into comfort. We watch baseball and "American Idol" and complain about gasoline prices.
John McCain -- certainly no stranger to sacrifice -- wants to suspend the federal gasoline tax this summer in a move based more on pandering to the voters than sound economic policy.
Hillary Clinton, uncorking a Hail Mary pass with the clock running out, wants to do the same.
"Politicians prefer to focus on what they would do for us, rather than what they would ask of us," wrote Ron Fournier of the Associated Press. "We live in a time, and in a nation, consumed by consuming."
This fall is one of the most pivotal presidential elections in nearly 50 years. Americans are begging for a leader who tells us what we need to hear, not something we want to hear.
Someone who asks all of us to sacrifice for the common good.
Someone like Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Five months after Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt reminded Americans of their individual responsibilities.
Higher taxes. Keeping personal and corporate profits at a reasonable rate. Ceilings on prices and rents. Stabilizing wages and farm prices. Buying war bonds. Rationing essential commodities which are scare. Limiting installment buying and paying down debts and mortgages.
"This will require, of course, the abandonment not only of luxuries but of many other creature comforts," said Roosevelt.
During World War II the highest tax rates on wealthy were over 90 percent. During the Korean and Vietnam Wars and the Cold War they were over 50 percent.
With the entire nation sharing in the sacrifice, it brought a level of discomfort to everyone's lives.
The war remained on people's minds every day.
Back then patriotism meant much more than putting a cheap sticker on your car or wearing a flag pin. Patriotism meant going to war at home as well as abroad.
In less than four years, Hitler, Mussolini and Japan were all defeated.
A 90 percent income tax on today's wealthy Americans is absurd, but why shouldn't we be buying war bonds to help with the living expenses of the families of our soldiers?
Why shouldn't we all recycle and monitor our natural resource consumption?
Why shouldn't we be asked to donate our economic stimulus checks to the Department of Veterans Affairs for improved health care benefits for veterans?
Why shouldn't we be asked to donate 50 hours a year (an average of less than one hour weekly) to some form of national service?
As President John F. Kennedy once said, ask not what your country can do for you.
Ask what you can do for your country.