https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/04/23/war-out-sight-sacrifice-out-mind/uqOjapPimqk4hLQAXU8UaK/story.html

OPINION | ANDREW J. BACHEVICH

War out of sight, sacrifice out of mind

By Andrew J. Bacevich   April 24, 2016

In the dispiriting summer of 1979, a beleaguered President Jimmy Carter tried to sell his fellow citizens on a radical proposition: Having strayed from the path of righteousness, the nation was in dire need of moral and cultural repair.
Carter’s pitch had a specific context: An “oil shock” — this one a product of the Iranian Revolution — had once more reminded Americans that their prevailing definition of the good life depended on the indulgence of others. The United States was running out of oil and was anxiously counting on others to provide it.
Yet the problem at hand, Carter insisted, went far beyond “gasoline lines or energy shortages.” A “mistaken idea of freedom” had led too many Americans “to worship self-indulgence and consumption.” The nation therefore faced a fundamental choice. Down one path lay “fragmentation and self-interest,” pointing toward “constant conflict” and “ending in chaos and immobility.” Down the other lay a “path of common purpose and the restoration of American values.” By choosing rectitude over profligacy, the nation could save itself. Making the sacrifices needed to end their dependence on foreign oil would enable Americans to “seize control again of our common destiny.”https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/04/23/war-out-sight-sacrifice-out-mind/uqOjapPimqk4hLQAXU8UaK/story.html