draft

Soldiers strained by six years at war are deserting their posts at the highest rate since 1980, with the number of Army deserters this year showing an 80 percent increase since the United States invaded Iraq in 2003.

When President George W. Bush started revealing his new strategy for Iraq, he was being pulled in two distinct directions, both loaded with real and political implications. As he settled on the "surge" idea, putting 21,500 additional troops in Iraq to help control the violence in Baghdad, those implications remained unsaid but were just below the surface of the conversation.

In times of war, the citizens of this country look to the president for direction. He must keep us focused so that we understand the sacrifice of American lives on foreign battlefields. President Bush, for his part, has worked hard to accomplish this task. ''We're a nation at war,'' he told an audience in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 5. ''America and her allies are fighting this war with relentless determination across the world.'' A few weeks later, he went on the say, ''This (the war on terrorism) is the great ideological struggle of the 21st century and it is the calling of our generation.''