<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/war_main_2.jpg"><img class="alignright size-medium wp-image-1465" title="war_main_2" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/war_main_2-300x158.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="158" /></a><strong><em>"What shall be our legacy? What will our children say? Let them say of me I was one who believed in sharing the blessings I received. Let me know in my heart when my days are through, America America, I gave my best to you."</em></strong>
<strong>-- AMERICAN ANTHEM, Norah Jones</strong>

It was maybe four years ago that I bought the DVD set for Ken Burns' wonderful project about World War II, but it wasn't until this week that I sat down and watched the seven-part series.

My dad served in the European Theater of Operations, and when he returned home at the end of the war as a decorated veteran, he had yet to celebrate his 20th birthday. He lived to the age of 82 and accomplished much, but he always took the greatest pride in serving his country in Europe during the war.

In all the years I knew him, we never discussed the war. And while there were many of things to admire him for, I particularly respected the fact that he had put his life on the line to help defeat Hitler. Because of him and millions of others like him, the world was saved from the incredible barbarism of the Third Reich and the Japanese Empire. Sixteen million young Americans -- most of them young men -- served in the military between 1941 and 1945. More than 400,000 of them died and nearly 1.1 million others were wounded or missing.

When my father died in March 2008, he had five children and four grandchildren. When I think of the 400,000 men who served with him who never made it home, I find myself wondering about their children, grandchildren and other descendants who were never born because they didn't come back to have families.

But the others returned, and America changed.

We became a country that didn't understand sacrifice. A country that had more in common with Civil War America -- in which those who had the money could buy their way out of serving in the military -- than with World War II America, where the sons of the rich and famous served right along beside the sons of the middle class and the poor.

We elect as leaders people who did everything they could <em>not</em> to serve in the military. Someone like Dick Cheney can work to get five different deferments during Vietnam and then say with no shame that he had "other plans" that didn't involve serving his country. Or people like Dan Quayle and George W. Bush, who used family connections to get cushy spots in the National Guard and avoid going overseas.

The last president we had who saw combat action was George H.W. Bush, who was one of the youngest fighter pilots in the Navy in World War II. Two of the three presidents since then didn't even serve in the peacetime military.

I was never in the military, nor were any of the handful of people I call my closest friends. Not one of us ever had to do anything in our lives that wasn't either about making money or furthering our ambitions. We're Dick Cheney without the air of superiority.

Have any of us "given our best" to America, as Norah Jones sings in the song that so beautifully accompanied the Burns film?

Could we even have done it had we been asked? I look at myself and at my close friends and I wonder if any of us would even have survived a week of combat. But as much as I doubt our abilities, I have a hunch that if we had been called to serve, at least some of us would have risen to the occasion and done our duty.

At least I hope we would have.