Feagler retired as a Plain Dealer columnist in January after more than 45 years in Cleveland journalism.



On Pearl Harbor night, nearly 70 years ago, my parents bundled me into the car and we drove over to the Yermans' house.

The Yermans were friends of our family. Their kid, Franklin, was in the Army. We didn't know anybody else in the Army.

We sat around the radio and listened to the sketchy news reports of battles in places we had never heard of. But that was soon to change.

The next day, the president announced that we were at war. And he meant it. Because then, when you said war, you were serious.

The kind of war that war was -- we were all in it.

Pretty soon, we knew lots of people who were in the Army. Some enlisted; some got drafted.

Things were rationed -- butter, tires, gasoline. We saved fat in a coffee can. We didn't know why, but they told us it was for the war effort. We turned our pots and pans in to the scrap drive. For the war effort.

Our mothers went out and got jobs, because the guys were trickling off into the Army. Meat was at a premium. When my mother went to our family butcher to ask for a little more round steak, he would look at her and say:

"What's the matter, lady? Dontcha know there's a war on?"

We knew. The war had started on 12/7/1941. And we knew fairly soon what would end it. Two red, bloodstained trails on the globe -- one leading to Berlin, the other to Tokyo. Get there and it will be over. And the battle cry was, "Remember Pearl Harbor!"

The war on terrorism, when again we were attacked, started on 9/11/2001. It's a convenient date to remember -- 9/11 -- almost like a mini-market chain. A lot of us can remember where we were and what we were doing when those planes hit the Twin Towers.

The world stopped.

Then the world started again. With little change in anybody's lives. Except for the relatives of the victims and the soldiers.

For the rest of us, this war has been merely a nuisance.

We don't save fat, unless it's trans fat out of a diet book. The butcher is kind to us. And so is the electronic gas pump that

fuels our gigantic SUVs or ALTs or whatever they call them.

After Pearl Harbor Day, a lot of us put our cars up on blocks. We didn't expect to drive again until the red trails hit their targets.

Two more things before I get to the main one.

There are no songs from this war which began at 9/11.

If there is such a thing as a good war and a bad war, a good war ought to produce good music.

A war with a purpose ought to have people in canteens crooning about how much they miss you and how they are keeping the home fires burning.

The current war -- no, let me correct myself, this ongoing misadventure in Iraq, started by the worst president in modern history, who was a puppet of Dick Cheney, with his five deferments -- does not produce melody. Perhaps it doesn't touch our heartstrings.

I think war ought to be at the top of our minds. It was in my youth when all my aunts and uncles and my parents hugged goodbye at the train station in the Terminal Tower.

When we walked away from one another, we were betting all we had -- win, lose or draw -- on America.

If we are going to continue to fight these kinds of wars, we all have to have a risk. There has to be some kind of draft. Maybe a lottery. You draw a number, I don't care if you are in an MBA program at Harvard. You go!

But, of course, we shouldn't continue to fight these kinds of wars. War is our big export item. We go to Wal-Mart for cheap imports and export our kids to fight other peoples' wars.

Now our next stop is Afghanistan. Everybody knows the people who plotted 9/11 are in Pakistan.

So why are we fighting in Afghanistan, a rocky, barren country that has defeated all invaders from Genghis Khan through the Russians? Now it's our turn?

It is generally conceded we never should have gone to Iraq. Nobody has answered the question, "What's our purpose in Afghanistan?"

How come everyone is watching "American Idol"? How come no one is asking, "Dontcha know there's a war on?"