As usual, Austin Bay is dead-on:

Given the vicious enemy we face, five years, perhaps 15 years from now, occasional bullets and bombs will disrupt the political and economic building. This is the Bush administration’s biggest strategic mistake — a failure to tap the reservoir of American willingness 9-11 produced.

One afternoon in December 2001, my mother told me she remembered being a teenager in 1942 and tossing a tin can on a wagon that rolled past the train station in her hometown. Mom said she knew that the can she tossed didn’t add much to the war effort, but she felt that in some small, token perhaps, but very real way, she was contributing to the battle.

“The Bush administration is going to make a terrible mistake if it does not let the American people get involved in this war. Austin, we need a war bond drive. This matters, because this is what it will take.”

She was right then, and she’s right now.