Why no parades for end of Iraq War?

The problem must be a lack of ticker tape. Otherwise we would certainly see a ticker-tape parade through the historic route on lower Broadway of New York, right?Maybe not everyone has heard, because it isn't even trending on Twitter, but the last U.S. troops have been pulled out of Iraq.

Our troops deserve more. Ticker tape streaming down from above, American flags waving, cheers from every mouth. American troops deserve that, but the rest of us do not.

Whether you agreed with the war is not at issue. What is at issue, is the fact that our soldiers are coming home.

So why the hush-hush? Our "in like a lion, out like a lamb" march from Iraq seems unclimactic.

Maybe it is my generation. I want to be entertained; I want grandiose; I want fun and dramatic. I had to look up what ticker tape was.

I couldn't recall the parades from memory, but had to watch them on YouTube. But for marking the end of this war, I still want more -- and so should you.

The lack of appreciation marks the lack of our sacrifice, but please don't misunderstand my use of "our." U.S. troops sacrificed everything, and they should be riding on our shoulders. But "our" sacrifice (yours and mine) was nonexistent.

There was no War Production Board, and maybe this is a signal of society's progress. Today, we can fight a war on multiple fronts and not even feel the effects at home.

But we should have to feel them.

Every single U.S. citizen should feel something. Whether it be a direct war tax or a new War Production Board, the next time we have troops laying down their lives for us, we should be sacrificing as well.

Though the sacrifices will not be equal, nor could they ever be, they can be meaningful.

So when that next war ends, and there have been sacrifices, I hope we do have a ticker-tape parade, one we all deserve.

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