Are you doing your part?

Something I heard on the radio last week got me to stop and ponder. There was a comment made, something about war being something in which everyone in the country should be doing their part. The point was that when a country goes to war, it is not just the soldiers in battle who are at war, but it is everyone in the country. All of a country's citizens should be doing something to help with the war effort. Since America is at war with Iraq, shouldn't all Americans be doing something to help with the effort? As I was pondering this, I discovered this article on Alternet. If you look around America today, can you really tell that we are at war? Do you see many citizens making sacrifices for the war? I see everyone consuming mass quantities of junk same as ever. I still see people driving large vehicles and uses as much gas as ever. I don't see many people conserving resources to ensure that there are enough for the war.
If we look back to previous wars, especially back to WWII, we see a much different homefront that we do today. In the WWII era, citizens conserved resources. Many workers rode their bikes to work instead of driving. Homeowners planted their own gardens (remember Victory Gardens?) so that the commercial farmers would be able to grow enough to feed other countries affected by the war. People bought less and made what they had last longer to ensure that there were enough resources and goods to help the soldiers and affected countries. How much are we sacrificing today to truly help rebuild Iraq? Are we today living in smaller houses, moving closer to our work, and doing more with less? I haven't seen much of it. It has become popular to say that we are going green and helping the environment, yet we are consuming and producing more pollution that ever.
Maybe we should take a closer look are how the country dealt with previous wars, and take a few lessons from it. Or, have we become so technologically advanced and affluent that we can now fight a war with another country, and not even feel the effects at home?