In one America, we hold bake sales to buy Kevlar bulletproof vests for family members deployed to Iraq.

In another America, lobbyists press to abolish the estate tax, America's only tax on accumulated wealth. This will ensure that the children of multi-millionaires, who are not losing sleep over insufficient body armor, will harvest unlimited inheritances into the millions and billions.

As we mark the second anniversary of the Iraq mission, there is a stunning inequality of sacrifice on the home front.

The Bush administration and Congressional leaders have shown little interest in the symbolism, let alone practice, of shared sacrifice. There are no tire drives, no calls for rationing, nor any moral duty to share in the financial costs of the war.

The war managers are determined to isolate the domestic sacrifice and losses for this war to as few families as possible, largely to those clustered outside the Fort Braggs and Camp Pendletons of America ­and those with family members in National Guard units waiting for loved ones to return.

But the war has a steep financial price tag. The Iraq operation has cost us over $155 billion to date with more to come. Instead of taxing our citizenry to pay for this war, Congress is deferring the bill to the next generation in the form of whopper deficits for decades to come. And instead of taxing the wealthy, and requiring them to take a stake in the war effort, we are now about to pass permanent tax cuts for multi-millionaires.

Never in the history of U.S. wartime has Congress pushed tax cuts, let alone permanent tax cuts for the very wealthy. Historically, the opposite has been true: wealth has been "conscripted," in the form of progressive income and estate taxes, to at least symbolize that everyone is contributing in some way.

The estate tax, in particular, has been a wartime tax. The first federal tax on wealth was levied in 1797, as our country was faced with the escalating costs of responding to French attacks on American shipping. During the Civil War and the Spanish-American War, inheritance taxes were instituted, to be repealed only after war debts were retired.

The 1916 law establishing our current estate tax was given a tremendous push by entry into the First World War and the need for revenue. After the war, businessman Harlan E. Read argued in his book "The Abolition of Inheritance" that war debts should be paid off with heavy taxes on inherited wealth.

During World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt understood that national domestic unity against Hitler depended on a sense of shared sacrifice not just by G.I. Joe and Rosie the Riveter, but also by the Rockefellers. The estate tax was increased so that fortunes exceeding $50 million would be taxed at a 70 percent rate. FDR spoke out boldly against war profiteering, saying, "I don't want to see a single war millionaire created in the United States as a result of this world disaster."

Our present inequality of sacrifice is not lost on some veterans' groups. "During the Civil War, rich people could buy their way out of the draft," said Charlie Richardson, co-founder of Military Families Speak Out. "Now the wealthy don't have to pay anything to avoid the draft ­and they get tax cuts on top."

Senator John McCain recently observed that times of war in U.S. history have been times of domestic sacrifice. "In the last year we have approved legislation containing billions and billions of dollarsŠin pork barrel projects, huge tax breaks for the wealthy, and a corporate tax bill estimated to cost $180 billion. This is a far cry from sacrifice."

The sustained push to abolish the estate tax has been financed by some of the wealthiest families in America, including the Walton, Mars and Gallo clans. These families, underrepresented in mess tents outside Fallujah, are not interested in a compromise estate tax reform that keeps our nation strong and secure while protecting veterans' services and America's family farms and small businesses.

Young Americans are putting their lives on the line to serve their country in Iraq, while those who are whining about the estate tax are fighting to keep every last cent. A time of war is no time to eliminate the estate tax.

Chuck Collins is Senior Fellow at United for a Fair Economy (www.faireconomy.org) and co-author with Bill Gates Sr. of Wealth and Our Commonwealth: Why America Should Tax Accumulated Fortunes (Beacon Press). Collins can be reached at: United for a Fair Economy, 29 Winter Street, Boston, MA 02108.

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