John Edwards: We Should Have Mandatory Military Service
To, you know, save all those “poor kids” who get duped into fighting wars by evil dictators like Chimpy McHitlerburton.
“One of the things we ought to be thinking about is some level of mandatory service to our country, so that everybody in America not just the poor kids who get sent to war are serving this country,” Edwards said.
There are a lot of things both wrong, and insulting, about that comment.
First, I think your average soldier carrying a rifle and walking a patrol in Iraq would be surprised and insulted to hear himself/herself described as a “poor kid.” Even the youngest among them. These aren’t children we’re sending off to Iraq. These are men and women who have weighed the decision to serve their nation in the military and chosen to do so knowing full well that they could probably be sent to a war zone. By now, four years into the war in Iraq, I’d be willing to bet that a majority of troops on the ground signed up (or re-upped their commitment) knowing the Iraq war was on and that they’d probably be sent there or to another hot spot like Afghanistan.
Edwards calling these proud patriots “kids” is just plain demeaning.
Second, the idea that these “kids” in the military are financially “poor” is something the left has been pushing for some time now, and it’s not surprising that the 2008 election’s most populist candidate is pushing it. Unfortunately for Edwards and the rest of the intellectually dishonest (or at least factually illiterate) left, it just isn’t true. The “poor” demographics of our population aren’t any more or less represented in the military than people from other financial brackets:
So, to sum up, our troops aren’t kids. And they aren’t any poorer than the rest of us. They are proud Americans who are risking their lives to serve this country and certainly don’t deserve to be used, in a dishonest fashion, as so much political fodder for John Edwards’ campaign.
