Why Is It?
That the only people who keep calling for a military draft are Democrats or columnists who either are outright Democrats, or left wing in their beliefs? This is just that same, old lament that they can't seem to get enough young people out in the streets to recreate their glory days as young anti-war protesters, isn't it? But to these people, it's perfectly fine to turn heroes into window displays.
Imagine if all our sons and daughters were at risk for deployment to the desert. Imagine if all our children faced the Al Qaeda-style butchery that took the lives of two American soldiers, Private First Class Thomas L. Tucker of Madras, Ore., and Private First Class Kristian Menchaca of Houston.
If we feared our children were next up to be gutted like fish, we might be less likely to shake our heads at crazy antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan. If turning 18 meant your kid's boots on the ground, a resolution to pull troops out of Iraq by a certain date might grab more than six votes in the US Senate.
A key difference between Iraq and Vietnam is the country's ability to keep this war at a convenient distance. We can turn from the front page headlines of war, death, and destruction to sports and celebrity gossip; a click of the remote, and the face of a young soldier, now dead, fades to “Friends" reruns or “America's Next Top Model." The volunteer army ensures that someone else's children are losing limbs and dying; someone else's children are pushed to alleged acts of violence against Iraqi detainees and civilians. Even when the news from Iraq is so brutal it forces a momentary focus on war, quick relief is promised.
Empty, inflammatory rhetoric will not help. Your claiming of the bodies of young men who served their country to use as props in your little rant is just plain disgusting. Those young men do not belong to you. They served their country and now they belong to their families to mourn. Your cheapening of their sacrifices to advance your political goals is contemptible. Shame on you for doing this, Joan Vennochi.
UPDATE: Others: Brainster, Austin Bay, Wizbang,
By TC@LeatherPenguin, June 22, 2006 @ 4:12 pm
I’ll bet cash money this preening Beantown FondaFan yearning for a return of her heady college days knows *no one* serving in uniform, or who has a family member in uniform, and neither knows personally or second handedly anyone who died on 9-11-01.
I’ll bet my house she’s never attended a memorial for either of those two groups.
By Gaius, June 22, 2006 @ 4:24 pm
I suspect she has no use for living soldiers. I take a bit of offense at her attempt to use them after they have died.
By yankeemom, June 22, 2006 @ 5:10 pm
This is why they’ll never “get it”. They don’t even begin to see that using our Finest who have fallen to further their agenda (which has nothing to do with supporting the troops), is wrong.
By Gaius, June 22, 2006 @ 5:16 pm
I quite agree.