Get Kerry Some Ammo!
I bet it is. I am sure (without data; I see this feelingly) that the kids who are serving in Iraq are not nearly as well educated as, say, the kids who are getting internships at media companies that served the Koolaid on WMD, or serving as pages to closeted gay Republican congressmen.
It's an economic draft, stupid.
Bravo John Kerry, for exposing the terrible hypocrisy of the Iraq war: the journos and thinktankers and pols who banged the drum were never at risk, and neither are their kids. Because they didn't fall off the back of the meritocracy bus. Do I hear some resentment? Yes. Jim Fallows established his reputation with a famous piece called Where Were You In the Class War, Daddy? about the class divide between those who served in Vietnam and those who protested the war in the safe streets of America. The piece appeared in the Washington Monthly, published by Charlie Peters, the former Peace Corps exec who has long called for mandatory national service. The class divide is (I bet) even wider today; including in the officer corps, where Ivy grads are (another wild wager on my part) far less likely to be found on the Tigris than their predecessors were to be found on the banks of the Mekong. E.g., John Kerry and Donald E. Graham, publisher of the Washington Post, who for whatever stupid, noble, democratic, or ambitious reason, served in that disastrous war.
Maybe we can't have the conversation for another week, while John Kerry is held in a safe house inside the green zone in D.C., but let's have it out. What's Charlie Rangel saying? Help my man out!
I think I heard this morning on the radio that 56% of all American males are college grads and that just over 3% of marines are college grads. I don't think he meant it to come out the way he did, but I agree that what he said has a lot of truth to it.
Correction - the National Center for Education Statistics reports that 57% of Americans have had "some college education" as opposed to 29% with a degree.
A little belated fact-checking:
Philip recently claimed that The New York Times has only just acknowledged the existence of the pro-Israel lobby. A search of the NYTimes website for "American Israel Public Affairs Committee" turns up 296 articles referring to it. (You don't need Times Select to do the search.) Philip also claims that the NYTimes has supressed discussion of the Walt-Mearsheimer controversy. This is a brazen falsehood. On April 19th of this year, The New York Times published a 1,289 word essay by Tony Judt, one of the speakers at the Cooper Union event that Philip wrote about tediously, and a vocal champion of Walt and Mearsheimer's arguments, defending Walt and Mearsheimer's scholarship. Access to Judt's editorial is free.
It's surprising that a newspaper with aspirations to be taken seriously would host a writer as careless or selective with facts as Philip Weiss is.
hey dumbo, there was a draft during Vietnam, now there is no draft.
The military is a job. It does not require a college degree so there are lot of people without one in the military. People take jobs to earn money. People like jobs that don't suck. If you are desperate for a job you take one that sucks.
You should learn statistics and the difference between a dependent and independent variable, you don't make any sense. you can't solve a problem because you can't identify a problem.
kerry has totally disavowed this comment. he was saying that if you slack off at college you might end up being a president who gets his country stuck in a quagmire. whatver kerry believes, the idea that a politician would say something like what people are claining he said it ridiculous. particularly one so proud of his commitment to the military. this is just election week stuff.
a little lesson in logic.
kerry said; only imbeciles serve in iraq.
phil weiss is not serving in iraq.
thus,
kerry is wrong
he didn't say ALL imbeciles
Oddly enough, the American officers I met in Iraq were wiser, more thoughtful, and dare I say it, more intelectual than most of the people I meet in New York, who may have more distiguished diplomas but are passionate about little other than real estate prices. In Iraq, the conversations are more interesting, and profound.
The tragedy of America is not that our people (even our less educated people) are stupid, it is that our intellegencia is stupid. After all, it was "policy intelectuals" and their media cheerleaders not military men who banged the drum to get us into this disasterous war.
Two quotes: "The dumbing down of America was done by a bunch off Harvard grads." and "There is nothing like being responsible for the lives of your men to make you pay attention to what is really going on."
Kerry needs more than ammo, he needs some steel in the backbone.
www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/politics/elections/15906533.htm
"Kerry Apologizes for Botched Joke"
It isn't a joke, he actually started to tell the truth and I guess couldn't bring himself to stick by it. I wholeheartedly agree with Phil about the poverty draft. And in response to some of the commentary here, it isn't lack of intellect but lack of funds which leads Americans into the military rather than into college.
Ironically, tragically, the reason that many Americans are serving in the military is precisely because the GI Bill represents their only hope for a college education. I have done a bit of research into this by way of reading local newspaper accounts of funerals and memorials to local soldiers fallen in Iraq. The families of these soldiers are routinely interviewed and routinely they answer questions or offer explanations of how their son or daughter came to be in the military and in Iraq. Very, very occasionally is patriotism/desire to serve the country in its' hour of need mentioned alone. What is commonly given as explanation is: "he wanted to serve his country, and also he needed the college money."
Whatever the statistics, a sizable portion of the military, especially the officers believe in "Duty, Honor, Country". That is, they believe that the military is a noble and honorable profession. They believe that the US is a great country and that it deserves a first-class military. They believe that the military should be under civilian control, and they believe that the people control those civilians.
I fear that our current crop of civilian leadership may change a few minds in the military.
Making a blanket statement, Kerry seems to reveal an unintelligent and nasty streak; he does not seem to understand the best traditions of the US military. What is the matter with this man?