Appearing on ABC this weekend, Rangel suggested that the Bush administration would “get out of Iraq so fast if they thought that Middle America had to make any sacrifices.” He added, “Believe me, when a Congress knows you’re talking about their community and their families, you’re reluctant to go to war in Iraq as speedily as we have.”…. “It’s easy to talk about supporting a war if someone else is fighting that war. And we already have an economic draft. We’re holding hostage reservists, National Guard. We’re enticing kids that come from the highest unemployment areas with $15 ‚Äö√Ñ√Æ $20 ‚Äö√Ñ√Æ $30,000 dollars. But for the middle class and the kids of the Congress, and the Pentagon, and the White House, they’re not involved. So you find a situation where people support the war, but not my kids.”
Hey, I’m no fan of the draft. In fact, I am opposed to a draft in ANY shape, manner, or form. Nonetheless, does it make any more sense to be sense the poor, the uneducated and the unemployed to be used as IED fodder in Iraq? When the decision-makers bear no risk of losing a loved one, when they’re isolated by their wealth an privilege from having to bury a family member…can they really have any empathy for Americans who are suffering these senseless losses? Have they shown any thus far?
Rangel doesn’t actually want a draft. What he wants is fairness. What he wants is for Congress and the Executive Branch to be exposed to the pain and loss that this immoral war is inflicting on everyday Americans. As it stands now, Congress and the Executive Branch are largely insulated from the consequences of their decisions. Perhaps if their loved one were facing the same risks that the children of the middle and lower classes are, they’d realize that war and the suffering it creates are more than mere abstract concepts. When you have these folks asking why so many Republicans support the war as long as someone else is doing the fighting and dying, and when Sam Bond is by far the exception, you know that the pain needs to be spread around better.
BTW…Karl Rove’s son, Andrew, is 18. Gee, I wonder if he’ll be enlisting any time soon?
