There has been some chatter recently in the blogosphere (at TNR’s Open University, and here, ...

"I had other priorities in the 60's than military service."

Now who said that?

How's that for a broad brush? If you disagree, then re-read comments by Kerry and others proving my point.

I grew up in Kentucky, and yes it is a rural state, and yes the education system sucks, and hasn't gotten much better since attempts back in the 90's to fix it, but the reality is that if a recruit is illiterate, he is unlikely to score well on the ASVAB, and is unlikely to get in the military anyway.

And I agree with the above post, if they are illiterate, do they actually belong in collega anymore than they belong in the military? And I suspect the Peace Corps isn't begging for illiterate recruits either.

cynthia Pierson: we can respect your corner of the world, but still disagree based on a view of the whole 50 states that make up our country. Would you at least agree that young people are prone to make many mistakes (be it career, marriage, parenthood, etc.,) that are no fault of the gov't, war, politics, etc.,? Not all Kentuckians who decide to join the military wind up serving in Iraq. Is there something wrong with those who wind up in Europe, Asia or right here at home?

The incoming Chairman of the powerful House Ways & Means Committee and a Deputy Majority Whip, Charlie Rangel (D-NY), reiterated the point that US troops are stupid today on Fox News Sunday. Wow. He actually believes that. Or maybe......

LJD, I said no such thing, nor would I. What I did do was cite another set of statistics and questioned the broad-brush definition of middle-class income used by the Heritage Foundation, suggesting that they used such a broad brush purely so that their figures would definitely support their prior agenda. I don't like seeing bad methodology unquestioningly taken as gospel, no matter who is doing it.

Would you care to retract?

Regards, Cernig

Ironic that these incredibly intelligent people you worked with could not find some means of income in the civilian world. Maybe not THAT smart, or to prove my point, they CHOSE to serve, regardless.

I do agree that our citizenry should be more involved in the war. Our media is definitely not doing an accurate job of informing them.

I went to USMA but didn't graduated and was commissioned via ROTC.

One of my former USMA classmates, who happened to get assigned to my artillery battalion, had a dad who was a Chrysler VP. His sister also graduated USMA and served. A couple other LT's in my battalion, both ROTC grads, came from pretty well-off backgrounds.

Most of us, including most of the USMA grads, came from middle class or lower-middle class backgrounds. My dad was a retired Army E-8 working as a civil servant. Still, the officer corps draws from a fairly wide swath.

Of course, with a draft, even one with no deferments, it would just be very young making those sacrifices. Almost everyone at the mall would be at the mall.

Further, as I've noted in rebuttal to the "chicken hawk" argument, nobody seems to mind that police officers, firefighters, and the like take on risks that the rest of society does not. Nor did anyone seem to mind that only physically fit young males served in the military during the draft era.

The bottom line is that this ain't the Civil War or WWII. The reason people act as if there's no war going on is that we have an all-volunteer force with 150,000 soldiers deployed to a stabilization and counterinsurgency operation that has cost fewer American lives than D-Day. That should no more derail Americans' shopping habits than the fact that millions are starving in Africa should impact our holiday feasts.

What does sadden me is that, working as a DoD contractor, I never got a sense from most of those working day-to-day in support of our troops really "got" that we are at war, either. To them, "warfighter" is just a buzzword.