It has become clearer than ever that Americans do not want to fight George W. Bush's tragically misguided war in Iraq.
You can still find plenty of folks arguing that we have to stay the course, or even raise the stakes by sending more troops to the war zone. But from the very start of this war the loudest of the flag-waving hawks were those who were safely beyond military age themselves and were unwilling to send their own children off to fight.
It's easy to be macho when you have nothing at risk. The hawks want the war to be fought with other people's children, while their own children go safely off to college, or to the mall. The number of influential American officials who have children in uniform in Iraq is minuscule.
What hasn't changed is the fact that the vast majority of the parents who support the war do not want their children to fight it. A woman in the affluent New York suburb of Ridgewood, N.J., who has a daughter in high school and a younger son, said: "I would not want my children to go. If there wasn't a war it would be different. I support the war and I think we need to be there. But it's not going well. It's becoming like Vietnam. It's a very bad situation. But we can't leave."
The Bush crowd may be bellicose, but for most Americans the biggest contribution to the war effort is a bumper sticker that says "support our troops," and maybe a belligerent call to a talk radio station.
The home-front "warriors" who find it so easy to give the thumbs up to war endanger the truly valorous men and women who are actually willing to put on a uniform, pick up a weapon and place their lives on the line.
The president and these home-front warriors got us into this war and now they don't know how to get us out. Nor do they have a satisfactory answer to the important ethical question: how do you justify sending other people's children off to fight while keeping a cloak of protection around your own kids?
If the United States had a draft (for which there is no political sentiment), its warriors would be drawn from a much wider swath of the population, and political leaders would think much longer and harder before committing the country to war.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/20/opinion/20herbert.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print
And then from our own James A. Genisio:
I know how to greatly increase volunteers for the military. If the Bush twins, Barbara and Jenna, or even one of them would volunteer for the military, volunteer to fight terror in Iraq, volunteer to establish democracy in Iraq, many others would follow. Imagine if we watched President Bush and the first lady saying goodbye to their patriotic children, Barbara and Jenna, as they went off in uniform to risk their lives for what their father and mother tell us is a great cause. What an inspiration! What an example! What a glorious day that would be.
http://www.wisinfo.com/northwestern/news/opinion/stories/opinion_21474414.shtml
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