If war is worthy, leaders should send loved ones

[Poiuyt]

http://www.wisinfo.com/postcrescent/news/archive/opinion_21737189.shtml

Posted July 08, 2005

John Edmondson column: If war is worthy, leaders should send loved ones

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President Bush just told us that the sacrifices in Iraq are “worth it.” If that’s true, if this is a war that truly needed to be fought, why hasn’t at least one of the president’s daughters, or any of Jeb or Neil Bush’s children or Dick Cheney’s children volunteered and served in Iraq?

Therein lies the secret to ending most wars — require that the president and all members of the House and Senate be required to send some close members of their family into harm’s way when they commit our troops to a foreign war.

If a majority of our elected officials are willing to risk the lives of their loved ones for an ideal, we will rest assured that it is indeed an ideal worthy of any American dying for — not just the sociologically/economically disadvantaged that form the bulk of our all-volunteer service.

Only when those elite few who make the decision to send a nation into war actually share in human costs of the war will we ever see end to war.


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This is an editorial written by a reader in a predominately Republican area.

[indepat]

1. Our governmental leaders don't send their own for the same reason my RW

first cousins don't send theirs: they are readily willing for your children and mine to die for their ideology, but they are not ready put their own in harm's way.

[frictionlessO]

2. Oh hell yes!!

Nom'd!

[frictionlessO]

3. kicked!

[Aristus]

4. When WWII started, George H.W. Bush had his Nazi-sympathizer

Senator father pull some strings so he could get INTO the service although underage. Boy, times sure have changed, haven't they?

G.H.W. Bush became the youngest aviator in the Navy at eighteen. This is still why I have a tiny, little iota of respect for him, even though I have none for the son, and seething, raging hatred instead.

DRAFT THE REPUBLICANS! ('cause they, you know, "do shit and stuff").