Botched Joke - Inconvenient Truth

The other day, John Kerry showed again why he should not be his party's nominee for the office of President in 2008. Speaking to a group of college students, he made a lame comment about how you should stay in school and be smart or else "You get stuck in Iraq."

Opposition opinionaters went into a feeding frenzy declaring that Kerry had maligned the honor of the US military by insinuating that they were all dunderheads. Even President Bush declared that the Senator from Massachusetts should apologize to the brave troops. Kerry, of course, went to the media to explain that what he said was not what he meant. In a display of even more pretzel logic, Kerry said that his remark was just a botched joke that was aimed at the current administration's failed enterprise in Iraq. Nobody believed him.

What everyone took out of the comment was the underlying truth that the people who end up fighting in wars are not the "best and the brightest" minds in our society. Check out the number of sons and daughters of our political leaders who are over there laying their asses on the line. Not too many eh?

Never mind that, say those who want to skewer Kerry, and they trot out some statistics that show that our current military is smarter than the group who fought in Viet Nam. Apples and oranges. Remember that during the Vietnam conflict we had an involuntary draft system in this county. If you could get into college you could get a deferment and avoid the unpleasantness of getting shot at by jungle snipers or being shredded by mortar blasts. Drop-outs and the less academically inclined tended to be the ones on the line.

This ain't WW2 either. In today's Army and Marine corps, the enlistment rolls are chiefly made up of people without better prospects. Duh - Would you sign-up for a chance to become a casualty if you had the option of having a nice peaceful day working at a job where you don't need a gun, coming home to dinner with your nice family? Chances are, you would opt for the lesser risk. The fact is that many of the guys who are there were called up from reserve units. These folks did not join the reserves thinking that they would have to go into battle, and we all know that.

The uplifting fact is that most of these soldiers have accepted their duty and are serving their country honorably - even heroically. Along with an uncomfortable number of GI's who are not doing things that make us proud. If Rumsfeld ever lets the reservists get out, the pool of replacement recruits is embarrassingly uneducated and unskilled - people who have few other choices. This is just the truth, folks.

It is not un-American to recognize that smart people tend to avoid military service. And it does not malign all GI's to note that they might have preferred to go to college and study philosophy, but they couldn't get in. It does not say that they aren't salt of the earth guys you would want as your friends and neighbors. It is what it is.

The smartest guys are generally officer rank, and not the guy with the gun, looking for IED's and enemy troops. Most of us would not want our loved ones to be over there - no matter how honorable. "Stay in school," we warn them "or you might get sent to Iraq."

How much more we would have admired Kerry, if he had the ability to articulate his point of view. Bush, for all of his elocution faults, lets us know exactly where he stands.