President Bush Encounters the Parent Problem

[bufffbison]

http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000039&refer=columnist_carlson&sid=ay_bh6swFaQ4

President Bush Encounters the Parent Problem: Margaret Carlson
Aug. 25 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush finally responded to the protesters camped outside his Texas ranch.

He did it a thousand miles away, before a convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Salt Lake City. On a stop en route to a vacation within a vacation in Idaho, Bush broke his near silence about the country's almost 2,000 war dead.

``Each of these men and women left grieving families and loved ones back home,'' Bush said. ``We owe them something. We will finish the task that they gave their lives for.''

To Bush's other rationales for the war -- weapons of mass destruction, taking the fight to those involved in Sept. 11, spreading democracy throughout the Middle East -- we can now add that more lives must be offered up to pay the debt owed to the already fallen.

I doubt that his Aug. 22 call to arms is going to reverse Bush's parent problem, and I'm not just talking about the grieving ones protesting and counter-protesting his conduct of the war. Parents are increasingly resistant to the hard sell that built the volunteer army.

Junior Succumbs

Kids are still enlisting (albeit not enough to meet demand), even though before they can train to be a high-tech whiz they must first spend a couple of low-tech years patrolling Mosul. At 18, they still feel immortal.

But parents no longer swallow the pitch that the military offers a better life for their kids, not if it means being blown to bits by an improvised explosive device under an unarmored Humvee. A Pentagon survey last November found that only 25 percent of parents would recommend military service to their children, down from 42 percent at the outset of the war.

As part of an effort to reverse that trend, the Defense Department is aiming straight at the parents in a bunch of new ads. In one, Junior comes to the dinner table and says that after talking to his Army recruiter about becoming an engineer, he's decided to enlist. ``It's time for me to be the man,'' the kid tells his apparently single Mom, who looks relieved.

Get Them Early

[Child_Of_Isis]

1. Sacrifice lives

for the lives that have already been sacrificed. I fail too see the logic.

[cliss]

2. "...about becoming an engineer, he's decided to enlist".

An engineer, IF he survives Iraq.

And that's a big IF. Because there are over 10,500 wounded veterans with serious injuries.

[applegrove]

3. BREAKING NEWS - Bush encounters Adults!