Working class fight war while well-off defend it- Cynthia Tucker, AJC

[PuraVidaDreamin]

http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/tucker/stories/032606.html
-snips-
This is not a truth the middle class is eager to confront. Each time I write a column about the disproportionate burden borne by our working-class men and women, I get countless angry letters and e-mails — tirades from the affluent denouncing me for fomenting race-consciousness (I've said nothing about race) or class warfare. Others write to me that they know somebody whose son or daughter or nephew or co-worker is a college graduate who volunteered to serve. (That's the exception that proves the rule.) We don't want to admit that we've left the burden of defending an affluent nation to those who enjoy less of its affluence. That's too ugly to think about.

Ah, but they volunteered, you say. Yes, they did. All the more reason to honor their commitment by making sure they aren't cannon fodder in a dubious cause. They took to heart the shopworn platitudes and easy slogans about duty and honor and service while many who are wealthier did not. Soldiers shouldn't be ill-used simply because they believed in their country and its leaders.

Of course, combat veterans were rare among the armchair hawks in Congress and the White House who rallied the nation for war. Vice President Dick Cheney has said he had "other priorities" during the Vietnam War. And, President Bush . . . well, that story is well-known. Even if you credit him with conscientiousness and brilliance as a National Guard pilot, he never left the United States.

Their callousness about other people's children aside, it's not just Cheney and Bush whom I hold responsible for the deaths of more than 2,300 Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis. It's also men like U.S. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and former Secretary of State Colin Powell, Vietnam veterans who have seen young men die in combat. They knew better than to take the nation to war on the wings of a lie.
That they did so was not only unjust; it was immoral

[400Years]

1. so true

[acmejack]

2. I particularly like the median income figure of $43,000

Could this number be skewed by the Alice Waltons making $18 Billion? Just wondering, there are so many down here that would think $43,000 a veritable fortune!

[Dhalgren]

3. K&R!

This is not just a great article, it is a very badly needed one. The people who scream the loudest about incitements to "class warfare" are the very ones waging it so viciously. But, really, it isn't "class warfare" if only one side is doing the killing - that's more like "class murder"; and that is what has been going on for the last 5 or 6 years. One of these days the rich elite are going to wake up and realize that they are facing hundreds of thousands of trained, veteran soldiers, all of whom are on the other side of the class war. They won't have enough money to hire enough mercs to deal with what they have created...

[specimenfred1984]

4. Raises Great Q: Why'd so Many Support WMD Lies

when it was blatently clear they were lies.

The hard and real answer: they are fascists.

[classysassy]

5. Bring back

the draft and watch the demented warhawks become peacenics.

[PuraVidaDreamin]

6. I really would like to know what Mr. Kerry intends to do

about his mistake. In my opinion he, and all of the walking dead
have a long way to go to make ammends.