Some are full of praise for Freidman's column yesterday.
They miss the point.
In ripping the slime like House majority leader Tom Delay and spoiled professional athletes like Latrell Sprewell and Hummer owners - real risky targets - Friedman paints a ridiculously romantic version of the U.S. troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the following quote Friedman shows why the U.S. is in Iraq - gee I thought it was to eliminate the weapons of mass destruction ... to take the fight to the terrorists ... to get rid of Saddam ... to simply bring democracy to Iraq.
I want to have the gall to sully American democracy at a time when young American soldiers are fighting in Iraq so we can enjoy a law-based society here and, maybe, extend it to others...
And his imaginative conclusion that completely ignores the socio-economic reality that has such a bearing on the composition of the U.S. military:
I want to take time on this Thanksgiving to thank God I live in a country where, despite so much rampant selfishness, the public schools still manage to produce young men and women ready to voluntarily risk their lives in places like Iraq and Afghanistan to spread the opportunity of freedom and to protect my own. And I want to thank them for doing this, even though on so many days in so many ways we really don't deserve them.
I suppose the poor, those lacking access to university or a good job, or the immigrants are just naturally more willing to volunteer their services (and often their lives) to defend their country....or maybe not (via LatinoPundit):
For weeks, Amalia Avila feared for the safety of her oldest son Victor Gonzalez, a 19-year-old Marine from Watsonville, who was recently sent to Iraq.
Her worst fears came true when she was notified that Victor had been killed Oct. 13 in a roadside mortar explosion just five weeks after his arrival in Iraq.
Now, Ms. Avila thinks her son was misled, as much by military recruiters who promised him a bright future as by police officers who mentored him. She says they never dispelled the notion that a few years with the Marines would make him a cop someday.
“Why didn’t they tell him that he didn’t have to go?” she asked...
Victor told his mother, “When I return from Iraq, I’m going to have credit,” she said. The recruiters “tell them that. It’s a lie.”
Recruiters often look for ways to relate to potential recruits, even when they can’t really help, says Jorge Mariscal, a Vietnam veteran and Chicano Studies professor at the University of California at San Diego.
Yeah, they didn't have to go...
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