Kristol Pandering Again
By Timothy V. Gatto
24 June,
2008
Countercurrents.org
William Kristol must believe that he is extraordinarily sanguine and the rest of us extraordinarily stupid when he wrote his column in the New York Times today. The column entitled “Someone Else’s Alex” was in response to a Move-On.org ad that showed a mother with a one-year old baby named Alex. and saying that her son would not be available for Senator John McCain’s 100 Year War in Iraq.
According to Kristol;
“I’m not persuaded. Having slandered a distinguished general officer, MoveOn has now moved on to express contempt for all who might choose to serve their country in uniform.”
Kristol goes on to defend McCain and insists that Alex would only be 9 years old after John McCain finishes his second tour. He also defends McCain’s statements about a prolonged occupation in Iraq citing the long presence that the US has had in Japan, Germany, Korea and Kuwait.
Just yesterday I had a conversation with my brother’s nephew-in-law who asked me about the Army. He’s 20 years old and since he was asking, I remembered the Army policy of giving two thousand dollars to any retiree that was responsible for an enlistment of anyone outside the family. Since this young man was outside my family I mulled it over. You see. I’m a former Army Recruiter and this young man was not my immediate family member. I tossed the idea back and forth in my head and then looked at him.
“Did you ever hear of stop-loss?” I asked.
No, he did not. I explained to him how the Army could keep you beyond your original enlistment if it met the needs of the Army.
“Do you know that some of the guys in Iraq are spending their third or fourth tour in Iraq?”
Again, he did not, so I explained how some of the guys in the Army only spend about 12 months home before they rotate out again to a combat zone.
“What’s that doing to their families?” He asked me.
“Well it’s causing a lot of hardship and in this country about 200 veterans take their own life every week according to a story on CBS.”
“That’s cold!” He said before he walked off shaking his head.
So much for my $2,000.00 bonus, I guess he won’t enlist. Still,
according to Kristol; everything is just rosy for our all-volunteer
Army.
“But it is surely relevant to point out that the United States has an all-volunteer Army. Alex won’t be drafted, and his mommy can’t enlist him. He can decide when he’s an adult whether he wants to serve. And, of course, McCain supports the volunteer army.”
One must come to realize sooner or later, that some former service members, even former recruiters won’t be helping to meet the Army’s enlistment objectives anytime soon. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that the Army in this day and age is not the “Deal of the Century”. They might make a young person “Army Strong”, but they could just as easily make a young person “Army Dead” too. The sad fact is that as soon as they are medi-vaced to Germany, if they die, once in the air, they are no longer counted as a fatality of the war, since they didn’t die in Iraq. We don’t want to advertise the real number of deaths, do we?
So Kristol, defend your candidate and your all-volunteer Army as much as you wish. You have your opinion and I have mine. The facts are very simple in this matter, I know what’s going on and you just don’t care. These kids are just cannon-fodder to you chicken-hawks anyway, right? I wonder how many of your offspring served in the military. Go on and attack Move-On, I don’t care for them too much anyway. I will say this though, this time they happen to be right on the money.
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