You Know It Isn't The Sons and Daughters Of The Rich Dying In George Bush's Wars

by James Glaser
April 21, 2004

You have to know if the son or daughter of some Congressman or administration staffer died in Iraq it would be on every front page. The same is true for the rich of this country. If any person of importance in this nation lost a child or even had one wounded in Iraq or Afghanistan, there would be a story in People Magazine, along with Time and Newsweek.

Rich kids do not sign up for our all volunteer Military. Those kids are in college, riding the waves in Hawaii, or they are making their European Tour. It is the children of the policeman or mechanic, maybe it is the son of the gas station owner or the daughter of local carpenter who is getting killed or wounded in Iraq or Afghanistan. Lots of kids from rural small town America are going off to fight for our country.

Carlton County, in Northern Minnesota, with a population of 32,000 has lost three young men in Iraq. 20 year old Lance Corporal Levi Angell, along with19 year old Private First Class Moises Langhorst, and 22 year old Corporal Tyler Fey have been killed in Iraq this month.

Robert Cushing, a Texas sociologist has studied who joins up and who gets killed in our recent wars. "It's not just small towns, but what we are finding is there's an overrepresentation of the casualties from small towns to far away from metropolitan areas."

Cushing reports that rural America has 19% of the country's population, but soldiers from the rural area make up a third of the nation's losses. He says that people in the rural area look at the military for economic gain. Small town America has no local jobs to keep the young there, but there are several recruiters at every American High School talking about jobs with adventure.

Young Americans in High School from poor and middle income families are bombarded with ads about how cool it is to join the Military. The Marines have a guy fighting a Fire Dragon, it is almost like a scene from Lord of the Rings. After he defeats this evil monster he magically turns into a Marine in Dress Blues.

Recruiters can now set up right in the school and fill the kid's minds with stories of glory. Also young kids with no funds for college can now see a chance through their enlistment to get that college education, while the sons and daughters of the wealthy take a college education as their natural right.

Of course no recruiter talks about the down side of the Military. Getting killed or maimed is never mentioned nor is the chance for life long psychological problems due to combat stress. At 18, Army pay seems pretty good, but many military families rely on the Food Self and Food Stamps to make ends meet.

The people on the lower end of the economic ladder in the United States are the people providing the Soldiers and Marines that make up our military. The poor of America are going off to Iraq to fight for our country and many are dying and still we pay them almost nothing. People died in the World Trade Center and Washington made their families millionaires. A soldier dies fighting for his country in Iraq and Washington gives his family twelve thousand dollars, plus a couple shiny medals.

The rich of America keep their kids out of the service so that they can get an education and make the "big" money. It is the children of the lower and middle class who go off to war to fight the wars that Washington and the wealthy think we should fight. Remember many of the wealthy families in America, make their money because we have these wars and they keep pushing for more of them.


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