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Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: redfish who wrote (17765)	4/25/2004 9:45:55 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 81568

THE RICH GET RICHER, THE REST GET IRAQ _____________________________ Op/Ed By Richard Reeves Fri Apr 23, 2004 news.yahoo.com LOS ANGELES -- All right, here's the plan. The Bush Plan. Only the rich kids get into the good colleges, like Yale, with big federal tax cuts financing even bigger tuitions. The poor kids and middle-class kids get drafted into the military to fight preventive wars around the globe. I exaggerate. I hope. But you could make the case that this is what is really going on in the United States today. Last Tuesday, Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, a Republican who served in Vietnam, questioned Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz during a hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about the rising costs and dangers of occupying Iraq, then concluded: "There is not an American who doesn't understand what we are engaged in and what the prospects are for the future. ... Those who are serving today and dying today are the children of the middle and lower middle class. Why shouldn't we ask all of our citizens to bear some responsibility and pay some price?" He went on to say that the United States is making military commitments today -- particularly a 25-year war against terrorism -- that it cannot possibly meet with today's all-volunteer military. Then he spoke the unspeakable: "We must consider a draft." Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, the ranking Democrat on the committee, added later: "The whole notion of shared burden is something we should be talking about well beyond the issue of just the draft." Why not indeed? Ending the draft was Richard Nixon's biggest dirty trick. He managed to pull it off in 1973 as a way to stop student demonstrations against the war in Vietnam. It worked; most students went back to studying after they did not have to face the risk of being sent out to die for the mistakes of their elders. One result of all that was to give the White House the opportunity to plan wars in secret and execute them without the consent of the governed. War has become a spectator sport for most of us. To be more specific: If there had been a draft, we would not be in Iraq, because President Bush and his gang would have had to persuade the Congress and country that we were in grave danger from the inhabitants of that particular rats' nest. Meanwhile, life goes on as usual at home. The rich get richer and ... we all know the rest. The New York Times confirmed it the day after Hagel spoke, under the front-page headline: "As Wealthy Fill Top Colleges, Concerns Grow Over Fairness." The newspaper reported what any parent of a college student, me among them, already knew: People with significant money are the only Americans who can meet bills of $40,000 a year for tuition, room and board -- and the tens of thousands of dollars more for private school educations, tutoring and coaching often necessary to get into the best private and state universities. The spreading gaps in American incomes are turning around one of the United States' greatest achievements (and investments), the democratization of the best education that began with the GI Bill after World War II. Until then, Americans knew their place. Harvard and Yale were, more or less, the places for the children of their own graduates -- and most applicants were accepted because most Americans never even thought of applying. Then, in a new America, everyone began to think Harvard or the University of Michigan or Stanford was their place, too. Soon only one in 10 applicants were being accepted, and the schools were getting better and better because smart middle-class kids, and some smart poor ones, too, were replacing all the rich kids at Daddy's school, say, Yale. I'm not naming any names here. Speaking of who gets in and who doesn't, which means who runs America one day, the president of Harvard, Lawrence Summers, told the Times: "It's very much an issue of fairness. An important purpose of institutions like Harvard is to give everyone a shot at the American dream." That's the way it should be. But the tide and all the costs have begun to turn back toward the past. The percentage of students at the 250 highest-rated colleges and universities who come from families in the top quarter of incomes has risen from 46 percent in 1985 to at least 55 percent now. It is a turn that few welcome. After all, if it continues, we will forever have presidents named George Bush.

To: redfish who wrote (17765)	4/25/2004 10:10:15 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81568

Whose policy is it that these pictures are banned...? commondreams.org Just wondering. -s2@BushIsSanitizingWar.com

To: redfish who wrote (17765)	4/25/2004 12:08:09 PM
From: rrufff	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81568

Thanks for that response. I'm not asking a political question because I believe that whether it is Bush or Kerry, we would pretty much be where we are. I'm looking more for solutions and will base my own vote on who I think has a plan going forward. Back to your post - It's clear we are fighting an enemy that doesn't play by "nice" rules. They use civilians, target their own people, hide behind hospitals, mosques, etc. I don't understand why we have to fight this with hands tied behind our back. It's nice to have freedom of the press, but not if it endangers our soldiers. There should be a total blackout on the press so that what is happening in these two areas are not subject to misrepresentation. It's not nice, but compared to blowing up civilians intentionally or fighting from a mosque, it's a minor infringement. We have given them time, give them another 48 hours for anyone to leave the city who is a non-combatant. Those w/o proper ID are presumed to be fighters and will be arrested. After that, we go in with bombs, planes, tanks, etc. If we hit mosques and civilians at that time, it's sad but there really is no other choice. I may be wrong with my approach but I don't see our politicians saying anything, other than criticizing each other. Americans don't want another VietNam where we sit and take casualties and keep our hands tied behind our back. Either do it or get out and let the Iraqis kill each other.