Someone Else's Child

[FreedomAngel82]

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/20/opinion/20herbert.html?
oref=login&pagewanted=print

Snip: <June 20, 2005
Someone Else's Child
By BOB HERBERT

You can still find plenty of folks arguing that we have to stay the
course, or even raise the stakes by sending more troops to the war
zone. But from the very start of this war the loudest of the flag-
waving hawks were those who were safely beyond military age
themselves and were unwilling to send their own children off to
fight.

It's easy to be macho when you have nothing at risk. The hawks want
the war to be fought with other people's children, while their own
children go safely off to college, or to the mall. The number of
influential American officials who have children in uniform in Iraq
is minuscule.

Most Americans want no part of Mr. Bush's war, which is why Army
recruiters are failing so miserably at meeting their monthly
enlistment quotas. Desperate, the Army is lowering its standards,
shortening tours, increasing bonuses and violating its own
recruitment regulations and ethical guidelines.

Americans do not want to fight this war.

Times Square in Midtown Manhattan is the most heavily traveled
intersection in the country. It was mobbed on V-E Day in May 1945
and was the scene of Alfred Eisenstaedt's legendary photo of a
sailor passionately kissing a nurse on V-J Day the following August.
There is currently an armed forces recruiting station in Times
Square, but it's a pretty lonely outpost. An officer on duty one
afternoon last week said no one had come in all day.>