[Steel Wolf]

I continue to believe that decision-makers would never have supported the invasion if more of them had family members in line for deployment.

While this is probably true, when in the history of this country has their even been a draft you couldn't buy, beg, or bum your way out of? Or is Rangel proposing a draft with zero exemptions? If not, all he's doing is drawing unwilling poor people into the meat grinder. How is that more fair?

Those who do the fighting have no choice; when the flag goes up, they salute and follow orders.

No one made them enlist, and stop-loss notwithstanding, no one keeps them in past the end of their contract. If you want to take the tax free reup money, it's your choice.

[steve-b]

I continue to believe that decision-makers would never have supported the invasion if more of them had family members in line for deployment.
While this is probably true

No. The simple fact is that it is NOT true.

Even when upper-class youths did go to the front (enforced more by social mores than government force -- as you correctly point out, the people in power will never really be effectively subjected to the latter), nations willingly marched into the meat grinder (World War One is a textbook example: a "war of choice" that could have easily been avoided if multi-digit IQs and multi-second attention spans had been in charge. It butchered an entire generation across all economic and social lines.)

[goldstategop]

He's a dummy. NO ONE IS FORCED TO ENLIST IN OUR MILITARY. WHEN THOSE WHO DO ENLIST COMPLETE THEIR TOUR OF DUTY, THEY RETURN BACK TO CIVILIAN LIFE. Sorry for all the all caps but you have to shout at morons like Charlie to get such a simple point across. They're so unbelievably dense when it comes to present day American reality.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus