A Comment on Charles Rangel

I was going to let this one pass, but couldn't resist:

"No young, bright individual wants to fight just because of a bonus and just because of educational benefits. And most all of them come from communities of very high unemployment. If a young fellow has an option of having a decent career or joining the Army to fight in Iraq, you can bet your life he would not be in Iraq."

Representative Charles Rangel (D-NY)
Fox News Sunday, 11/26/06

Oh, so many ways to take down this condescending idiocy, so little time. I won't even refer to myself here, as I'm sure The Distinguished Gentlemen wouldn't consider a job in the Bush NSC "a decent career." (I'll grant him that the alternative, an academic career, wouldn't offer much in the way of economic benefits).

First, Mr. Rangel, how do you explain that the Army actually had its best recruiting year since 1997 this year?

Or, Sir, how do you square your claim that only the poor join the military with scholarly empirical studies disproving those canards?

Finally, maybe, just maybe, the fact that units deployed to Iraq
actually enjoy higher than average retention rates suggests that the men and women might be doing this out of a sense of patriotism? Does Mr. Rangel recognize that such a concept exists?

It is telling that no Democrat has leapt to defend Rangel's ill-informed and offensive comments. Yet I am disappointed that despite professing a deep concern for our troops during the campaign, not a single elected Democratic official has had the courage or the integrity to condemn them.

I can accept that John Kerry's comment last month was a botched joke, albeit one that uncomfortably touched upon his previous slanders of his fellow veterans. But Rep. Rangel's comments are pure elitist condesencion towards American servicemen that sadly appears to be becoming fashionable on the Left once again.