Rep. Rangel Smears Military on Fox News Sunday
Open thread:
Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace yesterday interviewed Rep. Charles Rangel from House Ways and Means. Incredibly, in the interview Rangel actually says he believes the same sort of things about the military that Sen. John Kerry recently said and later admitted was a botched joke. Even when Wallace presented Rangel with facts to the contrary, Rangel insisted the military is made up of poor and uneducated individuals. To counter the problem as he sees it, Rangel is pushing for a compulsory military draft.
The truth comes out.
Excerpts from the Interview:
WALLACE: Congressman Rangel, you caused quite a stir this week when you said that you're going to introduce a bill to reinstate the draft. Here's what you said this week in a newspaper article. Let's take a look. "The great majority of people bearing arms in this country, for this country in Iraq, are from the poorer communities in our inner cities and rural areas."Let Rangel know how you feel. Contact Rep. Rangel here.
But a recent and very detailed study by the Heritage Foundation, Congressman, found the following and I'm going to put that up: 13 percent of recruits are from the poorest neighborhoods. That's less than the national average of people living in those neighborhoods. Ninety-seven percent of recruits have high school diplomas. Among all Americans, the graduation rate is under 80 percent. And blacks make up 14.5 percent of recruits for the military; the national average is 12 percent.
Congressman, in fact, contrary to what you've been saying, isn't the volunteer army better educated and more well-to-do than the general population?
RANGEL: Of course not. I want to make it abundantly clear that I have been advocating a draft ever since the president has been talking about war, and none of this comes within the jurisdiction of the Ways and Means Committee.
But I want to make it abundantly clear, if there's anyone who believes that these youngsters want to fight, as the Pentagon and some generals have said, you can just forget about it. 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, 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 that he would not be in Iraq.
So anyone who supports the war and is against everyone sharing in the sacrifice is being hypocritical about the whole thing. The record is clear, and once we are able to get hearings on this, everyone will see what they already know, and that is that those who have the least opportunities at this age find themselves in the military, as I did when I was 18 years old.
Read it.
This story is updated in a more recent post:
How Rangel Gets it Wrong on Facts, Draft
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posted by Steven Moyer at 11:21 AM
8 Comments:
Thank you for tracking down this interview and posting it.
Knowing Charlie, he will have hearings and attempt to prove that those in the military aren't too bright and are desperate.
Without his military service, he would not be where he is today.
You're welcome.
The thing of the matter is, while the Democrats came into power by running moderate (Republican in all but name) candidates, the power always rested in the liberal arm of the party. Those moderate freshmen congressmen have no choice but to be beholden to the DNC who shelled out the ca$h in support to help win the election.
Of course, it wasn't going to take long before folks started to see that they were hoodwinked with the ol' bait-and-switch routine.
Liberals cannot help but be themselves
I am sick and tired of all the wailing and gnashing of teeth about insinuations that the people who comprise the military may not be the cream of the crop.
For some people, the military is a family tradition, for others it is a way to pay for college, for most of us, it is the only option out there. I joined the navy after high school because I could not get accepted to college. I didn't try hard in school and apply myself. I didn't end up in iraq, but I ended up in the Red Sea during OIF. Most of the kids I went to school with had not applied, not been accepted or failed out of college when they joined the nuclear power program--a pipeline with some of the strictest entrance requirements in the military.
I've seen more than my fair share of people serving to avoid jail time, serving on a second or third enlistment after leaving and ending up on the welfare rolls, and most commonly, enlisted because there wasn't another option to pay for a family.
To gang up on Rangel with the presumption that we have the best force imaginable ignores so much scholarship on the issue as to make me sick. Look into the work done by Charles Moskos, the right wing military sociologist who has studied the American military since HE was drafted in the 1950's. Look at the RAND studies done on military enlistment and retention rates (they are sponsored by the US Army and available online at rand.org)--not exactly liberal bastions of thought.
I served. I vote. And I think.
Like the quoted Heritage Foundation study said, the military reflects a great diversity. Those demographics should not be characterised by focusing only on the lower or upper end of the bell curve. Rangel, Kerry and yourself chose to focus on one aspect. What about West Point and Annapolis graduates who can choose any life they want, yet volunteer to serve?
Let's hope for our sake the military IS the cream of the crop, or the greatest achievement in the history of mankind, the United States of America, is truly doomed to its eventual descent at the hands of people whose only goal in life is its destruction.
To say you only have one option is to sell yourself short. There has never been more opportunity anywhere in the world at any time as there is in the U.S. However, one political party will have you believe that bigger government, redistribution of income, and entitlements are the way to prosperity. Most outrageous is that they try to sell this crap when unemployment is so low anyone who wants a job can have one, and tens of millions of illegal aliens flock here to take advantage of the opportunity that exists.
If you chose to go into the service, that's not at all like being drafted. I am old enough to know something about the draft other than what I have read about it.
If you want a mediocre, demoralized military, institute a draft, become embroiled in an war where you suffer 50,000 deaths, and then prevent the military from winning, all while the whole thing is made unpopular by members of a liberal press who are free to report the war as their petty egos desire.
Hmmm.
Neither my mother or father finished high school.
I was a D student in high school. In a class of 455 I finished at 419.
After high school I did NOT enlist. I went to work, I got married, I got a mortgage, car payments, etc., etc.
At age 37 I wanted a change, so I put myself though college by working full time at night and going to school during the day.
After college, I went to work for a tech company during the dot-com boom.
I retired at age 45.
No other choice but the military my ass.
I find myself agreeing with the bulk of a good deal of these comments, but there are parts that I can't understand. The first anonymous comment "hoped that the military that we had were the cream of the crop". This is a great thing to hope for and a great goal to aspire to, but it isn't the same as a statement of fact. We cannot hope that the military is peopled entirely by the best of the best and then accuse someone of taking leave of their senses when they suggest it is not.
In response to the notion that I am ignoring the West Point, Annapolis and Air Force academy graduates, as well as ROTC members from colleges around the country, I am not. I served most recently with a Naval Academy graduate who went on to receive his masters in Russian History at Oxford before coming to a nuclear submarine. he was most certainly NOT a case of 'no option but in'. A preponderance of those who came into the service from a service academy or ROTC had either family ties or strong social traditions linking them to service--these same traditions run in families where the sons and (rarely) daughters traditionally enlist, rather than seek a commission. In the all the branches of service these individuals make up the core of competence. They are usually the most dedicated and the most inclined to lead. They do not however, make up a vast majority of the individuals serving.
In response to the last notion, that the idea of "one option" is facile.
Of course it is. I came from a state where I could have worked at a tool and die shop and been paid a good bit over minimum wage right out of high school. The military isn't the "only way out" obviously because not everyone chooses the military. I probably chose it because I lacked dedication and creativity, that's why I couldn't see that future after high school without college. The fact that it physically isn't the only option doesn't mean that it isn't realistically the last resort, meaning that while other options exist, of course, the military might as well be the only option for the majority of us at the lower end of the scale.
To be clear, Charles Rangel is an idiot. He isn't bringing up the draft in order to institute it. He is bringing up the draft in order to illustrate the fact that a healthy percentage of the nation's elite chooses NOT to serve--enlisted or commissioned. The notion that the draft can cure social ills is ridiculous. The social change that made the draft of WWII possible and of Vietnam unthinkable cannot be reversed. but don't confuse the raft with Vietnam. We didn't lose 50,000 soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen in Vietnam because there was a draft on, we lost them cause there was a war on, and we were loosing. the draft is a strategy to induct people into the military, nothing more. It cannot get us into wars or keep us into them, only foreign policy can do that. It cannot lose wars for us, only the situation on the ground can do that. Before someone responds with the inevitable story about fragging officers and NCO's in Vietnam, and the discipline problems with drafted soldiers, stop, think and tell me three things. Why did these problems not disappear immediately in 1973 with the end of the draft? Why were they not prevalent in WWII or Korea, where a huge portion of the population was mobilized? And why, even with these same problems, did the military fight so hard AGAINST the AVF when it was discussed?
Answer those, then lambast me about how the war in Vietnam was lost due to the draft.
The saddest part of this is that 10 years from now we ARE going to look at the military as demoralized, if not mediocre, stressed into contortions by a ground war that the force structure wasn't designed to win. We may look to the draft for the answer, but it won't help us.
Thanks for your insightful comments, Adam.
Yep, ol' Rangel is a bonehead alright.
I hope most of us see past the political smoke-and-mirrors trick he is trying to pull with the draft issue.
It's an unfortunate thing when our leaders not only send our troops into harm's way overseas, but also stoop to using them as pawns in their political parlor games at home.
Thank you, Steve.
I've done a considerable amount of research on the draft and the military in society, and one of the most distressing things is when ideologues (Rangel, etc) on the left and the right presume that the draft is what it is not.
Rangel assumes it is a social tool. It isn't. A good deal of the detractors of the draft assume it is a means to fight a war--meaning that having a conscript army means that we fight a 20th century war. That is closer to the truth through some complicated avenues but still isn't true.
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