The following is a copy of a letter written in my local newspaper:
Republicans should be the first to step up
Perhaps 60 million people voted for Mr. Bush eight months ago, and in the past five months, U.S. military recruitment goals have tanked, their recruitment goals unmet.
So with 60 million republicans voting for Bush, there must be millions of 18-32 year-old republican voters who could join the military, ending the recruitment problems. Am I wrong?
Indeed, aren't pro-war Republican politicians and parents actively encouraging their children to volunteer for Iraq's exploding front lines?
In fact, why don't Aaron Klein and Tim Leslie Jr. resign from their Sierra College Board seats and volunteer for Iraq, setting an example for young republicans, for God and Country?
Better yet, I urge the military recruiters to set up tables with contracts and ball-boint pens at high school and college, Young Republicans, and Central Committee meetings where super-patriot Republicans itch to enlist for this president and war they claim to believe in.
*For the writers privacy, I have erased his name.*
Now, really. How can recruitment be down if all those Republicans just itch to join? Answer me that, little_whip! If you are of age, have you enlisted? If you have children, have you encouraged them to join? Do you have close family or friends in the military? Do you, Dr. Guy, and Moderateman, and all the others that I don't know their names?
Honestly, I can't imagine how you gain the courage to put a sticker of an American flag on the back window of your pickup, in the USA. It must take a lot of courage to write liberal-hating spew, and that applies to liberals writing conservative-hating spew. I don't hate conservatives in general, just the ones that are the ones most often talked about. In fact, I would vote for John Mcain or Collin Powell over Hillary Clinton any day. Anyway, if you're so patriotic, why are you typing from your home computer? Why aren't you in Iraq or Afghanistan?
It's very easy to support a war when it's someone else's daughter or son, when it's someone else's father or mother, when it's someone else's best friend who is gone forever. When you have something real to lose, and you still support the war, then I'll listen and value your every word.
Now, obviously, immediate withdrawal is not the answer. It's the pottery barn rule: You break it, you buy it. We have to fix it now, and we're in for a long, hard fight. But we need to recognize the facts: there is no exit strategy, and the current course is not working. Iraqi troops are being blown up faster than they can be recruited, and that's not going to encourage them to sign up. There have been successes, I'm not going to deny that, but overall, policy needs to be changed, and our President, who is the president, whether you like it or not, needs to accept that there was a mistake in terms of intelligence. To my knowledge, there has been no such admission (if I am wrong, please provide me with a link to read or see or hear the admission myself). If a house is burning, you have to acknowledge that the house is, indeed, burning, before anything can be done.
To sum up: don't attack the patriotism of Liberals in general, many of whom have lost loved ones in this conflict, especially if you have nothing personally to lose.
