So, I was perusing the news headlines, and found that there is a ruckus going on with some verbiage that was spouted in a public forum:

What Kerry said Monday at a campaign rally was this: “You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”

I read that to The Wife and I think that her response was better stated than anything I could come up with. A sudden intake of breath, followed by “That Dumb Schmuck. What, he figures that you are all a bunch of dropouts so we send you off to war?”

Is it really inconceivable that someone who is educated in the sense that they have the vellum duly stamped and approved by Accredited University would be in the military? Or that after joining the military for education benefits, a Soldier / Sailor / Airman / Marine would stay once he or she reached whatever goals were set?

I can sometimes buy the idea that The Rich^TM send off to war The Poor^TM, but rather get in a frothy Marxist rage about class differences, I look at it from a systems perspective. (Hey, we all play to our strong suits.) The military is a way of getting ahead for those who would probably never get other opportunities. The fact of the matter in modern America is: if you are a minority and / or “economically disadvantaged” (i.e. you worry about bills to pay), then the military is a way to get college or get loans repaid or get training. Couple that with the military being color-blind and it is no wonder that minorities are over represented in the military compared to the larger population of the rest of America.

There is a bunch of backpedaling now with the comment, that it was a joke gone wrong, that it is a subtle criticism of policy.  But there are two things that jump out at me.  One is that when Number Two came home from school, she mentioned that one of her friends was talking about how Kerry said that “if you stay in school and do your homework, you will be okay; otherwise, you go to Iraq.”  Misquote or not of Kerry, that is the message that she was getting as the youth of America.  So, is it fair to her as the child with a deployed parent to hear “oh, by the way, he is probably a slacker” from the streets?

But what really sticks out in my mind is the second thing, which is the composition of my unit and the skills that we have. Actually, the enlisted are probably better educated than the officers. We have at least two master’s degrees, degrees in psychology, chemistry, biology, political science, electrical engineering, aeronautical engineering, computer science, business, and graphic arts. We also have plumbers, electricians, and welders. There are diesel mechanics and some that do construction, both wood and metal structures. Finally, we have two individuals who passed their national exams as paramedics who are not assigned as medics.

Not only can we destroy a town, we can rebuild it. And probably better than it was. Not bad for a bunch of slackers.