“There is an issue of how representative of America is the force,” said Curt Gilroy, the director of DoD’s accessions policy in the Pentagon.

DoD tracks “representativeness” - as Gilroy calls it - very closely. And representativeness can take a whole host of forms - race, education, social status, income, region and so on. “When you look at all of those, you find that the force is really quite representative of the country,” he said in a recent interview. “It mirrors the country in many of these. And where it doesn’t mirror America, it exceeds America.” (Source.)

It’s amazing how the Kerry defenders want to talk about anything except Kerry’s statement. Either Kerry meant what he said or he didn’t. If he didn’t, why doesn’t he apologize for the misstatement? If he did… As I said — stupid.

Soldiers are mostly from poor families, especially in the USA. Why is that? Why aren’t rich kids going off to war? What kind of democracy allows this to happen?

The fact that the poor are usually not very educated (some are stupid some are normal but none have made the most of their talents by working low paid jobs) reflects the fact that most higher education in the US is very expensive and private. Poor people are mostly excluded from it. The big change now is that unlike the past if you don’t have a college degree you are unlikely to get a good job, and blue collar jobs are going to China Mexico and India, making the rich people that own the companies exporting those jobs richer (shareholders are included in this).

Increasingly middle income americans are affected too, mostly through their children. Sometimes as there are no good jobs to go to to live like a human being, people are forced to go to the army as it offers training and the only viable career…
Some become criminals… some become cleaners etc..

Whereas C students like Bush succeed based on their parents money not their own efforts, so this is hardly meritocracy. I wouldn’t call Bush a smart man. I think he has outsourced the thinking to other unelected people which is a problem in a democracy.

As we live in a world were the rich can avoid the army, saying that poor people are the ones fighting the war is not a lie… Just think about it…

Both Bush and Cheney avoided going to Vietnam by Bush getting his rich family to intervene for him to guard the fearsome invaders in Texas (i.e. nobody), always at the ready from the bar, armed with several bottles of alcohol. Whereas Cheney used his university study as a reason not to go to Vietnam.

If they had fought in a war i would have much more time in listening to Bush or Cheney talk about the necessity of war, the reality is neither has experienced it… and they talk far too much about it.

Nice site. Great post.