Myth of disadvantaged military personnel and the draft

Here is an interesting article from Fox News:

It’s been 33 years since America got rid of the draft and moved to an all-volunteer military. Is it time to return to the days of conscription?

Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y., thinks so. He plans to hold hearings soon after the new Congress convenes in January.

For years, Rangel has been saying wealthy Americans are “absent” from the military. More recently, he dismissed any sense of duty in America’s youngest generation.

“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,” he said on “Fox News Sunday” on Nov. 26.

This is a bizarre slur on the volunteers in uniform. Class warfare rhetoric is a staple of liberals, but it is stunningly insulting when applied to the integrity of American troops engaged in real warfare. Rangel is talking about people in the profession of arms, men and women who believe it to be the most honorable path in life.

The pernicious myth that the armed forces are filled with stupid soldiers has got to stop. It spews from Michael Moore’s film, Fahrenheit 9/11. It slipped out in John Kerry’s botched “joke.” And it has been echoing around the Left unchallenged for too long.
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In 2005, some 80,000 young adults enlisted in the Army, and they came from some surprising places. From 2003 to 2005 -- i.e., after the Iraq War began -- the richest one-fifth of the population was overrepresented in the military at 23 percent. Meanwhile, the percentage of recruits from the poorest neighborhoods dropped from 18 percent in 1999 to 14 percent in 2005.

I personally know of people who enlisted in the military. They come from the upper middle class families: computer programmers from Silicon Valley or furniture store owners from San Diego should qualify as such. And, in case you are wondering, those families are Jews from the former Soviet Union. Immigrants from the former Soviet Union represent one of the most successful immigrant groups in this country. They came to this country often with nothing and made very good lives for themselves. I should know: I am one of them. They also tend to be very patriotic: the comparison with the old country is quite startling. Those people I know are not the only ones: click here. My point is, those people are pretty well to do and have plenty of opportunities. But they chose to serve out of sense of patriotism. While we are at it, let's bust the myth of underprivileged fighting in Vietnam.