Wright Salisbury lost his son-in-law, Edward Hennessy, Jr. in the 9/11 attack. He is also the founder of The Alliance for Jewish-Christian-Muslim Understanding, Inc., a non-profit organization dedicated to building bridges of understanding between people of different faiths.
There’s a popular old Christian hymn that goes like this:
“Here am I, Lord. Is it I, Lord?
I have heard you calling in the night.
I will go, Lord, if you lead me.
I will hold your people in my heart.”
There is a class of Americans that politicians love to bray about supporting, the “ordinary working class Americans.” Sounds so egalitarian, so democratic.
And these are the Americans that our politicians love to send to war. They are, almost unanimously, patriotic and religious. And poor, or relatively so, so that they find military service in the ranks to be a good job, and so that they volunteer to join the National Guard to make a little extra money and a chance for a college education.
These are the most vulnerable of our society. They finished high school, they have clean records, so we send them to fight our wars. In fact, we FORCE them to fight our wars. Some, after they see what war is like, rebel, but a rebelling “ordinary working class” man we know how to deal with.
I have a challenge to make to my older cohorts. Why send the young to fight these wars? Let’s REINSTATE THE DRAFT to include every man from 50 to 80 years old. The young have children to raise, lives to live, real responsibilities. Instead—
Send me, Lord.
I’m an old geezer. I’m blind in one eye and don’t see well out of the other and I’m a little hard of hearing. I’m arthritic and can’t run more than fifty feet without getting winded. I have to take a cocktail of drugs every day to keep my blood pressure and cholesterol level in check. But I dare say I could carry a rifle and take a bullet as well as the next man.
But I’m no fool. If you try to send me to fight a “police action” or to protect our oil resources, I’ll tell you young whippersnappers you’re damned idiots, so do you really want me in your army? Well that’s a chance you’ll have to take, because I’M VOLUNTEERING.
Would you like to see the war records of some of the gung ho fighting heroes among the elite? Here’s a sampling:
President George W. Bush, who decided a 6 year National Guard commitment really meant 4 years
Dick Cheney, who “had other priorities than military service”
Tom DeLay said that “So many minority youths had volunteered for the well-paying military positions to escape poverty and the ghetto that there was literally no room for patriotic folks like myself.”
Karl Rove, who never served in the armed forces
Newt Gingrich, who never served in the armed forces, said, "Part of the question I had to ask myself was what difference I would have made."
Att. General John Ashcroft, who never served in the armed forces, got seven deferments
For more about the service records of these brave warriors, see “Who served in the military” at http://www.awolbush.com/...
Send them too, Lord.