As August heats up, people are getting the simple message of this red sign which is sprouting up in places like Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman's neighborhood. And sprouting up also in the yards of Minnesotan families of Marines and soldiers serving in Iraq.
Of course the hypocrisy becomes more obvious when a war hawk like Mitt Romney can only manage to stammer out something lame about his five sons bravely choosing NOT to serve in the military in order to campaign for their father in Iowa and to pursue their other priorities. If only that woman who questioned Romney would have asked the same thing of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and all the other neocons and war profiteers who got us into the mess in Iraq! If only someone had asked all those warhawks whose own children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews have conveniently come up with other priorities, other than serving in our U.S. military. If only the question would be posed of all those who dodged the Vietnam draft like Rove and Cheney (with their total of 11 draft deferments!) and Norm Coleman who went from being a Jane Fonda-like Vietnam War protester in college to now becoming one of Bush-Cheney's biggest Iraq War supporters. How hypocritical is that?!
Maybe the worse the hypocrisy is (and here I'm reminded of the decades- long cover-up of priest-pedophile sexual abuse), the harder it is to expose?
President Bush's new "War Czar" Army Lt. General Douglas Lute just said that "it makes sense to certainly consider" a return to a military draft since frequent tours have stressed the all-volunteer force. Making the draft an "option on the table" now is not something most of my friends with college age children have given much prior thought to and no doubt it will cause more and more lights to go on. As more and more of the military families bearing the brunt of Bush's misbegotten war have seen the hypocrisy in their pro-war congresspersons staying Bush's course, more and more American families with draft-age children may soon see it too.
This certainly means more of these signs are going to be sprouting up.