What I think Rangel was trying to suggest, howver clumsily and ineptly, is that the proportion of the population that joins the military is a little skewed. Specifically, that while the average service member is not from the bottom of society (the Heritage foundation study, among others, showed that); the proportion of the "elites" children that join is less than their numbers would suggest. Basically, if more Congressmen and Senators had children in the military, they might be a inclined to think a little longer before committing US military forces to things like Iraq.

The most recent figure I have seen is 7 legislators between the house and senate have children on active duty. If this number was say 40 or 50, we might have seen some actual oversight of just what the executive was "not" planning in Iraq.

Well, you're free to think whatever you like, but that's not what Rangel said. What he said was basically that he didn't believe anything the Heritage study reported and that the military draws disproportionately from the poor, which is incorrect.

As for oversight, based on the degree of party loyalty demanded of Republicans over the past six years, I doubt having 100 children of legislators on active duty would have changed how Congress acted. Are you aware of any particular pressure brought in Congress by those members who do have children on active duty?

It's not directly related to this post, Andrew, but you'll be interested in this article by Larry Kahaner on "Why the US Loses Small Wars". It relates to your discussion from last week.

http://hnn.us/articles/31296.html

I think the Democrats are still stuck in a Vietnam consciousness when it comes to their institutional rhetoric on war and that needs to change if they are ever going to come to terms with the modern military. It's not the same military or the same world anymore. Kerry's comments were awkward, though not aimed at the troops (in context they were aimed at Bush). Rangel's comments are ill-conceived and mostly wrong.


That said, I think that the Republicans are extremely vulnerable when it comes to the military, especially after doggedly holding on to tax cuts for the top 2% of households in the face of a war while asking military households to foot the bill with reduced services. The Republicans are not pro-military, they are just more likely to use the military to further their own policy objectives and more polite while they exploit our servicepeople.


And as for the deeper argument about military demographics, I think that the Heritage Institute's numbers are problematic, both in the assumptions they make about income and zip code and in the way that they examine recruitment numbers as a whole rather than broken out by MOS and/or by officer/enlisted. It's hard to look at the specifics, for example, and see if recruits from disadvantaged backgrounds face the same sorts of prospects and risks going-in as those from more privileged backgrounds. It's also impossible to tell, given the way their economic background numbers are generated by ZIP code tabulation areas, if recruits are representative of their ZCTA or if they come from either end of the income curve for their area. I know that the military is more Southern, white, patriotic, and middle class than the anti-war demagogues would have us believe, but I also think that the Heritage Institute's numbers are higher than the actual numbers would be if recruits reported actual family income rather than just ZCTA.

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