Charles Bernard Rangel has been a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives since 1971. Rangel’s district encompasses Upper Manhattan and includes such neighborhoods as Harlem, Spanish Harlem, Washington Heights, Inwood, and part of the Upper West Side. He was born in New York City.
He is now the Ranking Member (soon to be chairman) of the Committee on Ways and Means. He co-founded the Congressional Black Caucus.
Rangel has repeatedly called for the government to bring back the draft as a way to make the military more representative of the American public at large. “A disproportionate number of the poor and members of minority groups make up the enlisted ranks of the military, while most privileged Americans are underrepresented or absent,” said Rangel.
But, according to The Heritage Foundation, on average 1999 recruits were more highly educated than the equivalent general population, more rural and less urban in origin, and of similar income status. They did not find evidence of minority racial exploitation (by race or by race-weighted ZIP code areas). They discovered that the household income of recruits generally matches the income distribution of the American population; there are slightly higher proportions of recruits from the middle class and slightly lower proportions from low-income brackets.
And now Rangel continues his tirade against the US military. From the NY SUN:
Rep. Charles Rangel has adopted Senator Kerry’s “botched joke” about unsuccessful young people ending up in the military — only Mr. Rangel is not joking. “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,” Mr. Rangel, a Democrat representing Manhattan and Queens, said on “Fox News Sunday.”
“If there’s anyone who believes these youngsters want to fight, as the Pentagon and some generals have said, you can just forget about it. No bright young individual wants to fight just because of a bonus and just because of educational benefits. And most all of them come from communities of very, very high unemployment,” the congressman said.
He has this idea that the military is composed of poor black boys that, if the government would simply give them good jobs, wouldn’t join the military. He’s tried and tried to institute a military draft so that rich white boys would be forced to serve – with the goal of having rich white moms prevent the government from going to war ever again.
Uh, I’m pretty much middle class, I’m white … and my son chose the Marine JROTC in high school and then chose to serve his country as a US Marine -before- 9/11 happened. He really didn’t care about the bonus, the educational benefits are serving him well today, but he simply wanted to serve his country … period. It’s called Patriotism. Therefore according to my limited experience Charles Rangel is not only wrong – he’s dumb as a stick.
All branches of the military are completely volunteer. Today’s military comes from higher income levels than ever before. They are smarter, faster, and stronger than ever before. Everything Rangel is wishing simply boils down to “How can I stop Bush’s war while looking like I’m ‘doing it for the children’?” Rangel is not a representative – he’s a partisan liberal Democrat.
The American Legion, one of the largest organizations supporting America’s veterans, has issued a statement calling for Rangel to apologize for his remarks, which disparaged all American vets:
“Our military is the most skilled, best-trained all-volunteer force on the planet,” said National Commander Paul A. Morin. “Like that recently espoused by Sen. John Kerry, Congressman Rangel’s view of our troops couldn’t be further from the truth and is possibly skewed by his political opposition to the war in Iraq.”
But this fits well with other recent Democrat statements:
- On a 2005 edition of CBS’s “Face the Nation”, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass) said in an interview with Bob Schieffer that U.S. troops were terrorizing Iraqi women and children: “And there is no reason, Bob, that young American soldiers need to be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, you know, women, breaking sort of the customs of the–of–the historical customs, religious customs.”
- On October 30, 2006, Sen. Kerry was a headline speaker at a campaign rally being held for Democratic California gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides at Pasadena City College in Pasadena, California. Speaking to an audience composed mainly of college students, Kerry stated during a speech that, “you know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”
- Dick Durbin likened American interrogators and Guantanamo military staff to Nazis, Soviet gulag operators and genocidal maniac Pol Pot.
This is why members of the US military almost always vote for Republican candidates: they understand that most Democrats have no respect for our fighting men and women, want a weakened military, want to cut military spending, and want the hard-earned freedoms of Iraqis to be erased.
This is what the voters of America demanded at the polls … and this is what they’re getting.
draft, military, Rangel, liberal, Democrat
