Tuesday, October 31, 2006
No Apology Yet
In two weeks I'll be in China. It may sound odd, but my wife's apartment has become to feel more like home than my own apartment even though I've only spent a few weeks over there in the last year. My wife is often annoyed with how poorly I recall details of our visits to various locales together, but every time I talk to her I see her apartment in my mind with startling clarity. China no longer feels like an exotic place to visit, just a place where I don't understand the words spoken all around me, but that's ok because of my wife's patient translations.
Aiai, our daughter is sick with a cold today. It doesn't seem too serious, but she does have a cough and Nian took her to the doctors today. I never know what to say when either Aiai or Nian are sick; I'm not there so I have no way to gauge how concerned to be. Little children I think tend to get sick fairly often with mild colds, but I've never been a parent before so I don't really know.
I feel a little conflicted about John Kerry's recent statements to a group of college students that they could either work hard in school or "get stuck in Iraq." On the surface it appears to imply that if you are not smart you end up having no options and have to resort to the military. As a Marine Corps veteran I find this insulting. One of my co-workers is currently in the Army reserve and one of the smartest people I know. People misspeak from time to time, perhaps this is what Mr. Kerry did, but in the face of a firestorm of calls for him to retract this statement he has chosen instead to turn on his attackers saying they are distorting his words for political gain. Having listened to the statement in full and in context on television I would have to say his words are not being twisted and his inability to apologize for this gaffe says something about his core personality. As to the conflicted part, I'm unhappy we are in Iraq and think we should not have gone in. But it is sad to see an American politician saying disparaging things about our armed service personnel in order to ingratiate himself with a liberal college audience.
Congressman Charles Rangel often plays the same no-options card with regard to military service, but with a racial spin, implying people of color end up disproportionately serving in Iraq and dying. However no actual census of the infantry servnig in Iraq shows a disproportionate percentage of non-white service men, quite the opposite in fact.
The trouble with both Rangel and Kerry is they just can't keep away from trying to find a class conflict to get a handle on and exploit it. Maybe I shouldn't hold it against them, maybe this is just to be expected from politicians.
