Reply #11: Many people have enlisted

[karynnj]

in the voluteer army either to get educational benefits or because they can't get jobs. The economic disparity may be every bit as great now as in Vietnam or possibly greater. Middle class kids DID go to Vietnam. You needed to be upper class (or at least upper middle class) to avoid it.

It would probably have been better not to say it - but it is true. Congressman Rangel and others have made the point that the fact that most people do not have family members or people they know involved. The burden of this war has very unfairly fallen primarily on the lower class. (There are exceptions - like Tillman or the Brown alumni whose funeral Kerry went to; there were exceptions to the rich not going - we know some names: Kerry, both Thorne brothers etc - but we also know a huge list of privildged people who avoided it.)