Fresh off the heels of Chris Matthews’ recent rant against the “piggish” neo-cons using ads to drive Americans into needless wars, Joe Scarborough unleashed a similar conspiratorial tirade while recapping a story regarding Afghan forces firing on NATO troops.
“Young Americans are going to be shot and killed over there. And that's why when it is so easy for somebody in a think tank or somebody on Capitol Hill to sit there and say, ‘we need to stick it out.’” So Scarborough dragged out the old screed that war-supporting members of Congress and people at the Heritage Foundation need to send their own children to war:
So for people in think tanks in Washington DC, that are sitting there trying to calculate this out, let them go. Let them go over there. Let their sons and daughters go over there. When they want to sit and be chicken hawks and talk about how America needs to be all over the world, let them go. Let them send their families. It's so easy for somebody at...a think tank or Heritage or anywhere...say ‘Yeah, lets do -- we need to stay in Afghanistan for as long as it takes.’ Fine, send your son or daughter there. Because we already have veterans that we can't even take of that have been fighting these wars for 12 years.
This is not to say that Joe is ignorant of the fact that some war supporters have or had children in Iraq and Afghanistan (such as former. Rep. Duncan Hunter and former Rep. Todd Akin). However, he shrugged it off, saying the number is an abysmal, “One per, one, maybe one, I don't know what the number is, Mike, you know this better than me.” Mika Brzezinski chipped in, saying it’s a “small percentage.”
Joe has apparently been trapped in the MSNBC bubble for so long that he was not informed that military service is voluntary and people can’t “send” anyone to fight anywhere unless they’ve volunteered.
His statement also carries the insulting premise that people in general and lawmakers in particular don’t care about American soldiers unless their children are among them. Putting aside the fact that this is easily disproved by the existence of initiatives like the Wounded Warrior Project, does this mean that Joe didn’t care about the troops when he was in Congress?
The contention that the war in the Middle East has rendered America unable to take care of its veterans is absurd when one realizes that America has suffered significantly fewer casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq than it did when it fought similar totalitarian threats in World War II. Joe’s fury over the poor care of American’s veterans would be better spent railing against the scandal ridden Veterans Health Administration, rather than making the absurd suggestion that America has exhausted her resources by fighting two wars.
Joe’s solution to this problem of blood lusting think-tanks and governments who want to send other people’s children is to fight in war is to channel Charlie Rangel, “I think it's time we reinstitute a draft...let...[a]ll Americans have skin in the game...and we’re going to have more members...in Congress, in the Senate, more people running for president...maybe they won't see this as toy soldiers moving across the globe.”
Under the current voluntary system, Joe’s sons do not have to be apart of a war effort their father believes to be the product of warmongering think-tanks and governments. They would if their father had his way.
