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But the military today is not the military of the Civil War or even Vietnam. It is more educated and affluent than ever before. A report by Heritage Foundation researcher Tim Kane, released just before the election, found that "the average reading level of new soldiers is roughly a full grade level higher than their civilian peers" and that the high school graduation rate for enlistees was 17 percentage points higher than the rate for the civilian population.

The military is also not just a bunch of poor boys with no other options. "The wealthiest 40 percent of neighborhoods in America are the home of 45.6 percent of 2005 enlistees," Kane found. "For every two U.S. recruits from the poorest neighborhoods, three come from the richest."

So how is Rangel's idea going over in poor neighborhoods?

"What, he was smoking pot or something?" 58-year-old James Brown of Harlem, one of Rangel's own constituents, asked a New York Daily News reporter when asked for comment on Rangel's plan.

Another Rangel constituent, 48-year-old Neil Davis, said Rangel "doesn't represent the people of Harlem if he's for the draft."

Generals often make the mistake of fighting the last war. On Iraq, Democrats are doing exactly that. They just cannot get past Vietnam. Someone might want to remind them of two important lessons of Vietnam they seem to have forgotten: 1) In the absence of U.S. troops, the Communists slaughter of innocents continued unchecked; 2) Our retreat taught the world what the North Vietnamese already knew: To defeat the United States you don't have to win a single battle, you just have to kill enough Americans to turn public opinion against the war.

The irony is that only if Democrats have their way and U.S. troops withdraw from Iraq before the mission is complete will Iraq be another Vietnam.

Andrew Cline is editorial page editor of the New Hampshire Union Leader and editor of the satire blog www.gunsnbutter.com.

topics:
Barack Obama, Satire, Military, Iraq