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Thursday, August 05, 2004
Something I'd long wondered about, but never bothered to get the actual figures on, was whether the claim that Congressmembers' children are under-represented in today's armed forces is a true one. It's claimed to be untrue here (via Instapundit.
I did a fair amount of research and number-crunching on a lot of the claims of anti-Iraq-war types, some of which was done regarding Charlie Rangel's NYT Op-Ed suggesting a reinstatement of the draft, which also questioned Congressmembers' willingness to send American troops to war in light of their perceived inability to grasp the true costs of war.
I don't have a digital copy of that research with me, and my hard-copy is elsewhere, but the research showed -- and feel free to try to duplicate this -- that if the votes on the Iraq war resolution are broken down by status as a veteran, and then as a veteran who's been in combat, members became more likely to vote for the war the further they are along on this costs-of-war-awareness spectrum, across party lines. Presumably, veterans are more aware of the costs of war than non-veterans, and combat veterans more so than veterans who did not experience combat. Yet, contra Rangel (and Moore), for both Republicans and Democrats, veterans voted in greater numbers for the war, and veterans with combat experience voted for the war in greater numbers than veterans who did not experience combat. There was only one category for which this proved not to be the case; if I recall correctly, Senate veteran Democrats voted for the war at a higher rate than Senate veteran Democrats with combat experience, the latter of which, if I recall correctly, voted for the war at a rate of 66%.
Steven I. Weiss 5:55:00 AM
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