I am on vacation in the mountains for a month right now, but I can’t resist posting on this one! Can someone please explain to me how Kerry’s comments were directed at the President and not the troops? In a broad sense, I can see that he might have been slamming the President’s policies, but wasn’t he also making the point, through a failed joke, that our troops are uneducated and that our soldiers have somehow been forced into serving due to lack of education?

We have a volunteer force, so the fact that most of our troops don’t have degrees is irrelevant. In fact, the military provides many of these folks with discipline and money so that they can go on to get education after they serve, unlike their peers who are still smoking weed back on the block. And I think every officer and enlisted servicemember with a degree should be offended by these remarks as well. Some of my friends in the service went to Ivy League schools and I know one guy who did undergrad at Harvard and has a law degree from Stanford. He’s in the Marines because he volunteered, like all the rest!

If Kerry was trying to say that the military is the only route for some to college and a good paying job, that is also untrue. There are plently of alternatives, and when someone joins the military it should not be for the college money or they pay. They should join with the full expectation that they will be sent to war and die in combat for their country. Are we supposed to feel bad that our troops are doing what they are supposed to be doing and fighting in a war – one that John Kerry himself voted for?