George Bush is Stripping Our Military of Honor

by Frank Schaffer | Bio |

To paper over the fact that he is destroying our military by overextending it, President Bush has hired professional mercenaries by the thousands. I have a stake in this decision: it dishonors my son's choice to volunteer to serve as a Marine.

After 9/11 my Marine son served two combat tours in Afghanistan, one shorter mission to Iraq and participated in several missions to other hot spots in the Global War on Terror. He had volunteered in 1999. It is the spirit of selflessness that my son and thousands of other men and women embraced by volunteering that the president is squandering.

Today our war machine includes "contractors" who are not fighting for love of country but for love of money. They are from all over the world and literally no more than hired guns. The fact that some of them are former U.S. military personnel changes nothing. It just shows that the line between a patriotic all-volunteer force and a mercenary force is blurring. It also shows that some men and women in the U.S. military have figured out that there is a chance to make a buck out of a decadent county that asked them to be willing to sacrifice everything while most Americans act like there is no war.

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