Charlie Rangel Kerrys the Troops

By Sonny Bunch
Weekly Standard
November 27, 2006

ON A SLOW post-Thanksgiving Sunday, Rep. Charles Rangel wins the award for stupidest comment of the day while appearing on Fox News Sunday. Expounding on his drive to reinstate the draft, Rangel said that "no young, bright individual wants to fight just because of a bonus and just because of educational benefits. And most all of them come from communities of very high unemployment. If a young fellow has an option of having a decent career or joining the Army to fight in Iraq, you can bet your life he would not be in Iraq." John Kerry couldn't have said it better himself.

Someone on Rangel's staff needs to pull him aside and explain to him just how wrong he is. A recent Heritage Foundation study destroyed the notion that the poor and minorities are heavily overrepresented in the military. Highlights include the following facts: "According to the 2004 Census ACS, 75.6 per-cent of the national adult population self-identifies as belonging to the racial category white alone. In both 2004 and 2005, 73.1 percent of recruits were classified as white alone. . . . Excluding the group of a combination of two or more races, minority representation varies between being moderately proportional to extremely disproportional." African Americans make up 12.17 percent of the population and 14.54 percent of the percentage of recruits. The study also showed that, on average, our soldiers tend to have more education than average Americans.