In spite of my total lack of interest, it has been impossible to ignore the Jenna Bush wedding. After the third or fourth time I heard the name Henry Hager, I started to wonder about who he was and checked out his biography.
Everything indicated he is an up-and-coming conservative Republican: the son of a prominent Republican tobacco family, an apprenticeship with Karl Rove, a future in the energy-oil industry. I assume Henry Hager is a firm supporter of the Bush policy in Iraq. He surely believes the U.S. military involvement in Iraq is necessary to defend the freedom and safety of the American people, and that the loss of 4,000-plus American lives is justifiable.
And then the question occurred to me: Why isn’t this guy in Iraq? Why is he pursuing a graduate degree, getting married and starting a career when thousands of other young men and women are sweating, bleeding and dying because his father-in-law tells them this is what their country needs them to be doing?
Imagine some journalist asking the question: “Mr. Hager, why aren’t you in Iraq?” Would he answer like Dick Cheney that he has “other things to do”? Or maybe in the world of conservative Republicans where the abbreviated service of George W. in the Texas National Guard at the height of the Vietnam War is lauded and the actual combat experience of John Kerry is ridiculed, Henry Hager wouldn’t feel that he needs to answer the question at all.
Norman Mrozicki
Surry
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