When will people wake up and realize that these deaths of 1400 – 1700 our young men and women per year is needless and bring them home?
What? No, not the soldiers in Iraq; the men and women on our college campuses, where the alcohol-induced deaths consistently run about twice as high per year as military deaths in Iraq. And that doesn’t even count “more than 500,000 alcohol-related injuries, more than 600,000 victims of alcohol-related sexual abuse or date rape….”
I’ve lifted all this from a letter that is not yet online by James Morris of Albemarle County in today’s Charlottesville Daily Progress. Morris writes, wisely:
I am not ready to ask for the recall of the students from college, but I do think it is time that risks to our college students received at elast as much attention as the military deaths.
UPDATE [15 April}
See the, er, “correction” contained here.
Here’s a direct link to the letter.
Though I don’t favor withdrawing right now from Iraq, the comparison made by Morris seems to me pretty weak. If all those stationed in Iraq had requested that specific assignment, were serving at-will, and were unpaid volunteers, then his argument would be stronger.