Affluent families:Support the troops.

[bigrun]

Sounds like a good plan...

WASHINGTON --
If you have military-age children who have not served in this decade's wars, then you owe a debt — meaning money — to those who did. That's the premise of a new fundraising effort by three wealthy American families who want to help U.S. veterans of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Every nonmilitary family should give something, they said. The affluent should give large sums. No one should think of it as charity, but rather a moral obligation, an alternative way to serve, perhaps the price of being spared the anxiety that comes with having a loved one in a war zone.

"We have three able-bodied, wonderful, wonderful children, all of whom are devoted to doing very, very good things around social justice; and we could not be more proud of them," said Philip Green, a local businessman who devised the fundraising idea. "We're also delighted that none of them had to serve in Iraq or Afghanistan."

"Millions of Americans and their families have sacrificed so much in the conflicts and they have such needs," Stimmel said. "By contrast, so many affluent Americans have not made a commensurate sacrifice; and they should."

http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/n...ps-ar-2034862/


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Poster comment to article by Juan Cole...unrelated to above story but a theme many agree with..

06/14/2012 at 8:01 am

If anyone believes as I do that the rock-bottom lowest a human being can sink is to support a war he or she expects anyone but themselves to fight or make sacrifices for, then the moral turpitude of Americans is clear. We crossed a moral Rubicon in early spring 2003 and we haven’t come close to recovering from it.

That said, I hope things aren’t as bad in America as you and I think they are