Bob Herbert's column today
(TimesSelect) is centered around an Army sergeant named Mike Krause who is returning from three overseas tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. Krause is quoted as follows in the column:
"Right now it's such a small minority of families who have a stake in all of this. I hear people say things like, `We lost a lot of good people over there.' I sort of snap around and say, `We? You didn't lose anybody.' You know what I mean?"
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I think that Sgt. Krause makes a good point, one that I am trying to address, at least for dKossians, with the attached poll.
The poll attempts to track two kinds of personal distance to these conflicts: (1) how close are you to someone who served in Iraq or Afghanistan, and (2) how close are you to someone who was killed or wounded in Iraq or Afghanistan. There are 4 levels of closeness: 0 means that you yourself served there and/or was wounded there; 1 means an immediate family member or close friend; 2 means a casual acquaintance; 3 means no personal connection. Sorry for the complication, but hopefully it will all be clear below.
Greg Shenaut