weekend reading

A couple of pieces worth reading during this long weekend.

Andrew Bacevich, a politically conservative scholar who has long opposed the current war, has an essay in today’s Washington Post. “Memorial Day orators will say that a G.I.’s life is priceless,” he writes. “Don’t believe it. I know what value the U.S. government assigns to a soldier’s life.” Bacevich lost his son in Iraq a couple weeks ago.

D.R. Scott discusses and links to a recent column in the Boston Globe on “how and why enlistments of African-Americans are at their lowest numbers since the all-volunteer military was created in 1973.” Part of the answer: “This is not a black people’s war. This is not a poor people’s war. This is an oilman’s war.”