Couple of follow up notes to the previous post:
1. Prince Harry, heir to the British throne, served in Afghanistan and his family was silent on the deployment. In fact, when news of the deployment leaked, Prince Harry was removed from service for the sake of his unit. The US VP nominee of the Republican party just announced the deployment date of their kid going toIraq. I see political mileage being made of the deployment of the unit already, and I do fear the worst for him, and his unit. Any terrorist wannabe with half a subscription to the US media knows US Republican VP Nominee junior is inbound to Iraq. If there ain’t a bounty on the kid’s head now, I’ll be very surprised.
2. I look forward to being wrong in November. I hope for the kid’s sake, I am wrong. But the bottom line is, there’s a really bad combination of opportunity and opportunism present here. If you don’t like what I’m saying, fine, don’t like it. I don’t expect it to sway your vote, I’m not in America, I’m not a Democratic party member or a US voter. I don’t like the idea of killing the VP’s nominee’s kid for political gain.
I happen to believe that it’s entirely possible to make a high profile politically charged event occur, and the candidate’s child is already in a highly political visible deployment in a combat zone.
Palin’s speechwriters may not get that flagging the VP’s son going to a warzone may not be a great plan for operational and unit security. Whether it’s not tactful, tasteful, nice, or whatever else you want to think, stop and think about the combination of opportunity, personal sacrifice, and virtually untouchable patriotic event that this death could become during the election. “Loved their coutry so much as to sacrifice their eldest child?” There’s a resonance with a few other statements of sacrifice that would play out to be amazing rhetoric.
It would bring gravitas, tragedy and political mileage like none other you’d see.
I’m calling it publicly because I think this unpleasant possibility is a possibility, and I’d rather it stays as conjecture, and an unpleasant taste in the minds of the people who read this - my preference is for Track and his unit to make it to the end of the tour unscatched. I’d like to be wrong
Hopefully, I am the only one with a dark enough worldview to have considered this, and hopefully, come November, I’m wrong.
It’s my call, benchmarked and in 54 days, we’ll have an answer.
ETA: Joe Biden’s son will be serving in Iraq according to CNN (hat tip to a colleague). So there’s two VP heirs in the firing line. Both men being there, and being known to be in Iraq is a really politically bad situation for them and their units. They have to be premium marked targets given the nature of the combat zone. It’s not good across the board.
