LUCKY FOR HARRY HE HAS A WELL-CONNECTED FAMILY. NOW IF YOU'RE NOT ROYALTY...

Mission accomplished: myth created-- now get home fast

Today's NY Times ran a small story about some 23 year old prince who is third in line for the anachronistic British throne. His name is Harry and there was some brouhaha a while back because his army unit was being deployed to Iraq and it was judged to be too dangerous for him. He threw a royal tantrum and the compromise was that he was allowed to go play-- secretly-- in Afghanistan instead. Today, after Drudge blew the secret, the British "Defense Ministry" had nothing better to do but tell Prince Harry it wasn't safe enough for him there and he'd have to come home. Maybe they can station him on Antigua.

The awkwardly timed dissemination of the prince’s whereabouts had several immediate repercussions. Politicians, including Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the Conservative leader, David Cameron, leapt all over one another in lavishing praise on Prince Harry, 23. British reporters whipped out their notebooks and unleashed into the public domain all the material they had been saving for later: interviews and video scenes of him discussing his deployment, wearing fatigues and firing his machine gun.

Independent congressional candidate Steve Porter, who is running against Bush rubber stamp Phil English, is wondering why if it's not safe for Prince Harry, it's safe for other people's -- American people's-- sons and daughters.

Prince Harry served in a war zone because he comes from a family which believes in putting your money where your mouth is. That is a trait which was often found in British royalty, and which to our disgrace is not often found in today’s American political leadership.
 
There are some members of the Washington elite whose kids are serving in the Iraq/Afghanistan conflict, but damn few. And certainly not Jenna and Barbara Bush, the two healthy, privileged children of a President who lied to get us into a war which has killed nearly 4,000 American “kids,” wounded tens of thousands more, and caused the deaths, injuries, and emigration of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians.
 
Prince Harry, truly the son of Princess Diana-- whose efforts on behalf of the downtrodden won her the love of the world-- said with his decision to serve, your burden will be my burden; your pain will be my pain; if my government asks you to die, I must stand with you.
 
What a contrast to Mr. Bush who asks others to die while his own kids enjoy the night life of Manhattan’s posh East Side. What a contrast to so many in Congress who send our soldiers to fight in a war which rarely involves their own flesh and blood.
 
I wonder what kinds of military aggression we would be involved in if the physically able children of those who demanded American participation were required to fight on the front lines. If the bullets were whizzing around the heads of Jenna and Barbara, I wonder if George would have been so hot to invade.
 
It surely is something to ponder, and while we ponder it, hats off to Harry and Diana and the family who had the integrity to ask not what their country could do for them, but what they could do for their country.