They don't belong in battle, by John D. Eisenhower, on October 3, 2008

As the only living presidential son to serve in combat while his father was in office, I feel an obligation to express my concern that both of the current vice presidential candidates, Governor Sarah Palin and Senator Joseph Biden, have sons in U.S. Army units on orders for duty in Iraq. In addition, the Republican presidential candidate, John McCain, has a son who is in the Marine Corps and subject to a second deployment to Iraq at any time.......


With all due respect for your combat in that-very-difficult-war and the eminence of your father's leadership and political (here meant as a compliment) skills in orchestrating and keeping together a wild bunch of squabbling general staff and war ministers through a world war without desintegration.....

I disagree with you that there should be an aristocracy in the United States that doesn't go through whatever everyone else goes through. If Van Fleet's son did it, if Patton's son did it, and every other citizens' son did it, then surely Palin, Biden and McCain's sons can do it. George Washington, by the way, slept in the snow and had the same as all his men had.

Just a sidenote, in the very war that you fought as the son of a President nominee (and later, son of the President), the son of the Chairman of China (the butchery is another topic) also served in the same war, as a Russian translator attached to the Chinese "Volunteers" HQ. Mao An-Ying/毛岸 英, the only talented and decent son of Mao (all others are eat and drink and gangster type), was killed in 1952 in a USAF napalm strike.

Seriously, people shouldn't be insulated in the White House or Capitol Hill or anywhere, from the consequences of any p0licy they carry out. And your suggestion that the lives of some soldiers should be worth more than others is absurd. If the President or vice-president, or any leader of men, think only his/her son's life to be worthy, while all the others are expendable, then the person should not be President, or vice-president, or leader.