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| Princeton Professor infantilizes the military--including his own son |
| 2006-11-09 |
| by James Taranto, "Best of the Web" @ Wall Street Journal It's Personal On Tuesday we noted that Uwe Reinhardt, a professor of political economy at Princeton, had issued, in a Washington Post op-ed, a partial defense of John Kerry's most recent calumny against American servicemen. Although acknowledging that Kerry's remark was "uncouth," Reinhardt argued that the all-volunteer military is invidious because those with greater education and opportunities have less incentive to join up. What we didn't realize, because Reinhardt didn't mention it in this piece (though he has elsewhere), is that this matter is personal to Reinhardt. As Town Topics, a weekly Princeton newspaper, reported in August 2005, Prof. Reinhardt's son, Mark, joined the Marines after his graduation from Princeton in 2001. Mark Reinhardt had three combat deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the Paktika province of Afghanistan, he was seriously wounded--seven broken ribs and a punctured lung--when his Humvee hit a Taliban mine. The younger Reinhardt recovered fully. In a Washington Post op-ed published in early August 2005--shortly before Mark Reinhardt was wounded--Uwe Reinhardt confessed that he did not approve of his son's decision to join the military: When our son, then a recent Princeton graduate, decided to join the Marine Corps in 2001, I advised him thus: "Do what you must, but be advised that, flourishing rhetoric notwithstanding, this nation will never truly honor your service, and it will condemn you to the bottom of the economic scrap heap should you ever get seriously wounded." The intervening years have not changed my views; they have reaffirmed them. As an editor at one of the nation's newspapers, let us say that we are impressed with Mark Reinhardt's sacrifice and sympathetic with Uwe Reinhardt's fatherly anguish at seeing his son in harm's way. But are such emotions a reliable guide to public policy? We would say not. Indeed, it strikes us that Prof. Reinhardt's personal involvement in this issue distorts rather than clarifies his views of it. To begin with, Reinhardt's son is actually a strong counterexample to the professor's argument. Mark Reinhardt, an Ivy League graduate, plainly joined the Marines not because of a lack of opportunity but because it was what he wanted to do. Uwe Reinhardt tried to talk him out of it, which is understandable enough: He loves his son and wants to protect him. But it is hypocritical for him to try to talk his own privileged child out of serving and then turn around and complain that the privileged don't sacrifice enough under the volunteer military. Prof. Reinhardt wrote a nasty little column for the Daily Princetonian this past September in which he taunted as "chicken hawks" those students who have refrained from joining the military. That is, he is insulting those young Americans who have taken the very course that he unsuccessfully urged on his own son. One gets the sense that Uwe Reinhardt thinks he has made a sacrifice here. In fact, although he obviously has paid an emotional price, the sacrifice was his son's alone. Mark Reinhardt will always be his father's child, but he is not a child. He is a man, and he made an adult decision to join the Marines. The infantilization of the American serviceman is a familiar and offensive refrain of the liberal left. In Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" there's one particularly stupid scene (and that's saying something) in which Moore approaches members of Congress and demands that they send their own children to Iraq. But of course no parent can force his child to join the military; that is a decision only an adult can make for himself. Again, for Reinhardt this seems to be more a personal matter than an ideological one. A Princetonian news article describes a revealing father-son conversation: "Why?" Wilson School professor Uwe Reinhardt asked of his son, Marine Cpt. Mark Reinhardt '01 and another Marine officer as they sat in a bar in San Diego. "Why did you do this?" Mark Reinhardt sounds like a class act, and his father should be very proud. But Uwe Reinhardt does himself no credit when he disparages young Americans who choose a different path. |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #2 This Uwe guy is a clinical narcissist of the worst kind. Uwe, in case you haven't noticed, there are far worse things in life than a United States Marine. If nothing else, show your son some f*cking respect. You can start by recognizing the sacrifice he has freely chosen to make-- despite the many less risky alternatives offered to a Princeton grad, I'm sure-- and the honor said sacrifice deserves. |
| Posted by: eltoroverde 2006-11-09 23:24 |
| #1 Uwe sounds like a self-absorbed asshole. I wanted my son to go to college (eventually,l he will), with a 3.8 GPA. When I asked him why he joined the Army, he said "9/11". What more could I say than "do your best and come home safe"? Uwe's world is all about him and his son's priorities kick his ass. Think he'll ever realize? No. The son is a hero. The father is a dick. not unlike my own situation... :-) |
| Posted by: Frank G 2006-11-09 21:42 |