I’ve read this story from IPS via Truthout thru twice now, and I’m still floored. Not so much by the appaling minutiae of the story: single mom can’t find caretaker for her child before deploying to Afghanistan, goes AWOL instead and is now under arrest and kid is in foster care. That’s bad enough. No, what really bowled me over me was the whole premise: the US Army actually considers a single mom deployable at all? I mean, are they that desperate for cannon fodder than they’ll take a single mom away from her 11-month old child? Christ, things must really be desperate in that massive machine that sucks in good Americans and our tax dollars and spits out body bags and destruction on the other end if that’s the case. That’s the same machine that’s glorified by the family values crowd, the bunch who claim to be all about the children when with their medieval stance on reproductive health — and yet, when it comes down to brass tacks, there’s not really much concern for the kids at all.
This gives a whole new meaning to that lame “Army of One” slogan, huh?
