Barack Claims He Wanted to Join the Military

Carol Platt Liebau | September 07, 2008 8:04 PM

Somehow, he left it out of his two memoirs, but this morning, Barack told George Stephanopoulos that he really thought about joining the military, but chose not to because we weren't in a war at the time.

Sorry. I don't believe it. I've had some good things to say about the Barack Obama I knew. But no way, no how is this true. Barack and the people who surrounded him were hardly the types to have any sympathy with or interest in the military. They were the type who supported the ban on ROTC at Harvard and other Ivy League schools and were happily anti-military because of the military's ban on gays.

What's more, the presence or absence of military conflict is irrelevant to many of the people who join ROTC. Many did so during peacetime as a way to pay for their educations -- like one of my roommates at Princeton. If Barack had had any inclination to serve in the military in even a limited capacity, of course, this option might have helped defray some of the cost of those student loans that his wife keeps discussing.