God save the prince: British royals serve as our U.S. elite does not

I really could not have put this any better. Where is the common sacrifice of the United States' leaders? Answer: Nowhere to be found.

Sunday, February 25, 2007

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The British are not like Americans. Prince Harry, third in line to the British throne, will serve a combat tour in Iraq starting in a few months.

The British royal family -- as Americans will be reminded again in the Academy Award consideration of "The Queen," a story from the life of Queen Elizabeth II -- spends a certain amount of time in military dress gear, on horses, frequently in red uniforms with lots of medals.

What is less well known is that generally at least the men have had formal military training, and some of them have experience in combat, most recently Prince Andrew in the British-Argentine Falklands war. Queen Elizabeth herself as a princess served as an ambulance driver and mechanic in London during World War II, when the Germans were raining bombs and rockets on the British capital.

Now, Prince Harry, or, more exactly, Cornet (second lieutenant equivalent) Henry Charles Albert David Mountbatten-Windsor, Prince of Wales, will go to Iraq as an officer of the Blues and Royals Regiment of the Household Cavalry, in command of an armored reconnaissance unit. His unit uses lightly armored vehicles, obviously vulnerable to improvised explosive devices and explosively formed projectiles, so this is the real thing.

The contrast with the military record (or nonrecord) of the American president and vice president and their offspring is hard to miss.