Torie Bosch''s column, "Trusting our generation in war a hard thing to do," is perhaps one of the most insulting pieces I have read this year. For one thing, given that all military personnel must undergo rigorous training in leadership, self-discipline and emotional maturity, the suggestion that professional soldiers in Iraq are little more than drunk, overexcited frat boys is as ignorant as anything Bosch accuses her Republican friends of saying. What I found particularly offensive, though, was the suggestion that "lower income citizens," lacking "quality education," must be incapable of rational behavior in a military or political context. Bosch overlooks the fact that our anti-war candidate, John Kerry, also draws much of his support from the lowest income brackets. If poor people are too dumb to fight for the U.S., should they be considered too dumb to select our president? Bosch tries to paint her pro-war friends as thoughtless and gullible. But how is it less intelligent to believe what the president says than to believe everything one's political science TA says, or worse, everything one reads in the Kerry campaign literature? How is it less thoughtful to decide that some wars are worthwhile than it is to assume that no war possibly can be? Youth is the season of arrogance, but to suggest that Bosch's two or three years in a college English program qualify one to mount intelligent critiques of American foreign policy is merely ludicrous.