John McCain, whose fame is based on his personal story as a serviceman and a prisoner of war, is fighting with Jim Webb and Barack Obama over Webb's bill to extend the GI Bill to provide enhanced educational benefits to our veterans (and one does wonder if McCain is sublimating his well-known temper into snottiness, not a quality that will serve him particularly well, I should think).
There are reasons to be against the bill as it stands; Congress couldn't resist the temptation to throw more spending into it, and I am growing increasingly tired of these add-on bills. It seems to me that one bill should be for one thing, another for another, though I understand the incentive to provide political cover. But I find it distracting and tiresome.
McCain, however, is against it because he contends that giving full educational benefits after three years will hurt retention, that veterans will come to the end of their tours and get out because they now have a chance to go to college that they wouldn't have had before. The Webb side contends that it will help in initial recruitment, which makes good sense. So it is possible that, overall, the Webb bill will lead to less-experienced servicemen.
But the alternative is pretty unpleasant, McCain apparently wanting to use desperation as a re-up tool. Make the GIs stay in by not giving them anywhere to go, that seems to be his "plan."
More damning, even, is what McCain fails to understand: The greatest deterrent to retention is not educational benefits, but WAR! It's risking your life on foreign adventuring that causes you not to want to stay in, the possibility of maiming or death.
And that's what McCain is offering, a war to "victory" (whatever that means) in Iraq, a retention-killer if ever there was one. That he can't see that, or thinks we can't, is what gives me a frightening suspicion that he really will be Bush 3rd term.
There are reasons to be against the bill as it stands; Congress couldn't resist the temptation to throw more spending into it, and I am growing increasingly tired of these add-on bills. It seems to me that one bill should be for one thing, another for another, though I understand the incentive to provide political cover. But I find it distracting and tiresome.
McCain, however, is against it because he contends that giving full educational benefits after three years will hurt retention, that veterans will come to the end of their tours and get out because they now have a chance to go to college that they wouldn't have had before. The Webb side contends that it will help in initial recruitment, which makes good sense. So it is possible that, overall, the Webb bill will lead to less-experienced servicemen.
But the alternative is pretty unpleasant, McCain apparently wanting to use desperation as a re-up tool. Make the GIs stay in by not giving them anywhere to go, that seems to be his "plan."
More damning, even, is what McCain fails to understand: The greatest deterrent to retention is not educational benefits, but WAR! It's risking your life on foreign adventuring that causes you not to want to stay in, the possibility of maiming or death.
And that's what McCain is offering, a war to "victory" (whatever that means) in Iraq, a retention-killer if ever there was one. That he can't see that, or thinks we can't, is what gives me a frightening suspicion that he really will be Bush 3rd term.
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