I am, by no reasonable metric, a fan of the armed forces. I don’t personally know anyone who has greatly benefited from being involved, nor can I come up with a particularly poignant reason why our current military has to be as expanded as it is. I fail to see why we need to dump so much money into it, and I refuse to accept the rationale of “if we fight them there we won’t have to fight them here.”

That said, I find the strife over the so-called ’21st Century GI Bill,’ the bill that Sen. Webb of Virginia is championing, to be disheartening at the very best. They want to create vast, useful benefits for men and women involved in the military after 2 years. Objections all center around creating benefits too quickly. Said a spokesman from the Pentagon, ” We have no issue with the fact that Senator Webb wishes to provide a more generous education benefit to troops. But we are certainly concerned that this would be eligible to them after only two years of service.”

Only. Two. Years.

It seems that the military has a plan for retaining troops: Make civilian life simply too difficult. Is it any wonder that the number of veterans who have committed suicide after returning from Iraq and Afghanistan may well exceed the number of deaths in combat?