McCain Opposes New GI Bill. Feels Troops Should Be Trapped in the Military

Excerpt Reuters report at Yahoo News "McCain and Obama battle over military service ";

McCain said he opposed the legislation because he wanted to make sure the Defense Department retains some people for a career in the military.

... 

The legislation that sparked the exchange was sponsored by Virginia Democratic Sen. James Webb and Nebraska Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel, both military veterans. McCain and the Bush administration said it was so generous it could encourage veterans to leave the military after one term to take advantage of the increased college benefits.

My older sister's family was entrapped by the military.  Her boyfriend was drafted right after he graduated from college in the Vietnam era.  They married before he left the states, and they were a family of three before his his time was up.  Unfortunately,  he didn't have the kind of degree that brought an automatic job, and the Nixon years were very bad for decent start a family type jobs anyway.  If he hadn't been drafted he could have started out right after college looking for a job in the right type of field to take advantage of his education and work up to a decent wage.  But he wasn't given that chance.

So he re-upped though he opposed the war.  (They promised to send him to Germany and kept that promise, but they did not keep their promise to train him in the pharmacy tech position he had chosen, or offer him any outside job skills.  In fact, he spent most of his time on menial jobs and playing football waiting for a chance for the training to open up.  He was also irregularly predeployed for any of the many disturbances that popped up.  And, yes, that was what he was expected to do, but after 4 more years the military had completely failed to give him the training they had offered him for reenlisting, again, and they were by that time a family of four.  So my sisters family did whatever they had to, in order to get out of the military, which was doing what it could to keep them from being able to live without staying in. 

Luckily the seventies were an easier time for young families, and our parents were able to help them out with a place to live.  Still they took a series of minimum wage or little better jobs to keep the kids from waking up one morning to learn that their daddy had been killed in a far away land.   Many families these days would find the jump insurmountable without help and a college education.

 That's what being trapped in the military means.  

And that's what John McCain wants.  He wants anyone who starts in the military to feel trapped in the military especially if they start a family during their enlistment.  That way the military will have the bodies available, to feed the neocons' war machine.  

And you can rest assured that is how McCain's position will steadfastly remain, unless, of course he finds the position to be politically unpopular.  Then he'll switch in a heartbeat.   Just like a hundred years in Iraq suddenly turned into "combat troops out in four" if he's president.  No timetable to McCain's timetable.

tags: john mccain  barack  obama  troops  gi bill  

links: digg this    del.icio.us    technorati    reddit