John McCain's excuse for not supporting a new GI Bill for military veterans reveals his worst instinct—a readiness to hurl the United States into more wars to prove Americans are no pushovers. Action of arms, not talk, is McCain's credo.
Although McCain is full of himself when talking of supporting the troops, he defied public opinion and overwhelming congressional support for the new GI Bill by complaining it would encourage troops to leave the service prematurely, and thus endanger the Pentagon's ability to maintain force levels. This, too, is President Bush's reasoning for opposing the bill.
McCain pegged his argument to a statistic—that the GI Bill offering college tuition and other benefits would encourage 16 percent of the armed forces to leave the service. But McCain didn't mention that the same study also found the 16 percent dropout would be offset by a 16 percent enlistment rate of new recruits joining up to qualify for the GI Bill.
Blaming the GI Bill—which, incidentally, was co-authored by Democratic U.S. Sen. James Webb, a decorated Vietnam War combat veteran—for Pentagon failures in keeping troops is thoroughly dishonest.
Right now, the armed forces offer staggeringly generous incentives--up to $40,000 cash for enlisting, up to $90,000 just to reenlist. Still a manpower shortage continues.
No, the force level problem rests elsewhere—the disastrous Iraq war's mismanagement by President Bush and Vice President Cheney and, by extension, by John McCain, an ardent backer of the debacle.
Potential recruits are well aware of the nightmares of troops being deployed two, three, four and even five times to Iraq and Afghanistan at painful costs to their home life and, in the case of National Guard members, their civilian careers. They also are capable of weighing the actuarial possibilities of getting out of Iraq alive.
McCain adds to misgivings about military service with swaggering, saber-rattling speeches such as the one he gave in Polk City, Fla., while pacing back and forth on a stage, his intensity and obsession building with each word.
"There's going to be other wars," he said. "There's going to be other wars. We will never surrender but there will be other wars."
Continuing as he paced, "We're gonna have a lot of (traumas) to treat. We're gonna have a lot of combat wounds that have to do with these terrible explosive IEDs that inflict such severe wounds."
Enlistments are bound to surge when the Bush presidency is over, when troops return from Iraq, and John McCain keeps his mouth shut.
