The restrictions placed on reporters and photographers in war zones is very troubling. But there’s other troublesome things I’ve had to consider that have changed my mind on certain aspects of military service.

I had an interesting conversation with a Marine veteran last week. He served just as the Vietnam War was getting underway. And he remains completely opposed to the GI Bill Senator Webb just got past the Senate. I was surprised.

He spoke of the way it was back then, with meager pay (less than minimum wage) for draftees. If you wanted the educational and other benefits of the GI Bill, you had to stick around for a few years.

Now with the all-volunteer army, there’s massive signing and re-up bonuses, very good pay and a raft of benefits. I reminded him that he uses the VA regularly for his healthcare and there he made a distinction. He felt the VA’s services were essential due to the damaging effects of war. And he said they could and should do much better in that regard.

What he was objecting to was our volunteer army has become a mercenary force, so well paid that it exceeds what most non-college educated enlistees could earn in the private sector. As a result, he said “It makes it too lucrative to go to war and kill people with the excuse that we’re just following orders.”

In short, it enables incompetents and ideologues such as Bush (on both counts) to prosecute phony, disastrous wars that serve very narrow interests instead of the country’s real security needs.

I think he has a point there. As well, in recent years, I’ve seen people game the system, extracting benefits and gaining early outs. And though I’m the son of a 28 year military veteran, I have to agree that too many benefits have become too front-loaded.

It’s not easy re-evaluating something like that, because I’ve always supported expanded compensation for GIs. But the Marine was right: why advance a system that practically invites war for all the wrong reasons? It’s not the GIs that I’m unwilling to support, it’s the corrupt people wielding the US military like a blunt instrument for illegal purposes.

Now I know John McCain opposed the bill for entirely different reasons, so I hate sharing the same voting position. But sometimes, that’s just the way things work out. Logic sometimes creates strange bedfellows.

So I give thanks for our veterans and our active duty troops, but I oppose the overexpanded GI Bill as it’s currently written. I think the VA and the military healthcare system needs major work to bring them up to a level that meets our current needs. When our country’s threatened or under attack, the American people have entered the military without hesitation, without consideration about the compensation levels. In such events, those who serve in combat zones do deserve extra benefits. And if they die or are permanently disabled, I’d be cool with passing on the educational benefits to their dependents. I just don’t want to make the whole system so lucrative that a President can so easily commit the wrongs that Bush has. I also want the media able to report as freely as they used to do, without the Pentagon micromanaging the news.

And for the sake of those now serving in Iraq, I say ‘Bring them home’. I also dedicate this song to them:

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