John McCain opposes a bill to improve educational benefits for veterans because "Enhanced educational opportunities could negatively affect retention rates." Mark Kleiman snarks that "McCain figures that if they had any real drive and ambition they'd just marry heiresses, the way he did."
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Supporting the Troops
21 Apr 2008 08:26 am
Comments (17)
So, the old fart bought off on the idea that keeping current enlistees in will more than balance out the potential enlistees the DoD misses out on with the current college scholarship program.
What a clueless asshole.
I just went to the article linked. It's not a quote from McCain. In fact, the quoted sentence section is preceded by "Disappointingly, Sen. John McCain, presumptive Republican candidate for president, so far declines to back the measure. He seems to be responding to concerns of the military brass that..."
Now, that may be reality, and maybe that is what McCain is effectively saying. But it shouldn't be implied that he has literally made such a comment if it is instead an editorial opinion.
Raviya Ismail, McClatchy Newspapers
BAGHDAD-
Rice used her visit to praise Maliki's choice to take on the militia. Fighting Sadr, who has declared that resistance against U.S. forces is legitimate, is an "internal Iraqi matter," she said.
"But clearly, the prime minister has laid down some ground rules which any functioning democratic state would insist upon, having to do with, you know, arms belonging to the state, not to -- not in private hands," she said. "The current circumstances come out of what I think is a very important and indeed appropriate action that the Iraqi government has taken."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The above excerpt is from an account of Rice's Baghdad visit and a statement she made regarding private possession of weapons. MSNBC, CNN, AP and many others carried this account this morning. Now when you go to articles concerning her visit this quote regarding weapons in private hands has gone missing. FOX notably never carried the quote. Wayne LaPierre must've been working overtime on the phones this morning. Interesting she says disarming the public and keeping arms in the hands of a "functioning democratic state" is a necessary measure in the face of internal dissent. I wonder what the media reaction would've been had Madeleine Albright said such a thing during Clinton's tenure?
What Cid said. I read MY's post and thought "God Almighty, even McCain wouldn't say something so obviously useful to a potential opponent." So I went to the article, and sure enough, it's not a quote, but an assumptive declaration by the writer based on presumed opinions of military brass. You might consider an update.
El Cid and Sam Hutcheson,
In fact, McCain has pretty explicitly cited the retention concern as a reason for not supporting the current bill.
http://www.dailypress.com/news/local/dp-local_mccainwebbbill_0416apr16,0,3534674.story
I'm in the military right now. The military is structured for high retention rates - as any well-run organization should be. It's gamed a bit, of course. Enlistment and re-enlistment contracts are conveniently just about the length of time between significant promotions, assignments to new locations are dangled like carrots in order to encourage re-enlistments, etc.
Still, though, something doesn't sit right with me about this sort of reasoning by McCain. Obviously I have my own interests at stake here - more benefits - but it seems as if you could find a lot more reasons to argue against the new GI Bill than the one he provided by him. Oh, and the obvious reasoning to support it:
It will help with recruiting, and bring in more people and better-qualified people! This is a good thing. The current GI Bill is why so many people walk into recruitment offices in the first place.
The WaPo article doesn't quote McCain saying that. I had previously heard this idea from another source - Rachel Maddow, I think, so I didn't bother to check it out.
From the Daily Press article:
...[McCain] was working on alternative legislation aimed at ensuring that troops do not leave the military earlier than planned to go to college.
Earlier than planned? By who?! It's a contract for two or four or six years. That's how long the freakin' plan is. I don't understand this; no one is leaving the military early, without permission, to go to college. No one could! You'd have a huge paper trail if you tried to ditch your active duty commitment in order to cash in on your benefits. They would find you in a heartbeat. The people that are ditching active duty - quite few - aren't doing it because they want to hurry up and go to college. This isn't even a legitimate concern.
socctty,
I assume that the issue isn't about leaving without permission, but rather about decisions to reenlist.
Which means that "bringing in better qualified people" could be a slightly mixed blessing, from the military's standpoint. Better qualified people will have more options available when they face that decision.
N: I'll see if sometime I can search and see if McCain is quoted directly to that effect, but even that linked Daily Press article does not directly quote John McCain saying anything like this.
N - Re: re-enlistment. The article phrased the matter as if there's a bunch of people giving the military the short end of the stick over this with it's use of the "earlier than planned" bit. That's not the case - it's a contract, and everyone involved knows how long it lasts (unless, of course, you get stop-lossed).
I guess I was taking issue with something the writer said (and may have misrepresented), but it certainly seems plausible to me. Of course the idea is to retain people. Recruiting is a pain the ass.
Anyway, my experience is that most people re-enlist not because their prospects outside of the military are so bleak, but rather because it's a pretty darn good deal to stay in. If you've got 6 years in, you're more than a quarter of the way towards a retirement check for the rest of your life. Retirement at 38 is a pretty good deal. You have a pretty clear career path, plenty of opportunity to progress up the ladder, health care, free time to go to college during peace time, etc. Lots of times it's just not really worth the drastic change back to civilian life once you've become accustomed to military life.
The bigger problem with retainability is in the Marine Corps and the Army, and that's primarily due to how the war has been managed, and not because college is such a great draw. I'd bet that plenty of the guys and gals that have decided to get out probably would have stayed in if they felt that they were being used in a more responsible manner.
Matt, why are you posting "snarky" comments like that? It's a stupid comment, however amusing, and it shouldn't be repeated. Can we have a real discussion about the Vet Education Bill?
I'm with El Cid and Sam Hutcheson here. Although I yield to no-one (well, to few) in my contempt for McCain, the use of the quotation marks in the blog post made me think that McCain had been so intemperate as to be caught using those words, when in fact they appear to be interpretation by an editorialist.
To be sure, the article to which N links suggests that either this interpretation of McCain's position is widespread among the media or that McCain might have actually said something of the sort, but even that article doesn't actually quote McCain to such an effect.
I really think this post ought to be updated to make it clear that the incendiary statement of motive is an imputation rather than an actual McCain declaration. This sort of attribution error could easily distract from the substantive issue that McCain does oppose increased benefits for our veterans.
Well, McCain explains his opposition to the legislation by saying that he wants to "make sure that we have incentives for people to remain in the military" - I'm not sure what else that could refer to.
N, I think you have a valid point, but the interpretation you and the Post editorial make is not, from the quote in its slightly fuller context, completely inescapable; it is one that should be defended and explained, and certainly the editorial's language should not be attributed to McCain in Yglesias's post.
As I read the quote your linked story uses (which I'll blockquote below to save people clicking about), it appears that McCain's problem could be that this bill increases incentives to leave the military without sufficiently increasing incentives to join or to stay - a position that is in theory distinguishable from what the Post's editorial suggests, a desire to punish those who wish to leave.
The whole McCain quote as given:
"We are working on proposals of our own," McCain said on his campaign plane, according to ABC News. "I'm a consistent supporter of educational benefits for the men and women of the military. I want to make sure that we have incentives for people to remain in the military, as well as for people to join the military."
Warren, if McCain thinks that we need to create more positive incentives to remain in the military, then he should be sponsoring or supporting separate legislation that would provide those positive incentives in ADDITION to the education benefits provided in Webb's bill. That is no justification for opposing the assistance that Webb proposes.
Obviously, McCain is not going to come out and say something like "We need to deprive our troops of educational and career opportunities so that they'll feel pressured to reenlist and go back to Iraq," but in the context of a justification for opposing education benefits, I don't see any other interpretation of his statement that makes much sense.
Anyway, I imagine that McCain will be backing off from this position in fairly short order, so it's probably a moot point.
Why not just forbid people to leave the military? Oh wait . . .
Comments closed May 05, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
Maybe McCain should propose impressing drifters into the military. That'll clear up the whole "homeless" thing, too.
Posted by Jeffrey Davis | April 21, 2008 9:07 AM