We all know how strapped for manpower the military is at the moment. I read the other day that of the Army’s 10 active-duty divisions, nine are either in Iraq and Afghanistan or on their way there. There are rumblings of a draft, and we’re hearing about inactive reservists and past military types being called back into service. In some ways, it’s looking like everyone is going to be involved in the war effort at one point or another.
So maybe it’s time to revive an old idea: The Veterans of Future Wars.
Times were tough during the Great Depression. To ease the economic pain a little, veterans of World War One lobbied Congress to pay them their war bonuses ten years early. Congress readily acquiesced and passed the Harrison Bonus Bill in January 1936.
This pre-payment was a source of inspiration for Lewis Gorin, a senior at Princeton University. It seemed logical to him that if present-day veterans could get their war bonuses early, why shouldn’t future veterans also receive their money up-front
2 thoughts on “veterans of future wars”
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bookslut reminded me how much I miss reading you. Won’t you please consider an RSS feed? (I know that sounds like “I can’t be bothered to come to your site, so won’t you please do a lot of extra work to accomodate me” but really, I do miss reading you, and nobody without an RSS feed is making it to my eyeballs lately!)
Oh, I could just hug you, anonymous commenter! Actually, I’ve had an RSS feed for years. I’ve just never bothered to link to it anywhere. try:
http://www.crabwalk.com/index.rdf (rss 1.0) or
http://www.crabwalk.com/index.xml (rss 0.91)
No Atom feed yet — I’ll try to get around to that at some point.