Army vets give arm & leg - but can't get drink

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/487055p-409992c.html

The retired New York City Firefighter Flip Mullen tells of an encounter with a 19-year-old soldier named Keith whose only complaint had nothing to do with having lost a leg in Iraq.

"He said, 'I can't get a drink,'" Mullen recalls.

Keith meant he was considered old enough to go to war but too young to go into a bar or a nightclub. He is among some 5,000 G.I.s who were wounded in Iraq when they were not yet 21. Exactly 550 have been killed before they were of an age to have a legal beer.

<snip>

An alternative would be to institute the same age limit in the military that we have in the NYPD, where a recruit must be at least 21 at the time of appointment. A sign reading "YOU MUST BE 21" could just as easily go up on the wall of a military recruiting station as on the wall of a gin mill.

The problem is, the military presently needs every pair of boots it can muster for an increasingly unpopular war. The need will become all the more pressing if the predictions concerning President Bush's revamped strategy are correct. The 130,000 troops already in Iraq include a good 25,000 who are too young to drink legally or, for that matter, become cops.

Even with the military taking them as young as 17, the recruiting station at Times Square had but a single prospect yesterday afternoon, and he was sitting by the Air Force cubicle. The Marine Corps recruiter was on the phone with his mother. The two Army recruiters looked about as busy as overcoat salesmen this season. They seemed happy to answer a visitor's inquiries regarding his 18-year-old daughter.

[Buzz Clik]

1. Our vets are the greatest, but there is no tie between service and alcohol.

He can't run for president or Congress, and I'm sure we could list other things a 19-year-old cannot do.

He can wait a couple of years. Let's bring them all home and buy them their "first drink" when they come of age.

[RamboLiberal]

2. I don't agree - if you're old enough to die or be horribly

maimed then you damn well ought to be able to have a beer, or whatever else you want in alcohol.

Yeah like the Bush twins didn't drink before they were 21!

If you served in Iraq or Afghanistan then you damn well grew up in a hurry!

[Buzz Clik]

5. How are the two related at all?

The legal age for alcohol consumption in my state used to be 18 for beer and 21 for harder stuff. In Michigan, it was 18 or 19 for everything. Kids from Notre Dame used to drive into Michigan to get their liquor and often died on the road going home (DWI, of course). Then, our highway funds became tied to 21 as the minimum for all alcohol in all states. Suddenly, we had a uniform drinking age across the country. So ... what does this have to do with Iraq, Afghanistan, or any other form of military service? Making the drinking age 21 is fine with me because it keeps kids off the roads after even one beer to avoid being horribly hassled by the cops for underage drinking. I have no doubt that it makes us all safer.

Are veterans of the military safer drivers after drinking (even under the legal blood alcohol limit) because their have risked their lives in service to the country? Of course not. Am I grateful to them? Yes, but not to the point of making alcohol more available to them.

I really don't see the connection.

What else should we give young vets? Legalize their use of marijuana? Give them a pass for running for Congress? Shall we make it legal for non-US born citizens to run for president if they served in combat?

We can show our gratitude in thousands of ways that make sense. But why is this a focus?

[RamboLiberal]

13. If kids are too stupid to drink under 21 then they are too stupid

to enlist under 21. Let's make the age to enlist 21!

Otherwise I'd say let them drink on base. Do you think in the Nam era the kids under 21 in the military weren't drinking in country?

[Buzz Clik]

14. You're really missing the point of my argument.

My point is very different than you're suggesting: There is no link between drinking age and enlistment age.

We could eliminate the drinking age altogether -- or eliminate drinking altogether. We'd still value our young military personnel. And, military personnel should not get a free pass around minimum drinking age.

So, if you want to decrease the drinking age or eliminate it altogether, then go for it. I don't like it, but that's a different argument.

[RaleighNCDUer]

3. I remember when drinking age was 18.

And, as an overseas brat, I drank legally as from the day of my first drink - in Spain, where if you could pay for wine they'd give you wine, then in England where the age was 16 for beer and wine, 18 for liquor.

I personally think that if you have a problem with kids drinking and driving, make them wait till 18 to get a license. The 19 yr old with 4 years driving behind him and no legal drinking is liklier to misjudge his capabilities than a 19 yr old with 4 years drinking and one year driving behind him.

[flamin lib]

4. The military desperately needs young people. The younger the

better. As people mature they begin to think for themselves and that's a bad thing if you want blind allegiance to authority. I remember Basic training. They took all us old guys, 20 & up, and put is in one platoon. I remember graduation day so well. Three platoons of gung ho recruits marching briskly and one sort of moseying across the field.

[lebkuchen]

6. 16 y.o. is all it takes to drink beer or wine in Germany

Europe was a haven for the Bush twins during their formative years.

[Buzz Clik]

8. Shrub learned his alcoholic ways in the US of A

I wouldn't care if we abandoned all drinking age limits. But to tie them to military service makes no sense.

[lebkuchen]

10. The military has nothing to do w/the law in Germany

at least that I'm aware of. The autobahn speeds of "as fast as you want" should play a role but don't.

[bananas]

7. The drinking and voting age were lowered to 18 during the Vietnam war

same reason - if someone is old enough to fight for the country, they're old enough to drink and vote.

[Buzz Clik]

9. Voting age was lowered, but the drinking age was not budged.

Voting age is a Federal mandate, but drinking age limits are at the discretion of the states. The Feds twisted the states arms by linking drinking age to highway funds, but it is not a Federal law.

[bananas]

11. Many states lowered the drinking age during Vietnam.

They raised it back under Reagan when he tied it to highway funds.

[Buzz Clik]

12. Okay -- I understand. And agree. And further:

From the http://www.dailylush.com/archives/concerning_the_drinking_age.html">Daily Lush

AS OF THURSDAY, August 18, an estimated 1,864 US soldiers have died in the Iraq War. The youngest American soldier killed in Iraq was 18 years old, three years shy of the legal drinking age in the country in whose service he died.

We don't mention this fact lightly. We bring it up because the war in Iraq has caused the greatest number of American casualties since the Vietnam War, and we mention it because the Vietnam War produced one of the largest changes in public policy toward drinking in the late 20th century. Between 1970 and 1975, 30 states lowered their minimum drinking age, either to 18 or 19. This was in direct response to the Vietnam War. The argument, put simply, was that it was hypocritical to insist that a citizen is old enough to be drafted and die in a war at age 18, but still too young to purchase and consume alcoholic beverages. This policy was not reversed until 1984, when President Ronald Reagan, under pressure from groups such as Mothers Against Drink Driving (MADD), pushed through legislation that would deny Federal-aid highway funds to states that refused to raise their minimum drinking age to 21.

Many states resisted. South Dakota, as an example, waged a legal challenge. They claimed that this legislation was in violation of the 21st amendment, which repealed Prohibition by allowing states to pass their own legislation regarding alcohol. (President Reagan had initially shared these concerns -- as a Republican, he worried that the legislation infringed on states rights; Reagan, under pressure from groups such as MADD, eventually reversed his position.) The Supreme Court rejected South Dakota's challenge. By then, South Dakota was one of the last states to accept a national minimum drinking age; badly in need of the highway funding, it changed its drinking age to 21.

MADD argued that the increased drinking age was necessary to combat a growing problem of drunk driving, particularly among young people in this country. We at Daily Lush will not take issue with their arguments, although we often find ourselves wishing that the circumstances regarding America's youth were reversed -- that is, we are far more comfortable with 18- to 21-year-olds drinking than driving.

The last paragraph sums it up for me -- I'm more comfortable with kids drinking than driving. Doing both is a nightmare.

[mariema]

15. I never did understand that.

We trust them with lethal weapons but we don't trust them with a beer?