Booze for the troops

Being a soldier can be some shitty, shitty work. You're deployed to a lot of hellholes like Fayetteville and Alabama, not to mention the foreign hellholes, there's no personal sense of style allowed in your dress, some ornery drill instructor is always asking you about reach-arounds and if you like being called "Private Snowball", and some shoddily performed KBR/Halliburton no-bid contract will result in your moderate to death inducing electrocution. Plus: that whole war thing.

But amongst the greatest indignities is this:

After a long day in a war zone, why not knock back a cold frosty one? If you’re in the U.S. military, not a chance: In Iraq and Afghanistan, deployed troops are under General Order No. 1, which forbids the consumption of alcohol, as well as gambling and possession of pornography.

Yeah, I'm sure soldiers abide by that one religiously.

But one man has made it his crusade to make sure our troops will soon be able to openly hold porn in one hand, a beer in another, and openly wish for the completion of a DARPA project that will genetically graft a third arm onto them which they can use to hold a winning poker hand.

But as Rick Maze of Army Times notes, one senator is questioning the draconian restrictions on alcohol consumption in theater. In a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing this week, Democratic Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia suggested that U.S. military commanders should consider loosening the ban to allow “alcohol for stress relief.”

It’s important not to take this out of context: Webb was responding to reports of increased use — and abuse of — of prescription drugs by deployed troops. As we’ve reported here, before troops are popping pills to fight everything from fatigue to depression.

Shit, that's kind of depressing and takes away from the whole comical "troops should be allowed to drink" angle I was taking. I really should read these things before I start posting them.

But we for one would like to support Senator Webb, himself a former Navy Secretary, and his quest to bring some measure of normalcy, relaxation, and stress relief to the men and women fighting overseas. So maybe with a little regulation and some guidelines, namely no drinking and shooting, maybe we could alleviate some stress and PTSD. We sure as hell aren't going to do it by ending the wars they're fighting in, so how about allowing them to partake in the consumption of a fine beverage like Pabst Blue Ribbon or Beast Ice? Drinking those two beers is considered a war crime in Germany, but whatever it takes to make it a little easier is cool with us.