U.S. Military (Ret.): Troops are special breed and deserve their benefits - Getting out, military health issues - Navy Times

U.S. Military (Ret.): Troops are special breed and deserve their benefits

My friend Joe Barnes, national executive director of the Fleet Reserve Association, took great exception — justified, in my mind — to a recent Washington Post opinion column that spoke of the supposed “unaffordability of the all-volunteer military.”

It’s a debate that will only continue to heat up in the next few years as military personnel costs continue to rise.

I sincerely doubt that many, if any, retirees want to see personnel costs break the military. After all, we devoted a good chunk of our lives to that institution.

Yet, I think a lot of retirees bristle when they hear that personnel programs — which encompass retirement benefits — are just too darn expensive for the nation to afford, particularly when they’re compared to civilian benefits.

As Barnes noted, that line of thinking often does not fully take into account the stress and demands that have been placed, and continue to be placed, on our troops every day.

And drawing conclusions about military compensation and retirement through comparisons to the private sector ignores the level of risk and responsibility shouldered by the 1 percent of our population who serve.

The plain truth is that if we want the best, most-highly trained, most capable, most dedicated military in recorded history, we have to be collectively willing to pay the monetary price — not only because it benefits our own national security, but because the people wearing the uniform are willing to pay an even higher price if called upon.

As Joe wrote in his Post rebuttal: “It’s a matter of priorities and whether lawmakers find it unaffordable to defend our nation.”

As an avid supporter of ensuring our military remains strong, I wanted to share this with my readers. Reasonable people can discuss reasonable defense budget tradeoffs, and there are always ways to lower costs through efficiency and innovation.

All I ask of lawmakers as they work through the current budget mess is to keep in mind the havoc of the 1990s, when the drive to slash the force after the end of the Cold War led to wrenching problems with recruiting and retention that took two wars and most of the next decade to fix.

Qualifying for lifetime government retirement benefits as early as age 38 sounds incredibly generous to most civilians who don’t know much about what it means to serve.

But the very reason military retirement benefits are so generous is that to earn them, you have to earn them — through at least 20 years of the kind of adversity, stress, sacrifice and challenges that the vast majority of civilians will never know.

Retired Command Master Chief Alex Keenan served 28 years in the Coast Guard. Email him at retired@militarytimes.com.