A Question I Don’t Really Want an Answer to

So, the Marines are taking the very least Mariney Marines they’ve got and forcing them back into active duty.  Once they run out of these folks, I hear they will be calling up people even more tangentially related to the Marine Corps–such as the ancient mariner Coleridge wrote about.   Sadly for the Marines, the Navy has already claimed Popeye.

Here is my question.  How much are our armed forces supposed to bear?  How many times are they supposed to go back into harm’s way before it is enough?

I remain opposed to this war and I don’t want the Butcher fighting in it.

But war is a shitty thing and people see and do things that are hard to endure and that fuck them up for the rest of their lives.  In the past, we spread this burden around.  Now that we have our all-volunteer armed forces, the burden is repeatedly borne by a small group.

I don’t like the idea of the military pointing at folks who are only tangentially still linked to the military and saying, "Hey now, come on back and report for duty" but I think it’s important to give other folks an opportunity to come home.

I just wonder at what point do we sit down and say–if we really are committed to being in Iraq, we need to provide the troops over there with some real relief?  And where are the folks to fill their spots going to come from?