Congressman: Let Troops Under 21 Drink

Congressmen Jack Kingston, R-GA, makes a good point. As he recently told Defense Secretary Robert Gates at a hearing, when you are 18:

“You can buy a house. You can go to jail. You can get married. You can go to Afghanistan and Iraq and kill somebody. But when you come back, you can’t have a drink in a bar. You can’t buy beer,” Kingston said. “It greatly disturbs me when I stand at the tarmac at Hunter Army Airfield seeing the 3rd Infantry [Division] deploy and … and then they come back and they cannot have a beer at the NCO club or wherever.”

Kingston introduced a bill last year to change the drinking age on military bases to 18. He plans to do so again this year. If we are going to entrust these soldiers with the ability to kill and operate high-tech weapons, certainly we can trust them with a beer? Gates for his part doesn’t agree. He believes that it will encourage further risky behavior on the part of our soldiers.