War and Peace

You probably know that one has to serve on active duty in the American military for twenty years in order to retire with a pension.

But do you know the last year that you could have joined the armed forces and had a career wholly in peacetime?

1921.

Using VA eligibility dates, there was less than four years between World War II and the Korean War, less than nine years between the Korean War and the Vietnam War and then fifteen years before the Gulf War.

Going by the VA, the Gulf War has been going on for the last twenty-four years. Which means that 1990 was the first year that one could have joined up and then spent one's entire career during a time of war.

At the current pace, the Gulf War period won't end anytime soon. Which means that soon, it will have gone on longer than it did for us to mobilize, beat Germany once, demobilize, reduce the Army to almost a token force, then rearm, mobilize again and beat the Germans a second time.

Which, when put that way, sounds somewhere between pathetic and depressing.