“Also, the war’s not costing that much relative to the federal government” — better be careful there. We don’t know the full cost yet. A responsible government should shoulder the cost of taking care of the tens of thousands of soldiers who are seriously maimed in the war. I don’t know how many there are, but the lifetime cost per person should easily be in the millions if you also consider that so many of them have severe psychological trauma on top of physical injuries.

In addition, if you consider that the military is stretched thin (you may not, but I do), then the responsible attitude is to spend extra to “catch up” — just like a business that has been seriously underinvesting needs to catch up in order to maintain sustainability.

If you add everything up, the cost will be much higher than the headline cost.

The rest of your arguments — the only thing that I can say is that we’re definitely follow very different logic here. But I do agree that the likes of Jenna Bush and Paris Hilton will make really bad soliders.