While We’re At It

The competition was intense, but the best opinion essay in the NYT this week goes to Bob Herbert:

Simply stated, we cannot continue sending service members into combat for three tours, four tours, five tours and more without paying a horrendous price in terms of the psychological well-being of the troops and their families, and the overall readiness of the armed forces to protect the nation.

So while this singular tragedy at the largest army base in the world draws a great amount of attention, not all of it appropriate, the underlying conditions that created it just keep rolling along. Six Hundred Eighty Billion. What does obscene mean?

Plus, Herbert’s last word is always our first.