T110's Third Summer of Love and Tolerance

The_Chieftain:   The military sets its own rules, and there's a little flexibility in them.   For example, there's a little clause in the rules which states that if the base is within 50 miles of a jurisdiction with a lower than 21 drinking age, then the base drinking age could be that. Fort Bliss was the last hold-out on that one: Being about a ten minute drive from the Mexican town of Juarez, drinking age 18, the military wanted to reduce the incentive for troops to cross over the border where they could get into trouble in Mexico.   However, a large number of accidents involving under-21s finally caused the base commander to raise the drinking limit to 21 eight years ago. He solved the Juarez problem by simply prohibiting the soldiers from crossing the border. There has been no sign of a let-up from the Army's side of the house. Unfortunately, the military's standard response to anything which could maybe, possibly, remotely be dangerous, is to ban it. They'd ban war deployments to foreign countries if they could. I became of the opinion that my most important job in Iraq was to not get killed. If so, I observed, would it not have made sense for us to not get killed at home, instead of trying to not get killed in Iraq?   However, the Marines have recently relaxed their restriction. In addition to the drinking age in foreign bases being equal to that of the host nation (or 18 minimum), the Commandant also permitted certain domestic exemptions at the local commander's discretion, allowing 18-year-olds to drink on specific occasions, such as the Marine Corps Birthday Dinner, or a 'welcome back from deployment' party.