A couple of people described glancingly in news stories as "top Army and Marine Corps generals" just told the Senate every military job will be open to women in the next few years. The White House, I guess, will still be tenanted by people who ran screaming from military service. This proves once again that the "new economy" gives poor people plenty of chances to better themselves and learn to kill people.

Women can join the military now, of course, and when they are through, they can return honorably to whatever minimum wage job they were trying to avoid in the first place. Yep. Your kids go to war. Their kids go to college.

Joining the military is a great way to get money for college. This is particularly true if your Desert Storm veteran dad came back from the war so crazy he couldn't hold a job, so you reach 18 without enough money to buy gum. Here's the gun! Off you go and pray you don't come back like Daddy!

It's an even better deal if you're a kid with two addicted parents and you're in the foster care system. Once you hit 18, you have to say goodbye to your foster parents. It's called "aging out of the system," and it is a great encourager of armed patriotism.

In the entire history of war, no nation has ever found a faster way to raise an army than grabbing the poor off the street. They're thankful for the food, their parents don't raise much fuss and, if they don't come back, who's gonna miss another motel maid or dishwasher? It's not like you're decimating the next crop of investment bankers.

I have had my chain steakhouse meal served to me by a part-time, no-benefits waiter with an open food-stamp account who only months before had been earning the "Thank you for your service," we throw at vets like a drunk heaving a quarter tip at a bartender. What a lucky American I am to have so many cheap meals served to me by so many cheap "heroes" that you hardly have to pay at all. You took Mosul, now you're takin' my order.

And there are so many places to fight. Iran. Iraq. Lebanon. Syria. Ferguson, Missouri. They're going to need men. And women. Maybe some of those child soldiers they have in Africa. I know women who would sell their 10 year old to the army for $1,000. Who are we kidding? You can get a kid for a lot less than a grand. Try the heroin addict parents first. A lot of them have been in the military, so they know it's not a bad life. Not as bad as the projects, anyway.

I believe people who serve in the military should come back to a country where it is not just theoretically "possible" to rise from poverty. I think it should be likely you'll rise from poverty. It's what happened to my old man when he got back from World War II, and he wasn't even a little bit grateful. He just thought that's how America worked.

To find out more about Marc Munroe Dion and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com. Dion's latest book, "Marc Dion Vol. I" is a collection of his best 2014 columns and is available for Nook and Kindle.

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