In seven years of war, thousands of young and not-so-young Americans have risked their lives in service to their country.

This nation owes them more than a debt of gratitude. It owes them a college education – the surest path to a secure future in an increasingly competitive world.

Sen. Jim Webb, a Virginia Democrat and a Vietnam veteran, understands this obligation to our war-time veterans. His Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act would extend to the veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan the same educational opportunities that their grandfathers received after World War II.

Webb’s bill has solid bipartisan backing that includes the support of one of the Senate’s elder statesmen, Sen. John Warner, R-Va. A companion House bill has 289 co-sponsors, including Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., and Rep. David Davis, R-Tenn. When was the last time Boucher and Davis agreed on anything?

Unfathomably, President Bush and the Republican Party’s standard bearer in the fall, Sen. John McCain, stand in the way of this beneficial legislation.

McCain, it seems, has no trouble with an unending military commitment in Iraq and its attendant costs, but cannot see his way clear to support a more robust G.I. bill. He supports a
Republican-only alternative to Webb’s legislation that would provide a limited increase in funding under the present Montgomery G.I. Bill, but that would not cover the mounting costs of college for most students.

Meanwhile, the president – through a surrogate – has promised to veto Webb’s bill if it arrives on his desk. Bush objects to a procedural maneuver attaching the Webb bill to an emergency spending measure that provides $195 billion to pay for the war in Iraq through next spring.

But the cost of educating veterans is a cost of this protracted war. This isn’t an example of larding up a war-spending bill with unrelated pork.

A nation that sends its young men and women off to war in a distant land has an obligation to care for them when they return home. It must treat their battlefield wounds, both mental and physical, and provide them the education necessary to prosper. In all these areas, there is room for improvement.

Webb’s bill would ensure that returning soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines can pursue a higher education without the shackles of debt. Of importance, it would extend full benefits to National Guard members and reservists who serve in the war zone. This is the least that we owe those who volunteer to serve their country at a time of war.

Reward their service and sacrifice. Pass the new G.I. bill.