Debits and credits of military service

As I watch budgeteers try to curtail or reduce benefits for our retired military, with hardly any recognition of the relative level of sacrifice made by those in uniform, compared to the civilian world, one thing always comes back to me. It's the stress on military families as a result of having them not be able to develop "roots" anywhere, as well as the years of separation they must endure while their service member is deployed. I remember long ago joking with my buddies, that the pluses and minuses of what we were then doing in the military, ought to be added up, credit and debit style, on some imaginary balance sheet. We often said, "one year in South Vietnam as a debit, would take one heck of a lot of years worth of credits to balance the sheet". Looking at our military men and women today with multiple tours in Afghanistan, Iraq or both, I have to wonder just how many years of credits they deserve in order to balance their sheet. Reducing their retirement or other benefits is certainly no way to add to the credit side of the ledger.