IT’S OUR TIME TO FIGHT

By Chris Spatola

March 8, 2012

One of the United States’ most prominent military veterans and the first President of our great nation once remarked, “The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive the veterans of earlier wars were treated and appreciated by their nation.”  If George Washington was correct in his assessment, the current unemployment rate of veterans returning from Afghanistan and Iraq threatens the future effectiveness of our all-volunteer force.  The national unemployment rate currently sits at an unacceptable eight percent.  The unemployment rate of returning veterans, however, is north of 29 percent – more than three times the national average.

One of the effects of this alarming unemployment figure has been a growing epidemic of homelessness among our nation’s veterans.  In New York City alone, twenty percent of the homeless population is comprised of veterans.  Two-hundred veterans sleep each night on the streets of New York City: a microcosm of a problem that plagues our entire country and one that will continue to grow more bleak as combat operations came to an end in Iraq in 2010 and are scheduled to conclude in Afghanistan no later than 2014.  Nearly two million men and women will have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, many of whom have battled IEDs, enemy fire, distance from loved ones, post-traumatic stress, all at our country’s bidding and without question.  Yet upon their return to the very country for which they laid down their lives these heroes can’t find a job, which for many means they can’t find a home.

There is no question that jobs on the whole, for many Americans, have been hard to find.  Even as the country slogs its way out of one of the greatest recessions in our great history, businesses are still largely reluctant to hire.  It would seem, nonetheless, a failure of what we call a democracy to not take extra care and attention in ensuring that all veterans, upon their return from war, have a job and a home in the country they defended.  

As a veteran, I had the privilege of recently attending the Robin Hood Veteran’s Summit, put on by New York’s incredibly philanthropic Robin Hood Foundation, which raised and discussed issues of joblessness, homelessness and mental health concerns among veterans.  Panels hosted by NBC’s Tom Brokaw, ABC’s Katie Couric, and NBC’s Brian Williams highlighted topics related to connecting veterans to jobs and exploring specific best practices and veteran-hiring initiatives by some of this country’s leading businesses.  Leaders like Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, Coca-cola CEO Steve Cahillane and Head of Strategic Outreach for Wal-Mart Joe Quinn discussed the advantages and benefits of hiring veterans.   “This country has already invested millions of dollars in [a soldier’s] training.  They show up on time, they know how to be team members, they’re disciplined, responsible – they come in with a wealth of life experience,” Quinn shared.  Many businesses fail to make the connection between the experience of military service and how that experience translates to their own bottom line.  

In a recent Washington Post op-ed piece, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Mike Mullen, positioned his case for hiring veterans in writing “An Army logistics manager who moved billions of dollars of equipment and tens of thousands of personnel into and out of war zones is perfectly positioned to help a U.S. business move goods and services for its customers.”  The values that make for winning organizations and businesses here in the U.S. are innate in a soldier.  It’s the primary reason we have the most powerful military in the world.  These soldiers arriving home from the battlefield do not want pity.  They simply want an opportunity to continue to make this country great. 

We are beginning to find that our population’s inherent detachment from our military, and subsequently the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan that have defined our history since 9/11, are exposing gross negligence on the part of our democracy in providing a safety net for our veteran’s returning home from combat.  Less than one percent of our population are veterans, which means nearly 99 percent of our population could simply ignore what is going on in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Contrast those figures with a United States embroiled in World War II in which nearly every citizen had multiple connections to the military – be it a family member, a friend, a neighbor.  We were in its truest essence a “nation at war.”  Certainly World War II and our current conflicts in the Middle East are different both in time and scale; nonetheless, what our general detachment and complacency have bred is a latent misunderstanding not only of the job qualifications and experience of our veterans, but also of the effect that ignoring these veterans is having on their ability to be hired.  Ultimately, this means an inability to provide for their families, all of whom felt the brunt of the war as much as the soldier.  As Admiral Mullen poignantly noted during the Robin Hood Summit, “This [unemployment and homelessness] problem is not just about the soldiers, it’s also about their families who have served right along with them.” 

Fighting a war and, more specifically, a country’s way of executing that war, evolves over time.  We once had draft.  We now have an all-volunteer military that allows us to protect our freedoms and interests abroad without affecting the way in which we live at home.  I surmise that most of us are thankful.  What we are finding, though, in the staggering unemployment and poverty statistics emerging in the aftermath of our Middle East wars is that our thanks is simply not enough.  As Tom Brokaw encouraged at the Veteran’s Summit, “9/11 reminded us that we live among heroes…we need to re-enlist as citizens.”  

When those two planes crashed into the Twin Towers, America needed defending.  We needed defending and counted on the men, women, and families of our military – now they count on us.  As this coming election season approaches, and with it divisive, polarizing rhetoric, let’s unite around the interests of our veterans.  Let’s drown out the voices that all too often fail to deliver, and turn up the volume on those who deliver our freedom every single day.  As Admiral Mullen eloquently wrote, “Every veteran deserves the chance to provide for his or her family…Every Veteran deserves the chance to live a life of dignity in the country whose freedom he or she helped secure.”  It’s our time to fight for our veterans’ futures.