Veterans Day - Why and How: QMN068
Veterans have a lot to bring to civilian life regarding leadership & management - they’ve spent years cultivating an ethos of accountability and can impart that ethos by teaching us or by joining us.
(This week’s report is a 7 minute read)
BLUF: “Thank You” is only part of it: veterans have a lot to bring to civilian life regarding leadership and management - they’ve spent years cultivating an ethos of accountability and can impart that ethos either by teaching us or by joining us. But their work at reintegration can tell us a lot about how we can improve the American experience. You can both show gratitude and reap the benefits of knowing one by being involved with a number of nonprofits across the US or right around the corner from your home.
Brady here. 100 years after the first Armistice Day (recognized as Veterans Day in the US since 1954), it’s a good time to examine why we should honor veterans, and the best way to do so. It’s important to first define what the holiday is, and is not. On Veterans Day we honor all those who have served the United States at any point - compared to Memorial Day, when we remember our war dead, and on Armed Forces Day, when we honor our servicemembers currently serving. Of those who have served, I’ll be focused here on the Post-9/11, or Global War on Terror (GWOT) veteran, who makes up a relatively small percentage of the population - and here are some relevant numbers:
There are nearly 20 million veterans in the US today, and of those only 4 million are Post-9/11 veterans.
Today nearly 70 percent of Post-9/11 veterans are between the ages of 25-44,and nearly 17 percent of this group are women.
There were 96 veterans in the 116th US Congress - 48 of which classify as Post-9/11 veterans.
You might have seen on social media that 22 Iraq or Afghanistan veterans commit suicide each day, but this number and narrative, while well-intentioned, are wrong. The number is closer to 1 per day.
And this graph comparing national to veteran suicide rates over the past 14 years might surprise you.
The commander of 1st Special Forces Group (Airborne), Col. Owen Ray, speaks to a crowd about the honor, commitment and courage required to serve in the armed forces during a Veterans Day ceremony at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Nov. 7, 2019. Image Source: DVIDS
So…we’ve got a day for our armed forces, and one for all those who died in our nation’s service, so why honor veterans at all? The first and most apparent reason is to show gratitude for their sacrifices - the idea is that they’ve endured a difficult time or put their safety at risk to help ensure the welfare of the nation, and that we should be grateful for it. But I think there’s something missed in this reasoning. Though military context and culture is at this point very different from civilian culture, veterans have a lot to bring to civilian life regarding leadership and management - they’ve spent years cultivating an ethos of accountability and can impart that ethos either by teaching us or by joining us. And I think there’s a truth about the disconnectedness of American life today that Post 9/11 veterans can explain better than anyone else right now.
No book explains this truth better than Tribe by Sebastian Junger. Today, combat veterans return home missing the incredibly powerful bonds of the life they had in combat. They become very close to the people they served with, having been ready to die for each other at any moment. Modern civilian life has few of those consolations and can leave those who’ve experienced combat feeling empty when it’s all over and they’re living as civilians. Junger supposes that the loss of that closeness may explain the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) suffered by some veterans today. His 2011 Op-Ed (5 min), Why Would Any Soldier Miss War? and his 2015 Vanity Fair article (30 min) do a great job of explaining how it’s not so much the trauma experienced in military life that hurts, it’s the misalignment and meaning-void of modern civilian life.
When I read that short book years ago, I thought it was the only accurate explanation of the core problem combat veterans face today - but I was wrong. Interestingly, the 1946 film The Best Years of Our Lives makes the same points. Winner of 7 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor, the story focuses on the return of three servicemen from the Second World War. Each faces a crisis upon his arrival home, and each of the crises is a microcosm of the experiences of many American servicemembers who found civilian life totally alien when they returned. It’s a great look at the complicated struggle for reintegration - and it’s interesting to note how little the struggle has changed in 70 years.
So what can you do to help with reintegration or show you support? First, showing gratitude is great, even if in some cases nearly half of Post 9/11 veterans report that it makes them uncomfortable. Second, knowing about the US military and what veterans have done is important as well, and that Vanity Fair article above, followed by reading Tribe, is a next step. Beyond these, I’d say the best way to honor veterans is to know them and spend time with them - to make them part of your community and recognize that their service was for the good of the nation, and that in many ways what they learned and did is valuable even today. As readers of this newsletter, I think you probably get this last part. Just about every major veterans organization today revolves around the struggle for reintegration and meaning for the veteran - and for reintegration there’s a cultural aspect and an economic one. The cultural reintegration comes in the form of service and is all veteran-led - either location-based American Legion or Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) halls (which are generally 501(c)(8) and 501(c)(10) - Fraternal Beneficiary Societies and Domestic Fraternal Societies), or newer nationwide service organizations like Team Rubicon or The Mission Continues that perform disaster relief services. The economic reintegration aspect focuses on employment, with organizations like American Corporate Partners, Your Grateful Nation, Elite Meet and The COMMIT Foundation, who in an effort to help with networking and job search services puts civilians close to recently-separated veterans. The newer organizations generally classify as 501(c)(3) nonprofits.
Speaking from experience, Team Rubicon, ACP, Elite Meet and COMMIT are all fantastic organizations and can put you into contact with veterans either as mentors focused on career development or as partners in service projects. I wholeheartedly recommend them all. But at the end of the day, my local VFW post has meant the most to me in terms of deep community involvement and family-like moral support, and the Special Forces Association chapter in NYC has done the most for improving reintegration professionally. Legion and VFW halls have been closing up in increasing numbers for the past few years as the World War II, Korea and Vietnam generations pass on, but have just this year nationally seen a historic upturn in attendance due to Post-9/11 veteran recruitment.
So get to know veterans - we have a lot to provide to the American experience. In this veteran’s opinion, there’s no better way to say thanks. (BJM)
*****
CULTURE IS KING: An Anthropologist Explains How The Culture Of Wall Street Reshaped The Entire Economy (Podcast) (45 min) “Where did the notion come from that the obligation of a company's management is to maximize shareholder returns, even if it means pain for workers? On this week's Odd Lots podcast, we speak with Karen Ho, a professor of anthropology at the University of Minnesota, who can answer the above question. Unlike your typical anthropologist, she did her field work inside a Wall Street bank to discover how the specific culture of finance bled through to the real economy.” (BJM)
WAR AS IT IS, NOT AS WE’D LIKE IT: Why America isn’t equipped for the new rules of war (5 min) “Why are we doing things like buying more Ford-class aircraft carriers, or F35s? That stuff should be slashed. I would cut away the expensive conventional weapons, and beef up the things that are very effective in modern war: political warfare, strategic influence, lawfare, economic might, and deception. Want to blunt Russian encroachment in the Baltics? Forget shows of force—military deterrence is obsolete. Instead, start a “color revolution” on their border. Moscow is paranoid and would shift resources to squashing it. Want China out of the South China Sea? Stop throwing carrier groups into the region. Instead, covertly support the Uighur insurgency. Internal regime security will steal Beijing’s attention away.” (BJM)
ORIGINS OF THOUGHT ON FUTURE WAR: The Road to Multi-Domain Battle: An Origin Story (7 min) “The impact of compression and expansion of the battlefield are best related back to the genesis speech by Mr. Work. He identified and described the combination of guided munitions and informationalized warfare—being able to kill by signature alone—as a critical variable for military success in twenty-first-century warfare. “Informationalized warfare” is the combination of cyber, electronic warfare, information operations, deception, and denial to disrupt our command and control and thereby give the enemy an advantage in the decision cycle. By combining informationalized warfare with the accuracy and relative low cost of guided munitions, the victors on the next battlefield will fix and fracture their adversary with quick, decisive, and lethal effects across the entirety of the battlespace and immediately consolidate gains to make any military response politically unpalatable.” (BJM)
Remarks Complete. Nothing Follows.
KS Anthony (KSA) & Brady Moore (BJM)