How do we Reshape America’s Views of Veterans?

How do we Reshape America’s Views of Veterans?

RP Members what are your recommendations for reshaping the views on how America views veterans?

Fully realizing the benefits that vets can bring to civilian life means changing the distorted way they are perceived.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/reshaping-americas-views-of-veterans [login to see]

A newspaper writer laments: “On their return home after their long absence from society, and from industry, many of these brave men . . . find it difficult to get the opportunity at once to return to their old avocations. Their places in the workshops or elsewhere are filled up; and having but little money, and having lost to some extent the facility for securing employment or the friends who might have helped them to find it, they are greatly discouraged and disheartened, and their families suffer.”

Sound familiar? That’s the New York Times in June 1865. And yet here we are, 150 years on, with vets dying while waiting for medical care, 50,000 vets homeless, unemployment among post-9/11 vets consistently above the average, and just half of those who go to college actually finishing.

What we really most need is a long march through the institutions, to borrow a phrase. Send your kids to ROTC-friendly colleges. Don’t shell out for movies that offer a limited, fantasy view of the military. We must praise our vets’ service. But praise is easy. What’s hard is helping vets return to civilian life. That will happen when we recognize most aren’t Hollywood heroes or damaged goods, but civic assets.