From health care to finances, protect those who protected us

A soldier’s money
From health care to finances, we should protect those who protected us

Sergeant Jared Doohen, left, and Staff Sergeant Thomas Stanley return home to Vermont last year after nine months in Afghanistan. (Associated Press)

By Juliette Kayyem
July 25, 2011

LAST WEEK, 650 troops quietly left Afghanistan, beginning the long slog home as part of President Obama’s drawdown. At the same time, General David Petraeus, the architect of the surges in both Iraq and Afghanistan, formally resigned from the military to take over as director of the CIA. The timing was coincidental, but not without meaning: The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are now simultaneously moving to a close.

Petraeus handed his Afghanistan command to Marine Lieutenant General John Allen, who will oversee further troop departures. He also symbolically handed over some measure of responsibility for those troops’ future well-being to his wife, Holly Petraeus, who represents a rare growth industry in government: protecting and providing to our returning service members and veterans.

As a nation, we are simply unprepared for the numbers of returning troops we now face. The wars of the last ten years have created over 1.1 million veterans; another 2.4 million men and women are on active, National Guard, or reserve duty. This class includes soldiers who have served in combat longer than any in US history. Of the nearly 400,000 who have seen combat duty, more than 13,000 have spent at least 45 months - nearly four cumulative years - in combat.

We know so little about the magnitude and the depth of the issues they will be facing in health care, employment, and education. All they want is to go back to normal lives. And that too is a challenge.
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From health care to finances