It goes without saying that National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command are playing a significant role in defending military and government computer networks.  It appears they’re now playing a role defending domestic U.S. civilian computer networks as well.  In past statements, General Keith Alexander – head of NSA and Cyber Command – said that the DoD entities would not be involved in the protection of domestic civilian networks because it is the purview of the Department of Homeland Security.  Despite those statements, a memorandum of agreement released on October 13 announced that the DoD and DHS would coordinate their cybersecurity efforts, collocating personnel.

While the NSA and Cyber Command both fall under the purview of the DoD, their missions are different.  The NSA is a hybrid civilian/military entity whose main function is to gather signals intelligence from foreign communications and provide information assurance to prevent foreign adversaries from accessing classified materials.  Cyber Command is a new, purely military entity that is responsible for providing the U.S. military with both offensive and defensive capabilities in cyberspace.

Because the NSA was at the center of the Bush administration’s domestic wiretapping scandal in the years just after 9/11, its involvement with protecting domestic computer networks makes privacy advocates uneasy. They’re worried that the NSA might use its new role to monitor U.S citizens. However, it’s worth noting that the NSA’s participation with U.S. domestic computer networks is not unprecedented.  In February, the NSA assisted Google in investigating an attack against the company in which it is believed that Chinese hackers stole large amounts of intellectual property as well as information about Chinese human rights activists.  More recently, the NSA was tasked with executing  “Perfect Citizen,” a program that gives NSA access to U.S. critical infrastructure networks in order to detect cyberspace threats. This means NSA would deploy sensors on many large privately owned networks.

Meanwhile, General Alexander stated in September that he did not believe Cyber Command should operate in the civilian sphere. However, that statement contradicts the memorandum of agreement, which specifically directs Cyber Command to locate personnel at a DHS facility to provide support and “operational synchronization.”  It also instructs Cyber Command to coordinate operational and mission planning with DHS and NSA.  Moreover, Cyber Command’s involvement with civilian networks was presaged by the June 2009 DoD memorandum announcing its formation which specifically states that part of its mission would be to protect civilian networks.

The question now is: how much of a role will DoD play? How much of a role should it play? In 2003, a presidential directive established DHS as the agency in charge of coordinating the overall effort of securing civilian networks.  The agency has since written a strategy and will to hire large numbers of cybersecurity professionals over the next few years, indicating the agency will maintain a large role in protecting civilian networks.

But critical cyber experience and technical expertise lies with the military, which would be foolish to ignore.   Furthermore, DHS wants to work with the military, admitting that it has at least contemplated leveraging NSA assets in its efforts to put together a comprehensive plan to protect critical cyberspace assets.  Even so, it’s not that straight forward: as the NSA wiretapping scandal shows, DoD’s involvement in civilian networks would stir civil liberties controversy.

Currently, no overarching cybersecurity strategy exists that clarifies agencies’ responsibilities.  Despite sweeping cybersecurity legislation being proposed in Congress – particularly by Senators Lieberman, Carper, and Collins – the White House must step in to clarify these roles.

photo credit: Patrick Hoesly

Just a few years ago, Lebanon appeared to be a foreign policy success for the United States. Outraged by the brutal assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri (likely at the hands of Syria and its allies), the Lebanese people, bolstered by international support, succeeded in expelling Syrian military forces and asserting Lebanese sovereignty in 2005 for the first time in decades. And again in 2009, the Lebanese affirmed their support for the pro-Western ruling coalition, awarding them a solid majority of seats in Parliament during the May general elections.

These days, however, the country looks headed for a frightening crisis. The March 14 coalition, as the ruling group is known, has been unable to capitalize on its popular mandate. This is due in large part to the overwhelming force wielded by Hezbollah – which is funded, trained, and armed by Iran and Syria. But it’s also because U.S. policy toward Lebanon has been unwilling to back up bold words with actions. Far from protecting America’s allies, consecutive U.S. administrations have not only failed the pro-Western government but also empowered its worst enemies.

The slow-burning confrontation is about to reach a boiling point over the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, charged with bringing Hariri’s killers to justice. The court, established by agreement between the U.N. Security Council and the Lebanese government, is expected to issue indictments against members of Hezbollah in the coming months. As the Wall Street Journal reported Monday, up to six members are slated to be indicted by the end of the year, including Mustafa Badreddine, a senior Hezbollah military commander and brother-in-law of the infamous Hezbollah mastermind Imad Mugniyah.

In an effort to preempt what would surely be a massive blow, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah has launched a war against the tribunal, and U.S. officials believe that Hezbollah will stop at nothing to prevent indictments from being handed down. The risk of war is palpable, and if Hezbollah and its Iranian patrons — and their Syrian puppets — unseat the elected government and take control over Lebanon, it will be a grave blow to U.S. security and credibility around the world.

It would also bolster the reach and credibility of Iran. Fred Hof, deputy to U.S. Special Middle East envoy George Mitchell and point man on U.S.-Syria policy once put it bluntly: “Whether most of his organization’s members know it or not, and whether most Lebanese Shiites know it or not, [Nasrallah] and his inner circle do what they do first and foremost to defend and project the existence and power of the Islamic Republic of Iran.” (He was speaking to the Middle East Institute in the midst of the 2006 conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.)

The rise of Iranian influence in Lebanon is particularly dangerous at the present moment, when moderate Arab countries are desperately looking for the United States to contain Iran. From the perspective of the United States’ Arab allies, if the world’s superpower can’t contain the mullahs before they have a nuclear weapon, how could they be expected to contain them if they have the bomb?

Given the disturbing drift in American policy since the 2005 Cedar revolution, what is at stake, and the choices we must make to support those seeking our help, Hezbollah’s crimes against us bear repeating.

Accused of terrorism on virtually every continent, Hezbollah has killed more Americans than any terrorist group except Al Qaeda, and today they posses weapons of state.

They murdered 63 people, including 17 Americans and eight CIA officers in our Beirut embassy in 1982. They slaughtered 241 American marines in the Marine barracks’ bombing in 1983, and a year later killed another 18 American servicemen near the U.S. Air Force Base in Torrejon, Spain. Robert Stethem, a US Navy diver, was beaten to death and thrown on the tarmac when Hezbollah terrorists hijacked TWA flight 847. And of course the brutal kidnapping, heinous torture, and eventual murder of the CIA’s Beirut station chief Bill Buckley and Col. William ‘Rich’ Higgins were carried out by Hezbollah terrorists.

Fred Hof was a close friend of Col. Higgins and, at the time, part of a small team that worked every possible angle to free Higgins before his death. “I am one of a small handful of Americans who knows the exact manner of Rich’s death,” he explained years ago. “If I were to describe it to you now – which I will not – I can guarantee that a significant number of people in this room would become physically ill.  When [former Deputy Secretary of State] Rich Armitage described Hezbollah a few years ago as the “A-Team” of international terrorism and suggested that there was a “blood debt” to be paid, he was referring to a leadership cadre that is steeped in blood and brutality.”

It is that ‘leadership cadre’ of Iranian backed terrorists, who have been killing our allies and us for over 30 years, that is today working for Tehran, “maneuvering furiously”, according to the New York Times, to derail the tribunal, and destroy the native forces inside Lebanon seeking to restore self-determination for the Lebanese people.

Lebanon is again at a cross roads, and so is American policy.

How did the situation become so dire, so soon after the West finally helped the Lebanese people shake off the foreign forces driving thirty years of civil war and violence? Is it now too late to stop Iran from successfully exporting their revolution into a country as culturally diverse and multi-confessional Lebanon?

It’s difficult not to lay the blame at the feet of former President George W. Bush and his Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice. The Bush administration was eager to hold up Lebanon as an example of its successful Middle East policy: “We took great joy in seeing the Cedar Revolution. We understand that the hundreds of thousands of people who took to the street to express their desire to be free required courage, and we support the desire of the people to have a government responsive to their needs and a government that is free, truly free,” Bush said at the time.  However, when push came to shove, the president did little to help our Lebanese allies when they needed him most.

Judgment day came May 7, 2008. An emboldened Hezbollah, alarmed that the government was moving to control the group’s illicit private communications network, invaded the streets of Beirut and the Chouf Mountains to the south, forcing Lebanon’s democratically-elected leaders to accede to a power-sharing agreement at the point of a gun. The result was yet another capitulation by the Bush administration, which signaled its acquiescence to the Doha Agreement, signed on May 21 of that year, formalizing Hezbollah’s veto over any government decision, including its own disarmament.

But if the Bush administration opened the door to Hezbollah’s takeover of Lebanon, Barack Obama’s administration is holding that door ajar, doing little to support America’s erstwhile allies in the March 14 coalition out of fear that such a move would damage any chance of engaging with Syria.

In an October 18 letter, Congressmen Gary Ackerman (D-NY) and Dan Burton (R-IN), chairman and ranking member of the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East, protested the administration’s lack of support for moderate elements in Lebanon: “We remain concerned that your strategy of offering diplomatic overtures to hostile regimes has done little to provoke Middle East peace, and has only taken away leverage from our democratic friends and allies.”

For its part, the Administration continues to put the emphasis on reaching out to Damascus, and has gone only so far as to indicate there are limits to America’s patience. “Syria and the United States have taken some modest steps to see if we can improve the bilateral relationship, but this cannot go very far as long as Syria’s friends are undermining stability in Lebanon,“ explained Assistant Secretary of State Jeffrey Feltman, on a visit to Syria earlier this month.

It is vital that the United States reverse these years of drift and act decisively to help the Lebanese people reassert their right to self-determination — because it is in America’s national interest.  The alternative is to give in to the foreign agenda of the Mullahs in Tehran and their terrorist proxy at time when containing Iran’s expansionist ambition is the paramount necessity in the region. So what do we do?

The Obama administration must decide to resist the “resistance,” and lead the West in a program to further empower Lebanese civil society and aid the dormant democratic forces in the country. It is these courageous actors, with the proven ability to lead successful political and media campaigns and expose the Syria-Iran-Hezbollah axis, who were specifically targeted by Hezbollah in May 2008 — exactly because they are effective. The Lebanese people need to know that the president of the United States supports their pursuit of freedom and democracy, especially as Hezbollah’s role in attacking the state is on the verge of being exposed.

President Obama should immediately look to Lebanon’s pro-democracy media, which has largely been silenced over the last year, intimidated not only by pro-Syrian, pro-Iranian, and Hezbollah foes, but hobbled by Saudi patrons who mistakenly thought they could pull Syria away from Iran’s influence. That strategy, like our own outreach to Syria, has proven a disastrous failure, for Lebanon, the region and US national interests. The Obama administration can help take the muzzle off of these Lebanese patriots—like Prime Minister Saad Hariri and head of the Lebanese Forces party Samir Geagea—whose courageous voices are the first defense against Hezbollah’s “resistance.” Let Lebanon speak.

And, the Obama administration must ensure that the Special Tribunal goes forward, prosecuting those it indicts.  America’s $10 million contribution last week is commendable, but it is not enough.  No problem, other than stopping Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, calls as urgently for international focus as does the effort to stop Iran from expanding its sphere of influence and overpowering another people.

The United States must be willing to work with its allies in Europe and the Middle East to support those democratic elements who want to save their country. This policy will not be easy. It may require making the tough decision to give up on forces and programs that have failed to serve as a bulwark against Hezbollah, or it may require a deep reform of the same, but tough choices are what we face.

It was Harry Truman who said “it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.” Those words are as true today under President Obama as when they were uttered in 1947 by a young former Senator thrust suddenly into power, forced to make some of this nation’s most fateful, difficult and ultimately, successful decisions. America is no less the leader of the free world today than we were then, unless we act otherwise.

If the Obama administration takes a bold stand in favor of Lebanon’s independence and starts pressing the Saudis to support Lebanese civil society, it will find that many figures in Beirut, and other countries with a stake in Lebanon’s stability will enthusiastically follow its lead.

But whatever methods it chooses, the administration must make a clear public signal that the United States will not sit on the sidelines while Iran, through its satraps Syria and Hezbollah, successfully exports the Iranian revolution to Lebanon. President Obama has spoken eloquently about the need to support democracy and tolerance in the Middle East. The time of decision has come. The President must now put America’s words into action.

A shorter version of this article appeared at ForeignPolicy.com

photo credit: Patrick Makhoul

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu flew to the States this week to try to break an impasse to the stalled peace talks. The visit, with VP Joe Biden in New Orleans, seems to have provoked the latest round of public bickering over the construction of settlements in Jerusalem.

This time, an international exchange between Bibi, Obama, and Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erakat makes it look like the sides remain miles apart.

Netanyahu: “Jerusalem is not a settlement. Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.”

Obama: “This kind of activity [settlement construction] is never helpful when it comes to peace negotiations.”

Erakat: “The international community must respond to Israel’s unilateral measures by instantly recognizing a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders.”

You know it’s bad if the three main players are barely talking about the same issue. I’ve argued that litigating these cases in the press is counter-productive, and in general I stand by that.  If you’re going public, it’s because you’ve lost the private battle.  In previous cases, it has proved particularly counter-productive when there’s public daylight between Obama and Netanyahu, necessitating a come-together meeting in July.

However, is it possible that the current round of public fighting is a coordinated attempt to provide the Israelis and Palestinians with room to compromise?

After all, Netanyahu’s rightist coalition partners will never permit a full suspension of settlement building. But the Palestinians have essentially made a suspension of settlements a litmus test for further talks. Is it possible then that Obama’s public push against settlement construction is designed as a foil for Netanyahu?  Will standing up to Obama in public on the settlement issue create enough goodwill within the more conservative caucus of Netanyahu’s coalition?

If the two sides sit down soon, the answer might be yes.

Photo credit: Premasagar

At last, some good news from Afghanistan: The New York Times reported last week that U.S. and Afghan forces are “routing” the Taliban in Kandahar province. In the northwest, Special Operations forces and air strikes have taken a heavy toll on insurgent commanders and “shadow governors,” according to The Washington Post.

These tactical gains are impressive. But they also spotlight the weakest link in our strategic chain, and no, it’s not Afghanistan’s mercurial leader, Hamid Karzai, or the corrupt and feckless central government. It’s Pakistan.

President Obama’s surge seems to be taking hold, but coalition forces can’t break the insurgency’s back as long as Pakistan continues to provide a sanctuary for the Taliban and allied terrorist groups.

Aided by better intelligence and a highly accurate new mobile rocket, in addition to more troops, coalition forces have successfully targeted Taliban leaders and driven insurgents from strongholds they have long held in Kandahar. The onslaught apparently has demoralized some Taliban foot soldiers, who are said to resent their high command for urging them to stand and fight from the relative safety of Pakistan.

U.S. officials say they are under no illusion of crushing the insurgency altogether, but they hope that, by inflicting heavy losses, they can turn the tide and induce top Taliban leaders to enter into peace negotiations with the Afghan government.

But there’s a problem: insurgent leaders are slipping over the border to Pakistan, where they can regroup for new attacks, or simply wait for NATO forces to leave. Says Gen. David Petraeus, “There is quite relentless pressure. It forces them on the run. But again, if you don’t take away the safe haven, it doesn’t have a lasting effect.”

And the Quetta Shura, whose leader, Mullah Omar, was so hospitable to al Qaeda when the Taliban ran Afghanistation, continues to orchestrate and finance the insurgency from Pakistan with impunity. If the United States and NATO are to permanently weaken the Taliban and force them to the negotiating table, that has to change.

Zalmay Khalilzad, a former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, argues that Pakistan’s double game threatens to prolong America’s costly intervention. On the one hand, Pakistan is an indispensible partner: it supplies the main supply routes for coalition forces, and tacitly colludes with drone strikes against al Qaeda and Taliban targets. On the other, Pakistan gives sanctuary not only to the Quetta Shura and but also the notorious Haqqani terrorist network, whose ties with Pakistani intelligence go back to the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan.

Pakistan’s military leaders, he says, “believe that our current surge will be the last push before we begin a face-saving troop drawdown next July. They are confident that if they continue to frustrate our military and political strategy – even actively impede reconciliation between Kabul and Taliban groups willing to make peace – pro-Pakistani forces will have the upper hand in Afghanistan after the United States departs.”

Khalilzad is right: the United States can’t allow our supposed ally to subvert our strategic goals in Afghanistan. Yet just last week, the administration announced a new $2 billion military aid package to Pakistan. This comes on top of a five-year, $7.5 billion civilian aid package for Pakistan approved last year.

This is the kind of thing that gives engagement a bad name. We need a more challenging approach: The United States should demand that Pakistan break decisively with Islamist terrorist groups and not allow its territory to be used as a staging point for attacks on its neighbor. If Pakistan refuses, we should target insurgent havens anyway and freeze aid. If it complies, we should make a long-term commitment to strengthening Pakistan’s economic and governing institutions, and to mediating regional conflicts.

U.S. officials have been reluctant to put too much pressure on Pakistan to act against the Haqqani network and the Afghan Taliban leadership. They don’t want to undermine the democratically elected government of President Asi Ali Zardari, or risk alienating Pakistan’s military and intelligence services, which are cooperating in the U.S. campaign against al Qaeda.  But Pakistan already has demonstrated the military ability to reclaim tribal areas when it suited its purpose.  Up until now, Pakistan has tried to have it both ways: help America fight al Qaeda, while retaining ties to terrorist groups to influence future events in Afghanistan (and to keep the pot boiling in Kashmir). Such ambivalence collides with America’s strategic interest, and it’s time for Pakistan to choose.

You’d think this morning’s Washington Post article by Greg Miller should throw some cold water on the relatively upbeat assessment I made yesterday:  I said Petraeus is “trying to hit the Taliban leadership hard, driving it to the negotiating table from a position of weakness,” which “might be speeding up a potential resolution to the conflict.”

The headline appears to play me the fool: “Taliban unscathed by U.S. strikes”.  Ouch, right?  It would appear, based on the first few paragraphs of Miller’s piece, that the Taliban is doing fine:

Escalated airstrikes and special operations raids have disrupted Taliban movements and damaged local cells. But officials said that insurgents have been adept at absorbing the blows and that they appear confident that they can outlast an American troop buildup set to subside beginning next July.
It ultimately assesses that “there is little indication that the direction of the war has changed.”

But wait just a minute. Disrupting the Taliban isn’t the goal of the recent increase in op-tempo.  The article fails to dis-aggregate the Taliban writ-large from its relatively small cadre of leaders.

While the organization plods on in a holistic sense, Petraeus’ raids and airstrikes are designed to telegraph a message to the leadership:  “You can keep fighting, but you, Mr. Senior Taliban Leader, might be next.”  With that life and death calculation staring them in the face, Petraeus rightly calculates that the Taliban’s leadership will be more interested in talking — a negotiation that will tip the leverage in NATO’s favor.

This is the same fundamental misunderstanding of international sanctions against Iran.  No one believes they’ll put a fundamental break on the Iranian economy.  But they will make life tougher on the mullahs, who now have to work hard to skirt them.  The calculation is that one day, Tehran will say, “Man, I’m sick and tired of all this running around.  Maybe we should sit down and negotiate with the West and we can get back to life as normal.”

Neither calculation may end up as an unqualified success, but the instincts behind them are right.

Let’s say you’re jonesing for a smoothie at your favorite hipster juice bar.  Not content with the strawberry, papaya, and kiwi in your standard Mangosteen Madness™, you pony up for a little something extra.  Let’s go crazy – say you drop the extra 78 cents on the counter and tell the Smoothie King to throw in a “Caffeine Charge” just to make sure the day keeps on sailing by.

That’s kind of what’s happening in Afghanistan these days.  The “clear, hold, and build” of counterinsurgency doctrine may be the Mangosteen strategy, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that General Petraeus is doubling down with a “Caffeine Charge” of his own.  He’s trying to hit the Taliban leadership hard, driving it to the negotiating table from a position of weakness.

As Dexter Filkins detailed in the NYT a few weeks ago, NATO military operations in Afghanistan have aggressively targeted Taliban militants with airstrikes and Special Forces operations.  Well-reputed columnists like David Ignatius, Joe Klein, and Fred Kaplan all write that this marks a shift away from the counterinsurgency strategy that Petraeus literally wrote the book on.  However, Paula Broadwell, a guest-author on Tom Ricks’ blog, disagrees, noting that the recent increase in counter-terrorism operations is an important subset of an across-the-board op-tempo increase in all COIN disciplines.

Despite disagreements over the shift, the important point is that it might be speeding up a potential resolution to the conflict.  General Petraeus has long said that we’re not going to kill or capture our way out of Aghanistan, and he told Katie Couric over the summer that negotiations are “historically the way counterinsurgency efforts ultimately have been concluded.”

The issue is ensuring that negotiations, quietly underway, take place on the most favorable grounds possible to America.  And if that goal is achieved, then semantics about COIN vs. CT won’t matter in the end.

Photo credit: terriseesthings

The Israeli-Palestinian peace talks effectively died this week.  That’s what happens when you take your case to the press.

Though the hard left no doubt cheers a Palestinian effort to seek unilateral recognition from everyone from the UN Security Council to the Poughkeepsie Dog Catchers Society, it’s simply neither a serious nor well-considered effort.

The move is bad for everyone, including peace-seeking Palestinians.  A UNSC resolution will be vetoed by the Americans and will split the Europeans; its failure will then cause regional Arab powers to blame everyone but themselves at a time when Arab engagement is crucial to success.

The PA went public with this ill-conceived demand as a response to Bibi Netanyahu’s impossible pre-condition offer of extending a moratorium on settlement construction only in return for Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state.  Doing so is a non-starter for the PA – it would essentially prevent ex-patriot Palestinian refugees from staking a claim to property and/or cash from the Israeli government.

Bibi’s demands were the beginning of the end, and should have spurred the Obama administration’s negotiators to keep the talks quiet at all cost.  Of course, maybe they tried, and tried hard, but the two parties were never on the same page from the beginning.

A resolution to this conflict will only be achieved through painstaking negotiations behind closed doors. When the parties begin to litigate their case in the court of international public opinion, it is nothing more than a desperation Hail Mary on 4th-and-a-million with no time on the clock.

If talks aren’t dead, they’re in a coma and on life support.  The White House needs to get both sides to shut up, and find a face-saving way for Bibi to extend the settlement moratorium that somehow addresses – or agrees to delay – the question of Israel’s Jewishness/Palestinian refugees.

Failing that, we’ll look to start these talks up again under the next Israeli government.

This post is the fifth in a series about the Progressive Military

I knew my entire life that I was going to join the military at 18.  There was never a time where I can recall I thought anything else.  It wasn’t pushed on me; it was just something I always understood.  My father and several of my uncles are Vietnam vets, my cousin is a Gulf War vet, and my grandfather and his brothers were in World War II.  Iraq is my own particular war.  In my family, we serve in the military.  Many other American families share the same story.

I was always good academically and very active in school activities.  As my high school graduation approached people would ask me or my parents where I was going to college and what I was going to do.  Doctor?  Lawyer?  Architect?  The answer was no, he’s shipping off to be a Private in the U.S. Army.  The looks were telling.  Someone even offered ‘there’s other ways to pay for college, you know.’

For many there are not.  I served with guys in the Army who will tell you that if they hadn’t joined they would be in the poorhouse, in jail, or dead in some alleyway.  My father was a tough Chicago kid who volunteered at the height of the Vietnam War because he wanted better than sketchy factory jobs.  He got it.  After ‘Nam, he used the GI Bill to get a degree and a job.  He just retired after thirty years of looking out for abused kids with the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services.  The opportunity the military gives has paid dividends not only for my father, but for me and my family, not to mention the thousands of kids my dad helped over the years.

Thirty years after him and at exactly the same place, Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri, I started my military career.  I could look out of my barracks window and see across the drill square the same building he had lived in.  They shaved my head, gave me a uniform, and a job with a steady paycheck, medical and dental care, a retirement system, and other benefits.  I grew up in rural southern Illinois, where the unemployment rate today ranges between 9 and14 percent.   A lot of people I grew up with haven’t fared as well, even some of those that went to college.

I had to work hard for it, but I did it, me and over 26 million other American veterans, many of whom might not have otherwise had such opportunities.  Today, communities around military posts are more prosperous than industrial cities, tech centers, and college towns.  The opportunities granted by military service help Americans of all kinds; studies have found military communities are among the least segregated in the country.

The military not only put money in our pockets, but it has given us work experience we couldn’t get elsewhere.  Only around 15 percent of our troops are actually ‘trigger-pullers’; over half work in technical and medical fields and another third work in administration and logistics.  These military jobs more often than not have a direct equivalent in the civilian market.  It’s no secret that military life creates disciplined, principled, and dedicated workers, an asset to any employer or a good basis for starting a business.

Almost a quarter of Americans have a college degree today and the increasing demand for and availability of degrees to the larger population owes much to the GI Bill.  Since 1944, it has helped over 21 million veterans join the educated workforce.  The Post 9-11 GI Bill will help hundreds of thousands of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans not only get an education, but help pay their cost of living while doing so, something the GI Bill hasn’t done since the 1980’s.  It has been touted as part of the economic recovery program by providing the opportunity for many former troops to qualify for better jobs than the currently scarce entry level positions available to those that have only a high school diploma.  This is especially important while unemployment among young veterans is estimated at 21 percent.  If you can’t find a job, at least you can go to school.

I didn’t join the military just to go to college or for the opportunities.  There are many that did and there’s nothing wrong with that.  They have earned the thanks of the nation.  The GI Bill is a progressive policy that does just that for Americans that might not otherwise have had the opportunity.  Serving in the military gives many Americans the chance they need for a career or a good start in life.  As for me, I have decided to study law in the end.  Without the opportunity the military has given to me and to my family, I would not have been able to.  Millions of other Americans share the same story.

Photo credit: US Army Africa