BattlelandVeterans
So What’s the Unemployment Rate Among Veterans?
Jobless vets – those who have recently waged America’s wars – are a national disgrace. The dignity and purpose that accompanies work is one of the best salves a veteran can apply to a mind rattled by combat. But the numbers can be like mercury. On Sunday, Mike Mullen, the retired admiral and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, …
BattlelandAfghanistan
Another Face of Multiple Deployments
It’s been nearly two months since the Kandahar massacre – some time and distance, but not much. Some things are clearer, some things still aren’t. We don’t know why Staff Sergeant Robert Bales did what he did. We do know the American public’s confidence in the war effort plunged post-Kandahar. We don’t know if that …
BattlelandNavy
This Is Only a Test: Navy Women Donning Dixie Cups
The Navy’s personnel chief, after a survey of nearly 400 women in the sea service, says there’s room for improvement in the uniforms they wear.
“As a result of fleet feedback received from female sailors during Navy leadership …
BattlelandVeterans
…Speaking of Moral Outrage…
For those of you keeping score at home, the blunt decision by a federal appeals court a year ago came as a shocker:
We willingly acknowledge that, in theory, the political branches of our government are better positioned than are the courts to design the procedures necessary to save veterans’ lives and to fulfill our country’s
…
BattlelandMilitary Personnel
“A Moral Outrage”
The over-deployment of a too-small military since 9/11 has led to a peculiar situation where Congress and the nation feel a subtle sense of guilt over what they have put the nation’s young men and women in uniform through. It has warped military compensation and retirement policies, Lawrence J. Korb, Alex Rothman, and Max Hoffman write …
Final Raptor Flies Home
BattlelandAfghanistan
Good Drugs, Bad Drugs
There’s two kinds of drug trafficking Afghanistan — the good, detailed in the map on the left, and the bad (click on either to enlarge). Last year, the U.N. charted the still-thriving opium trade from inside Afghanistan to the world’s narcotics markets. Monday, the Pentagon inspector general detailed problems with the Afghan National …
BattlelandMilitary Mental Health
PTSD: Weakness or Wound?
This week, the American Psychiatric Association is meeting in Philadelphia. Among the presentations in the “military track”—a spate of meetings directed towards practitioners focused on military or war related psychology and psychiatry—the top listed presentation is titled “Combat Related PTSD: Injury or Disorder?” Based on …
BattlelandIran
How You Going To Bridge This Gulf?
The sanctions the rest of the world is imposing against Iran apparently are beginning to bite. The latest evidence: Tehran’s complaint that Google Maps recently stopped labeling the Persian Gulf the Persian Gulf. But the search-engine giant isn’t changing its name to the Arabian Gulf, like Arab states – and the U.S. Navy – do. …
BattlelandVeterans
Battered and Bruised Minds Lead to Homelessness
The Department of Veterans Affairs first-ever large-scale study of homeless vets shows that the vast majority of homeless vets have mental disorders. “Majorities of the newly homeless diagnosed with mental disorders…were …
Why States Shouldn’t Control Immigration
Whatever the Supreme Court’s decision on Arizona’s controversial law, it should be a wake-up call about why American immigration policy must be established on a national — not state — level
BattlelandArmy
Paper Cuts
Command Sergeant Major Teresa King – relieved of command of the service’s drill-sergeant school at Fort Jackson, S.C., last November – was reinstated Friday, only days before she is set to relinquish command. The Army …