CHICAGO, January 11, 2011— A lot of veterans will soon hit the streets as civilians. Large numbers of them will be unemployed. The President and Congress are doing nothing to make those numbers smaller. They're doing nothing to pay the debt of gratitude we owe our veterans, replacing action with sanctimonious platitudes.
America's veterans deserve action, not words; they want jobs, not platitudes.
Our forces are volunteer, not drafted. Our servicemen and women serve freely, knowing that their leaders have grown indifferent to their service and sacrifices, knowing that the nation is tired of hearing about war, knowing that "support our troops" is a motto on a bumper sticker, not a national policy. They don't expect and will not receive ticker-tape parades or welcome home celebrations from a grateful nation, no city keys from their home-town mayors.
They expect none of this, yet they serve anyway. Their reasons for serving are as varied as the men and women serving, but among the most common are love of country, a sense of honor, and the urge to serve. In return their expectations are modest: some educational benefits, medical treatment, and at least equal footing with everyone else when they look for jobs. But what they may not expect, and shouldn't, is that life when they return will be harder for them than if they'd never left.
As a nation, we owe them nothing less. Simple decency demands that we guarantee our returning veterans educational and training opportunities through taxpayer-funded programs, then count their service in their favor when they go on the job market.
Simply put, we should make veterans, all of them, a protected class. The only protected class.
President Obama is touting a business tax-break scam to hire veteran, while legislators from both parties wax eloquent on our debt to veterans. But after all the kind words, they are doing nothing.
Giving vets protected-class status with legally mandated priority and preferential treatment, over and above any other group, in hiring and educational opportunities, is one small way we can thank those men and woman for their service.
Make it mandatory to hire a qualified veteran, all else equal, before hiring anyone else. Make it mandatory to educate or train a qualified veteran, all else equal, before anyone else. Make it mandatory to award any qualified veteran-owned business government contracts before considering any others, all else equal.
And as will all things mandatory, there must be penalties in place to punish any university, employer or agency that fails to comply.
Veterans have earned all this. They deserve protected-class status. They earn it through their service, and by their blood they've kept our schools and businesses among the safest, and so among the strongest, in the world.
The rest of us enjoy our jobs and educations by virtue of their sacrifice.
What would this protected-class status mean in practice?
1. Civil service tests would be waived for veterans. Let the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) stand in its place. On the basis of their education and ASVAB scores they would be immediately eligible and given first priority for any government job opening, federal, state or local.
2. All private employers, especially those who receive federal assistance, grants, or contracts, would be required to hire qualified veterans for job openings over and above any other protected group. All other affirmative action programs would be scrapped. We owe veterans a debt. We owe the rest nothing.
3. Veterans would get first priority in vocational education programs, trade-union training programs, college and university admissions, and professional schools in preference to any other affirmative-action programs. Institutions that fail to give them preference would be denied any federal funding.
4. Veteran-run businesses would get top priority for all federal, state and local government contracts, contingent on their ability to demonstrate ability to fulfill the contract.
We owe our veterans a debt of gratitude that we can never pay. It is the only true service to country. Everything else is just employment. Diversity and multi-culturalism should be thrown out the window when they conflict with veteran preferences.
Of course none of that will happen. Politicians are happy to "support our troops" when the support is just words, but giving veterans priority over other so-called "disadvantaged groups" is politically impossible. The political reality is that the other protected classes are much larger, much better organized, vastly more powerful, and so will always come first. They have a birth right to entitlement that they never earned.
More to the point, vast amounts of money are controlled by our current system of preferences. Government has become a system of spoils, and special interest money would flow like rivers to stop any legislation or policy that changed it.
And so our debt to veterans is unpaid and will remain unpaid. The word "deadbeat" comes to mind. No one is bold enough to stand up for those who served our nation and actually do something audacious. Our nation is lead by cowards.
America owes a debt to her veterans. It's a debt that will never be repaid, but we're obligated to try. So the next time Obama or some other political poltroon spouts platitudes about helping veterans, remember what we owe and what we actually give. Then their words will be clear for the lies that they are.
Peter V. Bella is a retired Chicago Police Officer, freelance writer and photographer, cook, and raconteur. He likes to be the sharp stick that pokes, prods, and annoys. His opinions are his and his alone.
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