I am a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. When I left the military in 2007, I went through something called the Transition Assistance Program (TAP). It was a memorable experience, if only because I hadn’t seen overhead projectors and transparencies used since I was in grade school. There was probably some valuable information covered in the three-day course, but I couldn't tell you what it was. And, what any veteran could tell you is that this outdated program serves mostly as a cursory check in the box on your way out the door to civilian life.
In the military, I never felt unprepared. I went through training for everything I might encounter on a deployment (and many, many things I would not). But, when it came time to separate from the military, for the first time in my adult life, I wasn’t prepared – at least not in the way I had been in the military.
In my TAP class, I was with men and women who had led in battle – making life and death decisions on a daily basis. There were engineers, pilots, mechanics, logisticians – great Americans who had served and sacrificed, the men and women who make our military the finest fighting force the world has ever seen.
So, given what these men and women have proven they can do in the most extreme circumstances, how is it that there are currently 1 million unemployed veterans? And how is it that the unemployment rate for post-9/11 veterans is at 13.3%? Does it make any sense that a combat medic who saved lives on the battlefield would have trouble finding work as an EMT back at home? Or, that we ask our young Marines and soldiers to be warriors and diplomats, to deploy time and time again into harm’s way, but cannot help them when they ask something of us – even something as easy as leveraging their skills, talents and unparalleled experience into a job?
Fonte: White House