"Making This War Visible"

Speaking recently before the World Congress on Disabilities in Dallas, Navy Admiral and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen discussed the challenges of health care, education and employment for veterans returning from America's wars. He is in the middle of a 'Conversation with the Country' tour across America, to discuss concerns and get ideas from people in communities large and small about how to strengthen military families, improve education opportunities and provide the best quality of life now and in the future for servicemembers, veterans, and their families.

Those veterans have sacrificed tremendously, and are on average 20 to 25 years old, Mullen is quoted as saying in an article by Karen Parrish of the American Forces Press Service. “They are wired to serve." If they can make a successful transition from the military to civilian life, he added, they will be an asset to the nation and the world for decades to come.”

Just giving veterans a slap on the back and wishing them luck in their new civilian life  is not acceptable anymore, Mullen said.  Many things have changed that make adjustment problems and our awareness of them more acute now. Mullen is stark about this. "I've got 40,000 physically wounded, I've got hundreds of thousands with [post-traumatic stress] ... and that model is the same model that generated a homeless level, post-Vietnam ... that we're still dealing with 50, 60 years later," 

There’s a great deal of support for servicemembers and veterans today, but  for many of us, they are not our friends and neighbors and its a bit fuzzy how to help. “You may live in a community and not have a clue who's there, as they return," Mullen points out. 

"We live in an extraordinary time of change," he said. "The wounds of these wars are different, and they have caused [the military] in many cases to look at things differently. We've changed – in medicine, we've changed how we handle people on the battlefield. Now, if you are brought to the right medical facility within an hour, almost ... without discrimination about the kind of wound, you have a 95 percent chance to survive."  Now, going on with life with often traumatic and seriously debilitating injuries is the challenge.

One of the most pressing new issues, as a result of the opposition’s tactics in these current wars, is mild to moderate brain injuries from blasts. We now know that immediate treatment of brain injuries can lessen their long-term consequences. "We're moving now, literally in our tenth year [of war], for better treatment of those kinds of injuries on the battlefield,” Mullen said. "We've since shifted dramatically on the battlefield, to pull people out of the fight in the case of any blast, and to evaluate them immediately." before transitioning them to longer term care.

A bigger concern for the general is PTSD and its effect not only on the servicemember but his or her family.  “Getting (servicemembers) to raise their hand and ask for help is truly difficult. We're starting to break through on that ... but in addition to members who have PTS, there are spouses and children who have PTS-like symptoms," he said. 

"If I am an 11- or 12-year-old right now, I have only known war, and I have seen my father or my mother less than half my life." Military children now going off to college may have spent junior high and high school seeing next to nothing of their deployed parent or parents. It’s hard to know what impact this will have on their future.

"Initially, it was deploy. Then it was get ready for the return from deployment, how do we prepare for that. Then it was get ready for the next deployment," Mullensaid. "And what we've found out is we have to start building resilience in every single one of us, from the first day of basic training." 

Mullen’s wife has been a help to him in understanding the pressures of military life on spouses and families. She has taught him that "we're in a time when we're just not going to be able to move people like we did ... it's education, it's kids in school, it's spouse careers. We're going to have to be based, I think, in places longer than we have in the past." 

"Particularly guardsmen and women, and [reservists], who live in every single corner of this country," he said. "They live in rural areas where medical care is not that great. They live in small communities where schools are small – and my ability to reach out to those teachers and touch them, and educate them about what a young boy or girl is going through, is still a challenge." 

All of that, he said, is "part of making this war visible, having leaders understand this, and then try to figure out local solutions."