America’s Veterans Are Civic Assets — Let’s Stop Fearing Them as ‘Violent’
The “violent veteran” narrative is as old as war itself. Odysseus, when he finally returns to Ithaca after enduring an epic series of trials in Homer’s epic poem Odyssey, kills more than 100 people who were dishonoring his home. In the War on Terror era, this narrative took hold, with stories about veterans as “ticking time bombs,” for example. And in the aftermath of January 6, an ideological imprint was added to the mix with concerns raised about extremism within the active-duty military and among veterans.
A new study proves yet again that such concerns are unfounded, however. The Institute for Defense Analysis found “no evidence that the number of violent extremists in the military is
disproportionate to the number of violent extremists in the United States as a whole.” This report comes just months after a comparable study by RAND found “support among military veterans for extremist groups and extremist ideals appears similar to or less than levels seen among the U.S. public in general.” Together, these reports should be more than sufficient evidence to put the narrative of violence by veterans to bed — but that’s not enough.
We need to change the narrative. As with habits, changing a narrative requires that we do more than just stop perpetuating a harmful one; we must replace it with a positive one. The narrative we should lift up is that of veterans as civic assets.
Veterans long have played an outsized role in American civic life. As democracy scholar Theda Skocpol has noted, veterans were the “mainstays of voluntary membership federations” throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. For example, the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) started as a group of 12 Union veterans of the Civil War in 1866 and grew to a membership of more than 400,000 Americans in 1890, becoming one of the nation’s largest civic organizations. The GAR included five presidents as members and, among other things, started Memorial Day as a national moment for remembrance. Similarly, the American Legion, a veterans organization founded in 1919, has offered its civic education program Boys State since 1935 and the American Legion Auxiliary has run Girls Nation program since 1947.
Veterans’ propensity for civic service remains strong today. The 2021 Veterans Civic Health Index — an in-depth analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data — found that veterans were more likely than their non-veteran peers to vote, volunteer and spend time with neighbors (among many civic behaviors). This is evident with civic organizations founded by the post-9/11 generation of veterans, such as The Mission Continues, Team Red, White and Blue, and More Perfect Union, that regularly bring thousands of Americans together, veteran and non-veteran, for civic and service activities.
Elevating the work of such organizations, and lifting up the narrative of veterans as civic assets, would benefit both veterans and our society more generally. The more veterans feel valued as civic assets, the more likely they will be to join groups and contribute to civic life. As James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, notes, “the more pride you have in a particular aspect of your identity, the more motivated you will be to maintain the habits associated with it.” This would generate a positive feedback loop: more veterans serving in civic life reinforces the positive narrative and creates further incentive for veterans to join. This cycle would bolster America’s civic fabric during a time of profound polarization and social isolation.
- Veterans Affairs Defends Flying LGBTQ+ Flag During Pride Month
- Veterans Day Reminds Us What It Means To Have a Strong Military
- All US National Parks Are Free on Veterans Day
- Involving More Veterans in Marine Conservation Can Restore Our Ocean — and Them
- TikToker Recruits Veterans for Secret US Military Bases in Israel
- Veterans are suffering from mental illness at an alarming rate with young, male veterans most at risk
The good news is that there exists a solid bedrock of positive thought about veterans among the American public. It’s not clear, however, that this sentiment translates into seeing veterans as civic assets and engaging with them as such. The situation is complicated by the fact that fewer Americans have direct connections to the military and veteran community. This means we need intermediating organizations, especially news and cultural media, to lift up stories of veterans as civic assets if a new narrative is to take hold.
But the burden is not entirely on the media or non-veterans. All of us, regardless of our connection to the military, can take action. Veterans organizations can place greater emphasis on programming that brings veterans and non-veterans together for civic work. Civil society organizations can prioritize partnerships with local veterans organizations and reach out to the Veterans Affairs system to create new opportunities to engage veterans. And military families play a vital role in shaping this narrative. The nonprofit Blue Star Families, for example, organizes Welcome Weeks in communities across the country to welcome the hundreds of thousands of military families that relocate each year.
When we think about veterans, we should see the local leaders organizing crisis response during a flood, the poll workers ensuring the integrity of our elections, and the parents coaching sports for kids from different neighborhoods. These are America’s veterans and it’s time we told more of their stories.
Dan Vallone, an Army and Operation Enduring Freedom veteran, is founding principal at Polarization Risk Advisory, a strategy and communications consulting firm.
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