Post-9/11 Veterans Are Helping Mend Our Social Fabric
Photo Credit: The Mission Continues
We have just come through a bruising election season, and the fight is still not over yet. The contest has thrown a harsh spotlight on our tattered social fabric, which has been fraying for several decades and is now threatening to rip apart. It remains to be seen whether and how we can repair it. Some strong fibers we can work into the mending include the patriotism, servant leadership, and diversity prevalent among the 17.4 million Americans who have served in the nation’s armed forces. In honor of Veterans Day, I asked my friend John Tien to reflect on veterans’ unique contributions to our civil society and democracy, especially those who have served in the two decades since the 9/11 attacks.
John is a terrific guide for us on this topic. The son of immigrants from China, John graduated in 1987 from West Point, where he was the first Asian-American to serve as First Captain, the cadet in charge of the 4,400-member Corps of Cadets. During his Army career, John commanded a scout platoon in combat during the first Gulf War in 1991, and later an armored battalion during the Iraq Surge in 2006-2007. John also taught on the Social Science faculty at West Point and worked in the White House as a senior national security advisor to presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
After retiring as a colonel in 2011, John joined Citigroup, where he is now an Atlanta-based Managing Director and chief operating officer of a retail unit of the bank that serves more than 20 million customers. As a volunteer, John has chaired the board of The Mission Continues, a leading veterans’ service organization, and is a member of the leadership council of the Bob Woodruff Foundation. I recently sent John a set of questions on topics that I thought would be of interest to readers here at The Art of Association. His responses appear below.
DS: What if anything is different about how veterans tend to think about citizenship and democracy? Are there any notable patterns in how veterans tend to get involved as volunteers and community members?
JT: Every member of the United States Armed Forces takes the same oath of service, that “we will support and defend the Constitution of the United States.” We take that oath willingly and voluntarily. From that moment on, everything we do is focused on serving that oath both in actual action – for example, fighting on the streets of Ramadi, Iraq or Kabul, Afghanistan – and in philosophical spirit. Unfortunately, when we transition from the military to civilian life, we come back to a society where the need and opportunity to serve our fellow citizens is not so obvious. Some veterans thankfully continue with direct service and become first responders, teachers, social entrepreneurs or join police or fire departments. It is not surprising then that so many post-9/11 veterans have flocked to organizations that allow them to continue to serve their fellow citizens as volunteers. The three biggest post-9/11 veterans non-profits are focused entirely on that approach: The Mission Continues, Team Rubicon, and Team Red, White and Blue. Through these great organizations, veterans volunteer together to serve their local communities or abroad in response to natural disasters.
DS: How are veterans of the post-9/11 conflicts different from their predecessors? What challenges does this present for the engagement of post-9/11 veterans in civil society?
JT: On September 11, 2001, the U.S. homeland was directly attacked for the first time since Pearl Harbor. Like they did in WW II, since 9/11, military-aged American citizens have voluntarily enlisted in record numbers compared to the periods preceding the conflicts they have fought in. That spirit of volunteerism in support of a bigger cause and to fight the good fight create a useful comparison of the post-9/11 veteran generation to the WW II generation. After 9/11, the mission was clear: we were all jointly called on to fight the Global War On Terror. While some will argue with whether it was a global war on the scale of WW II, one thing is true—those post-9/11 military servicemembers believed they were being called to duty to defend the nation and to do so as part of a multi-national coalition. Today, we remain a nation at war. Yes, the combat deployed troops are down almost 95% from the high of 190,000 at the post-9/11 peak. Nonetheless, when a veteran transitions into your local community today, he or she has served in a wartime military in which the greater good of defending the nation in wartime was at the root of their service psyche. I have found that the veterans who transition the best are the ones who find ways to be of service to others. Actually, that’s the motto of The Mission Continues: “Reporting for Duty in Your Local Community.” Interestingly, veterans also prosper in businesses where customers are the priority. The customer becomes the focus of service, whether it is a veteran turned Starbucks barista or a veteran being a project manager for a financial services firm.
DS: In the twentieth century, the Veterans of Foreign Wars and American Legion were the leading veterans service organizations (VSOs). They were advocates for veterans nationally and, through their local posts and halls, important fraternal societies. How is the landscape of VSOs changing for those who served after 9/11?
JT: The VFW and the American Legion are still active and do amazing work supporting their local communities and, as you noted, serving as advocates for veterans causes such as healthcare. Today’s post-9/11 veterans desire the same things: advocacy for the veterans causes they care about and a way to bond with others who have worn the nation’s colors. Current advocacy groups include Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, Student Veterans of America, and, more recently, Mission Roll Call. For gathering and bonding, the community service VSOs like The Mission Continues create opportunities to achieve a rare triple bottom-line: service to the community; service with the community; and service with other veterans.
DS: What are some exemplary veterans groups formed over the past two decades that are working to bolster their communities and civil society that you would commend to readers attention?
JT: I’m sometimes asked, which veterans non-profits are the good ones, or legitimate ones? Like any social entrepreneurial community, there are good, less good, and quite honestly, bad and sometimes even ill-intentioned veterans non-profits out there. Here in Atlanta, we have a convening group called VETLANTA . The co-leaders of that organization, an Army and an Air Force veteran, have a great saying: “the veterans know the good from the bad and the ugly so when in doubt, ask the other veterans.” So if you want to know the good national and local VSOs, my recommendation is to start with an organization like the Bob Woodruff Foundation. Part of the Foundation’s mission is to assess and then invest in the best VSOs out there so that our veterans and military family members can have their best possible future lives. The “local partners” section of the BWF website has a state-by-state listing of the local collective impact organizations, such as the one here in Atlanta, The Warrior Alliance.
DS: This summer you joined with the leaders of several veterans’ organizations to rally your fellow veterans to defend a free and fair election in 2020. What prompted you to do this? Did it feel like a departure from how you had previously sought to lead in civil society?
JT: If you are a post-9/11 military veteran, it means that you know what life looks like in a country where there is no democracy and, even more so, what a country’s citizens look and sound like who want to live in a democracy. Especially for those who served for the decade or so following 9/11, it would be highly likely that the veteran helped protect local Iraqi and Afghan polling places so those Iraqis and Afghans could vote in a fair and free election for the first time in their lives. Whenever I vote today in Georgia and the volunteer poll worker hands me my “I voted today” sticker with the Georgia peach, I go home and place it proudly on my bulletin board. I do that because when I was in Iraq, I remember the smiles on the faces of both the Iraqi men and women who went into a polling location and came back out proudly waving their blue-inked stained fingers showing that they voted that day. So with the group we organized this summer, we just wanted all Americans to be able to dip their finger in the blue ink of democracy and exercise their right to vote. Last week’s elections certainly prove that every vote counts. It counted for the nearly 71 million who voted for President Trump, and it counted for the more than 75 million who voted for President-Elect Biden. We wanted our elected officials to understand how vital America’s democratic character is to so many military service members. We wanted the elected officials to know that the fundamental proposition that every American citizen has the right to cast a vote in free and fair elections and that, in our nation, the will of our people determines who governs us, has been an essential part of the motivation to serve for so many of us. Indeed, some of our military brothers and sisters gave their lives to protect this ideal.
Lieutenant Colonel John Tien (Center) and Task Force 2-37 Armor Battalion Company Commanders, Ramadi, Iraq (December 2006)
DS: What transpired in the veterans community after you issued your call? Has anything surprised you?
JT: After we wrote the letter and posted it on Medium and it then became a USA Today op-ed, the comments came quick. The vast majority of the comments were positive. Some outside, but also inside the veterans community, however, charged us with being left-leaning and partisan. The words in the comments weren’t always so polite, either. Interestingly, the letter made no mention of either party and certainly did not reference any candidate. We simply called on the elected officials at every level to protect the democracy that veterans served and sometimes died for.
DS: Anything else you’d like to share with our readers on this Veterans Day, coming as it does the week after such a charged election?
JT: As President-Elect Biden said this past weekend, this is a “time to heal.” He also said, “I ran as a proud Democrat. I will now be an American president. I will work as hard for those who didn’t vote for me as for those who did.” When he said those words, it reminded me of what we in the U.S. military pride ourselves on being: servant leaders. We serve our troops first and always. We serve them no matter what their political party is, what the color of their skin is, their gender, their sexual orientation, their religion, or where they came from. In the U.S. military, we view diversity, equality, and inclusion as force multipliers for good leadership.
In the spirit of this need to heal and see each other as fellow human beings first, I recently partnered with eleven other veterans to create a mobile phone app: diversitypop. While my fellow co-founders and I know that we don’t have a corner on the DEI marketplace of great ideas, we do know our own experiences: over the past 30 plus years, since most of us entered the military, we saw the value of diversity, equality, and inclusion in the military, the companies where we work, and the communities in which we live. We hope that the app helps make the differences between us smaller and the connections among us even stronger as well as open our hearts and minds to understanding, valuing, and respecting one another.
Whether it is using this app or self-improving oneself on DEI in other ways, or helping others be more inclusive to others–especially those who may not have voted the same these past few weeks, I am confident that all Americans are ready to turn the corner on healing and hoping. On this Veterans Day and the days and months to follow, I look forward to serving this nation with all of you.
