What do American troops, who have spent much of the past 15 years in desert camouflage, do when they come home? Compared with veterans of previous wars, they are more likely to work for the federal government, where almost half of all new hires are now veterans. They are more likely to be disabled. And they are less likely to be in the labour force. These last two trends mean that the financial cost of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars will remain high long after the final bullets have been fired. Around 200,000 people leave the military each year. Most go through a Pentagon programme designed to ease the transition to civilian life. This often points in one direction: towards government employment. Veterans have been more likely to work for the government than workers as a whole since the introduction, between the two world wars, of laws ordering the bureaucracies to favour them when hiring. There was a bump in the number of vets in the civil service after the second world war and again after Vietnam, but nothing on the scale of the increase since 2009 (see chart) when Barack Obama ordered the government to hire even more of them. Americans revere veterans almost as much as they distrust federal bureaucrats, yet increasingly they are the same people.
展开▼
