The article presented here is a review of the twenty-four articles, research notes, or book reviews pertaining to veterans that have appeared in our journal since its inception in 1974. For the purposes of discussion, the articles are divided into a thematic scheme. Following each thematic section, the authors pose a number of potential research projects that, in their opinion, would advance research on veterans' issues and may be of interest to our members.
Go to http://afs.sagepub.com/cgi/search?FIRSTINDEX=30&fulltext=VETERANS&sortspec=relevance.
2.
In approximate terms, there have been 768 articles published (not including book reviews), given four issues per year and approximately six articles per issue. Thus, these articles on veterans represent about 3.12 percent of all published articles. Also, the reader will note a minor difference in the title of our journal. The switch from Armed Forces and Society to Armed Forces & Society came in 1990. In this article, we decided to use the latter.
3.
Jack Ladinsky , Review Articles: “Vietnam, the Veterans, and the Veterans Administration,”Armed Forces & Society2, 3 (1976): 435–465 . Ladinsky reviewed ten works: (1) Senate Committee Print No. 18, 93rd Congress, 1st Session,Final Report on Educational Assistance to Veterans: A Comparative Study of Three GI Bills (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1973); (2) John Helmer,Bringing the War Home (New York: Free Press, 1974); (3) Sar A. Levitan and K. A. Cleary,Old Wars Remain Unfinished: The Veterans Benefits System (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 1973); (4) Sar A. Levitan and J. K. Zickler, Swords into Plowshares: Our G.I. Bill (Salt Lake City, UT: Olympus,1973); (5) Charles J. Levy,Spoils of War (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,1974); (6) Robert J. Lifton,Home from the War—Vietnam Veterans, Neither Victims nor Executioners (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1973); (7) Lee N. Robins, The Vietnam Drug User Returns, Special Action Office for Drug Abuse Prevention, Executive Office of the President, Special Action Monograph Series A, no.2 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, May 1974); (8) Source Material on the Vietnam Era Veteran, Senate Committee Print no. 26, 93 Congress, 2nd Session, February 12 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1974); (9) Paul Starr, The Discarded Army: Veterans After Vietnam (New York: Charterhouse, 1973); (10) Michael K. Taussig,Those Who Served, Report of the Twentieth Century Fund Task Force on Policies toward Veterans (New York: Twentieth-Century Fund, 1974).
4.
See Power, Politics, and People—The Collected Essays of C. Wright Mills, ed. Irving Louis Horowitz ( New York: Ballantine , 1963): 292–304.
5.
These three entities controlled the definitions and construction of the veterans' agenda for decades. The power of this “iron triangle” has begun to diminish and unravel only during the past six years.
6.
See Linda Feldmann , “Now Running for Office: An Army of Iraq Veterans—All but One of These 11 House Hopefuls Are in the Democratic Party,”The Christian Science Monitor, February 22, 2006. See also Bryan Bender, “Veterans Take On New Battle: Run for Office, ‘Fighting Dems’ See Options in the War against Terrorism,”Boston Globe, November 27, 2005.
7.
See the following Web sites for these two reports: http://stinet.dtic.mil/andwww.defenselink.mil/ra/; also see GAO report,Military Personnel—DOD Needs More Data to Address Financial and Health Care Issues Affecting Reservists, report to Congressional Committees, September 2003 (GAO-03-1004).
8.
It was unclear to this author if that data originated from some special subset.
9.
Martindale and Poston cite the Villemez and Kasarda study as the only research that correlated findings on war era and race.
10.
See the 2000 Survey of Reserve Component Personnel, sponsored by the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs—Defense Technical Information Center Web site (http://stinet.dtic.mil/), and the 2002 Survey of Spouses of Activated National Guard and Reserve Component Members, also sponsored by the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs (www.defenselink.mil/ra/).
11.
See GAO-03-1004, “Military Personnel—DOD Needs More Data to Address Financial and Health Care Issues Affecting Reservists,” Report to Congressional Committees, September 2003.
12.
See the Department of Veterans Affairs' Web site on women veterans, http://www1.va.gov/womenvet/page.cfm?pg=53.
13.
The .pdf file named “Update_Att_A for SP Guidance May 2 2005.pdf” was obtained by specific request from the DVA by the author. The only title/header is “The Comprehensive VHA Mental Health Strategic Plan Aligned with the Recommendations of the Action Agenda (AA),” May 2, 2005, update.
14.
In 1999, there were about 1.6 million, and in 2000, a little more than 1.7 million. See Fiscal Year 2004 DOD Statistical Report on the Military Retirement System, DOD Office of the Actuary, Defense Manpower Data Center. The Department of Veterans Affairs Web site link, http://www.va.gov/vetdata/demographics/Vetpop2001/Data/10L.xls, projects these numbers out twenty-five years to 2030. Apparently, the high point has been reached; its numbers project a steady gradual drop of approximately twenty thousand per year in retiree population to approximately 1.3 million in 2030.
15.
However, even this can get muddled when one throws in the concept of things such as the Army's combat action ribbon—the soldier/veteran was actually in a combat operation, as opposed to (for example) being in service support in Saigon. Certainly, similar comparisons can and will be made in the future about Iraq—distinguishing between “desk jockey” service deep in the “Green Zone” and combat patrols along the Syrian border.
16.
In the United States, this phenomenon is often referred to as “grunt chauvinism.”
17.
Conservative columnist Max Boot was widely criticized for an article that was critical of the amenities provided to soldiers in Iraq in American island bases complete with lattes. The question this begets is whether our military is providing too many “front end” comforts as inducements for enlistment and retention. One could ask if young service personnel would actually be better off with a stronger package of educational, small-business, health care, and home-loan benefits that would better serve them (and the nation) in terms of their reintegration into civilian life. See Max Boot , “Our Enemies in Iraq Aren't Drinking Lattes” (for the Los Angeles Times),The Concord Monitor, July 11, 2006, p. B7-B7.
