As America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan came to a close, thousands of courageous men and women who risked their lives fighting for years to protect our country and our way of life began coming home and transitioning into civilian life. For so many of them, that transition left a gaping hole.
Just a few weeks earlier, they had been a critical part of operations vital to national security. Decisions they made under fire had life and death implications for their brothers and sisters fighting to their left and right in the heat of battle. These were missions they carried out to keep their families and all Americans safe without any expectation of recognition or thanks.
Arriving back home, their days seem empty in comparison. For many, the most important decision they now must make may be which of 12 brands of cereal on the grocery shelf they will choose or what to wear to work the next day. Ordinary daily life is a shock. Something is missing.
That something is having a purpose.
America is more divided than we have been since the Civil War, and political violence is on the rise. Politicians and media celebrities work to dehumanize the other side, and social media platforms fan the flames to drive clicks, views and revenue. We have been sorted into echo chambers where we seldom encounter other Americans who don’t think like us, act like us or look like us. Trust has been significantly eroded to be replaced by fear – not because of some horrific crime we have committed against one another, but because of perceptions we have of other Americans as our politics has become more and more partisan.
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Veterans can play a strong role in creating the trust America needs. Veterans are one of the most trusted institutions in America. According to a 2024 Gallup poll, 61 percent of Americans trust the military “a great deal or quite a lot,” compared to Congress coming in at a staggeringly low 9 percent. Veterans hold a special place in American society. They are trusted on both the left and the right of the political divide in America; and therein lies the opportunity.
Our brave men and women coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan need a new hill to climb, and there is no greater hill to climb right now than to help unite the country across our political divide. Our veterans fought to defend American democracy overseas, and now we need them to do one more tour and fight for it again here at home. Veterans can be our greatest asset in this historically divisive time.
I am one of those veterans who returned home from the wars with a gaping hole inside me, aching for purpose and meaning. As a result, I foundedMore Perfect Union, an organization and movement that could tap into the lessons we had learned downrange in combat to help unite the country that we all love and fought so hard to protect.
Many of those lessons we learned while serving are still applicable to this new mission. In highly fragile regions, we were tasked with building trust among warring tribes in a village to prevent the infiltration of violent extremist organizations like Al Qaeda and ISIS. We formed those bonds of trust using classic counterinsurgency tactics and hard-won lessons learned from two decades of asymmetric warfare.
We learned how to map out communities to understand the real power dynamics within a community and across rival factions. We learned how to earn the trust of power brokers within each of those factions. We brought them together around a common project for the greater good of the community and region These projects were varied, like a large-scale farming cooperative, building a school ,or repairing basic infrastructure like roads and bridges to ensure trade routes stay open and communities maintain access to markets.
Through these tactics, we were able to form strong bonds of trust among these warring factions to keep out extremist groups looking to exploit the weaknesses of isolation and division.
As veterans come home from foreign wars, we are returning to a situation that seems shockingly all too familiar. We see two rival factions separated and exploited by the most extreme voices in our society. It’s time to use our battle-tested lessons here at home — restoring unity and hope to prevent those extreme voices from tearing us apart. In the wake of a particularly contentious election, veterans can help turn down the temperature in communities across the country — reminding all of us that we are not Republicans and we are not Democrats. We are Americans.
We have one more mission to ask of our veterans. They can help us find a new patriotism in this important moment. They can help us remember that there is so much more that unites us than divides us. Veterans can help us find common ground, and then lead us beyond that to higher ground.
Harriman is founder and president of +More Perfect Union.
