First Lady Talks Military Family Support on ‘Letterman’

By Elaine Sanchez

American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, March 20, 2012 – First Lady Michelle Obama encouraged Americans to rally in support of military families during an appearance on the “Late Show with David Letterman” last night.

The first lady shared a few laughs with Letterman, but then grew serious when the topic turned to her Joining Forces campaign. Obama and Dr. Jill Biden, the vice president’s wife, launched this initiative last year to boost support to troops, veterans and their families.

Service members and their families have served and sacrificed for more than a decade, the first lady noted, yet most Americans are unaware of the extent of their challenges. “We take it for granted because we have 1 percent of this nation serving and protecting the rights of the other 99 percent of us,” she said.

Growing up in south Chicago and with limited exposure to the military, the first lady said, she wasn’t aware of these challenges either until recently. “It wasn’t until I started campaigning and traveling around to military bases where I got to meet these very resilient, proud, disciplined, smart individuals,” she said. “I thought, ‘Most Americans have no clue about the level of sacrifice they’re making so we can live in freedom.’”

The Joining Forces campaign is intended to ensure every service member, veteran and family member understands “they live in a grateful nation,” she said.

Obama cited the progress she’s seen in military family support since Joining Forces launched last spring, particularly in the area of employment. Organizations have been hosting veteran job fairs across the nation, and President Barack Obama has launched programs and incentives to encourage private-sector employers to hire veterans.

Due to these efforts and others, she said, the unemployment rate among veterans is decreasing at a faster pace than the broader unemployment rate. As of last week, the unemployment rate for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans was down from last year’s high of 12.5 percent to 7.6 percent, below the national rate of 8.3 percent.

While this progress is a “great thing,” the first lady said, she also called attention to military spouses’ employment challenges. In this decade of war, military spouses have moved forward despite the challenges of frequent moves and deployments -- all while caring for children and a household.

But when it comes to moving forward in their own careers, she said, military spouses often run up against a brick wall as they’re forced to kick-start their careers at each new location.

“These men and women are just as trained, they are just as prepared, they are just as competent” as their civilian-life counterparts, Obama said. “They’re some of the best this country has to offer.”

The first lady encouraged people to find military families in their midst and then “do whatever they do best,” whether it’s offering to mow a lawn or babysit for a family with a deployed loved one, or providing pro bono accounting or attorney services.

Obama also noted the importance of caring for children from military families. It’s hard to imagine what they’re going through, she said, as they move from base to base every couple of years. She recalled meeting children attending their 12th school in nearly the same number of years.

Still, they’re keeping their grades up and are “still managing to keep it all together,” she said. “Just imagine what these kids need.”

Military families need to be on the forefront of Americans’ minds, she told the audience. And, through Joining Forces, “we’ll do everything we can to rally support for them so that they never feel that they’re alone in this.”

Mullen Discusses Afghanistan, Iraq, ‘Don’t Ask’ on Letterman

By Jim Garamone

American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, June 14, 2011 – America’s top military officer explained what members of the U.S. military have gone through during 10 years of war to the audience of the “Late Show with David Letterman” last night.

Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told celebrity host David Letterman that the American people need to know what their armed forces are doing and the sacrifices service members and their families are making.

“We’re in our tenth year of war,” the chairman said. “We’ve had almost 2 million men and women serve in Afghanistan and Iraq. Some of them have seen horrors we can’t even imagine.”

These soldiers, Marines, sailors and airmen have deployed repeatedly. “Some of our big units, which would be a brigade of 4,000 or 5,000 soldiers, have deployed for a year at a time -- four, five, six times,” he said. And then the units are home for a year.

This has caused enormous stress, Mullen said. “We’ve lost upwards of 6,000 individuals, very special people who sacrifice their lives,” he said. “We’ve had tens of thousands physically wounded, lost limbs. We’ve had tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands suffer the invisible wounds of traumatic brain injury or post-traumatic stress.”

The military makes up less than 1 percent of the total U.S. population, the chairman said. He wants America to do right by this generation of veterans.

“They’re looking for jobs. They come back to a GI bill that's very good. They want to go to school,” he said. “There’s a sea of goodwill out there that wants to make a difference in their lives. And so I’ve worked hard to try to focus on that. We’re only 1 percent of the population, and yet they’ve marched off to war and done what America has asked. They’ve done it as well if not better than ever in our history. And I’m very proud of them. We should, from my perspective, work hard to repay that debt.”

The chairman wants the American people to understand the circumstances of service members and their families. “What I am trying to do is bring voice to their sacrifice, and a level of awareness to Americans of what they’ve been through,” he said. “These are the best young men and women I’ve ever served with.”

Mullen also discussed Afghanistan, Iraq and the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal with Letterman.

The chairman said defense leaders are focused on transition in Afghanistan. After surging 30,000 additional troops into the country, coalition forces now are looking at transitioning security responsibility to Afghan forces. Next month, the transition begins in seven areas of the country.

“We’ll meet here over the course of the next several weeks with the president to determine [which] troops will start to come out next month,” Mullen said. “We don’t know what the pace is or the number.”

The transition will be complete in 2014, the chairman said.

The United States still has 48,000 troops in Iraq, down from almost 200,000 a few years ago. All American troops will be out of the country by the end of the year under the current agreement with Iraq, he said. “Whether the Iraqis will ask us for some kind of small footprint in the future is to be determined here in the next few months,” he said.

The chairman is optimistic about Iraq’s future. “From what I have seen … [Iraqi leaders] seem to be focusing on their country as opposed to their individual parties in their country or the kind of sectarian split that has been so bad for them in the past,” he said. “I’m actually encouraged. I think economically they will be in pretty good shape. They’ve got a lot of oil and they will, I think, move forward in the next several years to make that a viable part of their future. So I’m actually optimistic.”

Mullen explained his position on repeal of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell law. “I testified in front of Congress a year ago February that I personally couldn’t reconcile an institution like the military, which values integrity in everything that we do, yet asking people to come to work every single day and lie about who they are,” he said. “That is how I felt then. That’s how I feel now. The law has been changed. We’re right now in the middle of conducting training prior to certification. Certification will take place … certainly in the next couple of months.”