Sept. 11 reflections emphasize increase in job opportunities
New opportunities are opening up in the global job market as the United States’ role in Iraq makes the transition from active combat to what President Barack Obama said is a role of “advising and assisting” in his Aug. 31 address to the nation.
“Our combat mission is ending,” he said, “but our commitment to Iraq’s future is not.”
In accordance with the president’s plan to have all U.S. troops pulled out of Iraq by the end of next year, a new labor force is moving in to help stabilize the country.
“As our military draws down,” he said, “our dedicated civilians – diplomats, aid workers, and advisers – are moving into the lead to support Iraq as it strengthens its government.”
For many soon to enter the job force, this could mean an abundance of new opportunities.
“Private contractors are hiring all kinds of people that are willing to go to Iraq, and get paid a lot of money but live in a somewhat unstable environment,” said USU professor Jeannie Johnson, a former CIA analyst who currently teaches a course on international relations. “Everything down to aerobics instructors.”
This is all part of what Obama called a “new approach,” which “reflects our long-term partnership with Iraq.”
According to Johnson, however, this isn’t the first hiring push created by our conflict in the Middle East. She believes that the post 9/11 world has created a world of opportunities for students and job seekers.
“All of these new bureaucracies and institutions have been created and they are looking for bright people,” she said. “We learned that we were vastly under-tooled in our understanding of foreign theaters. There is a huge hiring push for anthropologists, historians, and people who have dedicated a lot of time to understanding languages.”
This means new opportunities for areas of study that may have previously offered limited opportunities outside of academia.
“This plays to the natural interests of a lot of students,” she said. “That means if they start thinking towards intelligence institutions they may find themselves with opportunities in the very near future.”
According to Veronica Ward, a USU professor who teaches a class on terrorism and anti-terrorism, the creation of a new job market is due to the nature of the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“There is no battlefield, and there are no uniforms,” she said. “Intelligence becomes absolutely crucial … you can’t use conventional tactics.”
However, she said lending cultural knowledge or language skills to the conflict in the Middle East doesn’t necessarily mean landing in a war zone.
“I don’t think very many linguists or anthropologists would be eager to go out in the field,” Ward said, “but they could certainly be very helpful within security forces or investigative units.”
Opportunities are not exclusive to those familiar with Middle Eastern languages and cultures. In an effort to be better prepared, agencies such as the state department are looking for experts in a wide variety of cultures and languages.
“President Obama and General Petraeus are in favor of empowering the state department and our civil services so that we have an institution’s worth of experts when the next big thing hits,” Johnson said. “Instead of scrambling for such people we want to have them on hand.”
Increasing the state department’s resources is one way that our nation has evolved since its involvement in the Middle East, he said.
“One of the lessons of our effort in Iraq is that American influence around the world is not a function of military force alone,” Obama said. “We must use all elements of our power.”
It is part of what Obama said was a “new push for peace in the Middle East,” a push that, according to Obama, will allow us to “do more than just defeat on the battlefield those who offer hatred and destruction,” but “also lead among those who are willing to work together to expand freedom and opportunity for all people.”
– mike.burnham@aggiemail.usu.edu