In his speech Bob Woodruff, an ABC News anchor who was severely injured by a roadside bomb in Iraq, did not focus just on motivational advice because, he joked, he didn’t remember the speech given by Ted Koppel at his graduation twenty-five years earlier.  Woodruff also took the time in his speech to connect his personal story to a major political issue of our day in a non-partisan way.  Specifically, he discussed the war in Iraq reminding the students that regardless of how they felt about the war – they needed to make sure that our veterans are treated with respect when they return.  On the eve of Congress considering continued war funding, Woodruff bravely reminded us,

“In this war it is not clear how many are injured. Mine was obvious, but others are not. A recent report by Rand Corporation found that more than 300,000 soldiers are suffering from some kind of brain injury. That includes physical injuries or mental stress from combat. Some of them have obvious wounds; scars that mark them as brain injured, but others are more hidden from the outside, in a way, invisible.

As you probably know most of these soldiers are around your age. They wake up every day wondering if this is going to be the day they get hit by a sniper bullet or stumble on an IED [improvised explosive device] in the dirt on the side of the road or under the body of a dead dog.

Whether you are for or against this war, on the right or on the left, this is not a political issue. I believe that veterans deserve to be treated with dignity when they return home. It is simply the right thing to do.”

I hope that the graduates took to heart Woodruff’s advice to “seize it, suck it up, [and] go after your dreams,” but more importantly I hope that the 20,000 people sitting in the Carrier Dome on Sunday are inspired by his message that protecting veterans must be a renewed priority.