Our guest bloggers are Lawrence J. Korb and Alex Rothman.

Earlier today, President Obama unveiled his latest initiative to reduce veteran unemployment: a $6 billion jobs corps program which, if approved by Congress, will create opportunities for returning service members to serve their country in a new capacity — as policemen, firefighters, and employees of the National Park Service.

In addition, General Eric Shinseki, the Secretary of the Department of Veteran Affairs and himself a wounded war veteran, announced that the Small Business Administration will begin offering online entrepreneurial training courses to veterans and their families.

These initiatives are the latest example of the Obama administration’s deep and ongoing commitment to taking care of our men and women in uniform, even as they transition out of the service. Since coming into office, President Obama has substantially increased funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs. It is the VA that assumes responsibility for service members as they leave the force and transition back to civilian life, and its programs will only become more essential as more men and women return from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Last November, Obama signed the VOW to Hire Heroes Act, which provides companies with a substantial tax credit if they hire unemployed or disabled veterans. And the President has also used his executive authority to establish a national Veterans Job Bank, authorize 6-months of career counseling at locations across the country, and create My Next Move, an online database that helps connect veterans with jobs that build off their military experience.

Perhaps most importantly, President Obama, the first lady, and Dr. Jill Biden have brought public attention to the problem of veteran unemployment and the valuable skills that our service members possess. All the president and his administration have done to highlight this issue appears to have prompted employers to take a second look.

As a result of the President’s policy, the jobless rate among post-9/11 veterans — as this blog noted earlier today — fell four percent in January, from 13.1 percent in December to 9.1 percent today. This is a tremendous improvement from one year ago, when the unemployment rate for these veterans stood at about 15 percent. And the initiatives announced by President Obama today will continue to target veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, who suffer from unemployment rates significantly higher than those facing the broader veteran population.

President Obama has made much progress in tackling veteran unemployment. But much work remains to be done. The unemployment rate for veterans under the age of 25 is nearly 30 percent, more than twice the rate of civilians their age.

Moreover, with the war in Iraq over and U.S. involvement in Afghanistan coming to a close, the Pentagon has announced that it plans to reduce the ground forces to near their pre-war levels. This process will entail shedding about 100,000 ground troops, a move that will further increase the number of service members looking for civilian jobs.

Over the past decade, in the name of supporting our troops, Congress has steadfastly passed war supplemental after war supplemental. But it is imperative that this support does not end when our men and women in uniform come home. Congress should approve President Obama’s veterans jobs corps and allow these men and women who have served so admirably overseas to reinvest their efforts at home.

Our guest blogger is Peter Orr, the Senior Sudan Advocate for Refugees International.

In the last few weeks, the media has ramped up its coverage of violence in the South Sudanese state of Jonglei — and rightly so. Inter-ethnic clashes in Jonglei flared up in January, pitting the Lou Nuer and Murle ethnic groups against each other in what is the latest round of recurrent attacks between the two.

At the same time, however, violence on a much larger scale is hitting Sudan’s “new south”: Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile States. Fighting between the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement – North (SPLM-N) has forced tens of thousands of people to flee to Ethiopia and South Sudan. Nearly as many have been internally displaced and face dire food shortages.

Displacement is a growing problem in the region, and aid groups face immense challenges providing enough emergency food and care to support the displaced population. Bombing and fighting in the area have prevented local families from cultivating their crops, and a poor harvest in November left food stocks even lower than usual. The most insidious problem, however, is the aid blockade imposed by Khartoum.

The government’s refusal to allow international aid agencies (both UN and private) into its territory is putting tens of thousands of lives at risk. Only the Sudanese Red Crescent, seen as neither impartial nor capable of handling the needs of civilians in government and SPLM-N areas, has been allowed to enter the area.

The U.N. and countries including the United States have tried to shift Khartoum and stave off a humanitarian disaster. In recent weeks, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and the U.N.’s top humanitarian official both visited Sudan and pressed Omar al-Bashir’s government for greater access. But neither visit was successful in opening Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile to desperately needed assistance.

Khartoum is clearly in bunker mode. Feeling that it was not sufficiently “rewarded” for allowing South Sudan to break away, it is now wary of any incentives the West might offer for opening up these war-torn states. It is also keen to avoid a second Darfur, where Khartoum saw humanitarian assistance as merely a friendly façade for Western meddling. More than that, Bashir’s regime sees the aid blockade in Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile as another way to force the SPLM-N to surrender for the sake of suffering civilians.

Given the dire need in these two states and the lack of movement by Sudan, some in the U.S. are now calling for forced access to Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile – whereby food and medical supplies might be flown or trucked into the two areas against Khartoum’s will. Certainly, the need is clear; but leaving aside the prospect of Sudanese military retaliation, the practicalities of such a move are thorny indeed. Dropping aid from the air would be incredibly costly, and it’s unclear how the supplies would be distributed once the aid hits the ground. Meanwhile, the land routes from South Sudan into Blue Nile and Southern Kordofan are either impassible or go through Khartoum-held areas. Ethiopia, another possible entry point, would be wary of provoking Khartoum by cooperating with such a plan.

For the time being, Khartoum’s recklessness and intransigence is certain to push more families from Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile into South Sudan and Ethiopia – adding to the over 100,000 Sudanese refugees already there. Those who can’t flee will face even more danger and deprivation; many will surely die.

As humanitarians, we continue to hope that this time Khartoum will prove its critics wrong; that this time it will welcome assistance and not endanger thousands of lives out of pique. But after years of disappointment, it is hard to expect anything better from Sudan. And the fear is that the most the world can do is prepare for the human tragedy that is about to unfold.

For the past 24 hours, news outlets have feverishly reported on Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s belief, as first reported by the Washington Post’s David Ignatius, that “there is a strong likelihood that Israel will strike Iran in April, May or June.” The views attributed to Panetta were quickly echoed by Israeli officials. But the appearance of a consensus that Israel has already decided to bomb Iran is undermined by various statements from U.S. and Israeli officials.

Former Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Moshe Ya’alon, speaking at the Herzliya conference on Thursday, boasted that all of Iran’s nuclear facilities “can be hit, and I speak from experience as the IDF chief of staff,” and Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, speaking at Herzliya later in the day, warned that there is a consensus among many nations that “a nuclear Iran will be more complicated to deal with, more dangerous and more costly in blood than if it were stopped today.”

While Panetta’s reported views, along with those of senior Israeli officials speaking at Herzliya, were interpreted by many as evidence of an emerging consensus that Israel will attack Iranian nuclear facilities before June — when Iran enters what Israelis describe to Ignatius as a “‘zone of immunity’ to commence building a nuclear bomb” — U.S. and Israeli officials are not in agreement on the inevitability of an Israeli attack.

Panetta, speaking in Brussels yesterday, refused to comment on Ignatius’s column but told reporters that “Israel has indicated they are considering this, and we have indicated our concerns.” The Associated Press reported Panetta’s comments in an article emphasizing that “Israel’s major allies in the West are working hard to talk it out of a unilateral military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, arguing forcefully that an attack ultimately would strengthen, not weaken, the regime in Tehran.” And in a seeming effort to deter an attack, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey reportedly warned Israeli leaders last month that the U.S. would not participate in a war against Iran initiated by Israel.

U.S. defense officials are not alone in expressing serious misgivings about an Israeli attack. While Ya’alon, Barak and Panetta’s comments dominated news coverage yesterday, The Independent reported that almost the entire hierarchy of Israel’s military and security establishment is concerned about the consequences from a premature Israeli attack on Iran, according to Lt. Gen. Amnon Lipkin-Shahak. Lipkin-Shahak, in comments starkly contrasting with Ya’alon and Barak’s hawkish warnings at Herzliya, warned that there had been little analysis of what happens the “day after” Israel strikes Iran and “It is quite clear that much if not all of the IDF [Israeli Defence Forces] leadership do not support military action at this point.”

Earlier this week, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper advocated that economic pressure could dissuade Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon and CIA Director David Petraeus urged policymakers to examine the current and upcoming IAEA reports to determine Iran’s nuclear intentions. The IAEA has said it has concerns about military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear program and inspectors returned from a monitoring trip to Iran this week. But with reports of inspectors not receiving full access to sites mentioned in the IAEA’s November report, Tehran will be under heightened pressure to cooperate with the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency during its next trip to Iran later this month.

Today’s stronger-than-expected jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics also contained good news for veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The unemployment rate for veterans of the two wars fell from 15.2 percent a year ago to 9.1 percent last month, while the national unemployment rate fell from 9.1 percent to 8.3 percent during the same period.

The report also showed a big drop for the entire veteran population, as the unemployment rate fell from 9.9 percent to 7.5 percent, lower than the national average.

The news is surely a welcome relief to the veteran community that has been hit especially hard by the weak economy. Unemployment rates for post-9/11 veterans have consistently remained above the national average, and a recent report issued by the U.S Army shows that the impact on returning soldiers has been devastating.

With the backing of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, an emphasis on hiring veterans was a key component of President Obama’s proposed American Jobs Act, which was blocked at every turn by congressional Republicans. After voting down the full jobs bill in the Senate and House, Congress passed the Vow to Hire Heroes Act as a standalone bill nearly unanimously in November. The law provides tax credits to employers who hire veterans.

Today, President Obama spoke in Arlington, Virginia to unveil further efforts to place an increasing number of returning veterans in jobs. He called for an additional $6 billion in spending to place as many as 20,000 veterans in jobs, and is asking Congress to increase funding in the next budget for programs that will place veterans in local police and fire departments.

The Republican candidates for president have largely settled on two common themes throughout the campaign thus far: that President Obama is ushering in American decline, both at home and abroad, and that the United States should confront Iran militarily over its nuclear program. “Internationally, we have witnessed a weakening of our military and a decline in our standing in the world,” Mitt Romney said in December. While Romney has gone back and forth the in using harsh rhetoric on Iran this campaign season, his competitors aren’t so shy about using bellicose rhetoric. Rick Santorum said attacking Iran is part of his plan.

Last night on CNN, host John King asked former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a Republican who served in both the Obama and George W. Bush administrations, about the GOP charges. While Gates noted that America’s economic standing has been in flux for decades, he called the charge that the President is overseeing American military decline “ridiculous” and later said the GOP’s militaristic rhetoric on Iran is “irresponsible”:

GATES: Are we talking about relative role economically in the world? Because that’s been going down for 60 years. It was an unnatural situation to begin with. If we’re talking about military power, I think that’s ridiculous. Our military power has nothing comparable to it anywhere in the world or any combination of nations that come anywhere close to our military power. [...]

And those who say we should underestimate the consequences of going to war [with Iran]. This is, I think, one of the toughest foreign policy problems I have ever seen since entering the government 45 years ago. And I think to talk about it loosely or as though these are easy choices in some way or sort of self-proclaimed, obvious alternatives, I just think is irresponsible.

Watch the clip: