Donald Trump Quotes

I'm trying to raise awareness for veterans.

My brother-in-law, Chuck, whom I have known since we were teenagers, is a disabled veteran who was wounded while fighting with the marines in Vietnam. I've been around to observe how the war affected his life and the problems that veterans have, and I knew for a long time that I wanted to write a song about Vietnam.

When people come back from war and combat and they see things that maybe a lot of the folks in this room have seen many times over, and you're strong and you can handle it, but a lot of people can't handle it.

What happens when these young men and women come home so scarred and so wounded? We are ignoring that fact. We're just shoving them under the carpet.

Sarah Palin, suggesting her son's arrest on domestic violence charges was a result of post-traumatic stress disorder and partially due to President Obama's lack of respect for men and women in uniform.

These are things that we hear from military families everywhere we go. But it - on PTSD, the thing that I want to make sure people understand is that the vast majority of veterans and military families aren't dealing with any kind of mental health. But there are - these are what are called the invisible wounds of this war. And many times they don't present.

As a veteran, I know firsthand the satisfaction there is in defending the democracy you so strongly believe in, but I can also attest to the trauma encountered from combat on the battlefield.

Veterans' issues are quite close to my heart. I find it quite hard to talk about, actually.

The lives of prisoners of war after they are returned is almost never discussed, never explored.

We are particularly interested in the mental health programs and policies that support our troops and their families before, during, and after deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan.

My greatest disappointment is that I believe that those of us who went through the war and tried to write about it, about their experience, became messengers. We have given the message, and nothing changed.

More soldiers died last year by their own hand than at the hands of the enemy…. More than 22 veterans commit suicide every day.

We watch our sons go to war, disagree with the rationale for sending them, loathe the men who ordered them to battle, and then, when the veterans come home, beg and plead with the local V.A. to ensure they have access to proper care.

We do a very good job at fixing broken bodies but not such a great job at healing broken minds with our returning veterans.

We owe it to our service men and women and their families, who sacrificed so much for our country, to find out the answers they deserve and make care and treatment for them, their children, and their grandchildren a priority.

You have these people that fight wars for their country, and then they come home and they need to attend to their mental health, and they can't get a job. That's a real thing.

I didn't hear anybody talking about the plight of a soldier coming back home and what he'd gone through. That was why I wrote about that stuff. If somebody else had done it, I probably wouldn't have touched the subject.

I try to stay involved with veterans' issues. I work with some veterans charities.

Veteran causes are an extremely important issue, especially the transition from military to civilian life.

When vets come home from war they are going through a tremendous change in identity. Then the VA, and others, encourage them to view themselves as disabled.

Veterans' issues have always spoken to me.

Uncle fought in Vietnam and then he fought a war all by himself.

Mr. McCain fought in Vietnam. I think that he has enough blood of peaceful citizens on his hands. It must be impossible for him to live without these disgusting scenes anymore. Mr. McCain was captured and they kept him not just in prison, but in a pit for several years. Anyone [in his place] would go nuts.

The war does not end when you come home. It lives on in memories of your fellow soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who gave their lives. It endures in the wound that is slow to heal, the disability that isn't going away, the dream that wakes you at night, or the stiffening in your spine when a car backfires down the street.

Fury is an entirely appropriate response to a system that sends young people to kill other young people in a war that never should have been waged. Yet the American Right is forever trying to pathologise anger as something menacing and abnormal, dismissing war opponents as hateful and, in the latest slur, "wild-eyed". This is much harder to do when victims of wars begin to speak for themselves: no one questions the wildness in the eyes of a mother or father who has just lost a son or daughter, or the fury of a soldier who knows that he is being asked to kill, and to die, needlessly.