Reintegration Challenges Quotes

I just felt from personal observation that there is nothing more dislocated or alienated than a lifelong military person trying to cope in civilian life. It's like two completely separate planets.

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.

We noted the psychological problems facing many of the returning from Iraq veterans - of the 700,000 returning veterans, more than a 100,000 have been diagnosed with problems, but the numbers are likely to get worse, as those with multiple deployments return. We should have valued the loss of life as a result of these suicides, using the same procedures we used for the loss of those who died in combat.

America does not like losers. Look how we treated those soldiers who came back from Vietnam. Because they lost. America likes winners.

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.

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.

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.

The challenges military families face from frequent relocations and deployments are themselves patches of service, and that's why supporting our military families is one of my top priorities in Congress.

Most people coming out of war feel lost and resentful. What had been a minute-to-minute confrontation with yourself, your struggle with what courage you have against discomfort, at the least, and death at the other end, ties you to the people you have known in the war and makes for a time others seem alien and frivolous.

We ask our men and women in uniform to leave their families, our guardsmen and reservists to leave their jobs. We ask you to fight, to sacrifice, to risk your lives for your country. The last thing you should have to do is fight for a job when you come home.

We keep a woman in prison for decade after decade at a cost of $60,000 a year, and then give them $200 when they hit the gates for release. And, adios. People have to get their IDs, Social Security cards. They have to get clothing, housing, apply for benefits and services, and it's impossible to do with 200 bucks.

For many of the brave men and women who have fought on the front lines, returning home means trying to navigate a complicated and bureaucratic Veterans Administration benefits system.

I've always had a lot of time for servicemen. Yet there's been this bad relationship between civilians and the armed services. We say to soldiers, 'We want you when we want you, but stay away in peacetime. We're proud of you, but keep away from my daughter and don't come drinking in my pub.'

It's hard for people sometimes to relate to me. They weren't in the military, they weren't injured overseas in Iraq, they weren't burned, they didn't go through 33 surgeries, or two and a half years in the hospital.

Congress has an obligation to ease the challenges our veterans face when they come home and return to civilian life.

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.

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

After I came back [to China], there was still a long period of time when I felt I had nothing to do.

I remember the Korean War very well. And I remember the soldiers who were POWs who supposedly were "brainwashed," quote, unquote, who gave in, so to speak. And when they came back, they were treated like pariahs and traitors.

I don't want to act as though my deployment was particularly rough, because it wasn't. I had a very mild deployment; I was a staff officer.

Young men who have been away, been to war, they are different when they come home.

I feel oddly at peace with the ups and downs of pandemic life. They're not too different from the ups and downs of deployment life, which I've experienced a lot the last few years as my husband, an Army Special Forces officer, has been overseas.

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.

World War II affected the male population in a very detrimental way. They were happy to be home, happy to be alive, happy they won, but they could not express to anybody the horror they had been through.

Here in Israel, we want the boys back home, we demand it from our government, who often pay a steep price to get hostages back. But we need a happy ending. We don't want to deal with those days after release, their post-trauma or reintroduction to society. Yet coming home is only the start of their journey.