A look at Vietnam veterans in jail as warning of newer veterans fate

If saving veterans is not morally right to you enough, then think of how much money it costs to send them to jail because it's "between $62,492 and $88,892 a year." Is it worth getting this right finally? These are the men and women we trained to go into combat and risk their lives for us. What did we do when they came home? We tested the wind to see what we could get away with. We were able to just write off Vietnam veterans because we didn't have the Internet and the ability to cover their stories from around the country. We can't hide them now. You can't just write them off or the newer veterans.

Here in Florida there is not enough begin done for any of them and I've tried for 5 years to break through whatever stupid wall there is separating all the different groups while they play games. This is about their lives! It's about their families and it's about our communities. I tried to get churches involved and all but one door was closed. They wouldn't even discuss it. I tried to get service groups involved, but none of them responded. Folks, we're talking about what I do for free and they wouldn't even give me the time of day! For heaven's sake I live in Central Florida and only a few groups have supported the work I do. The last couple of years I had to travel out of state to help their veterans and help set up programs with other groups online. Not here though and that's a real shame.

Think Vietnam Vets Were Screwed? Wait Until You See How Many Veterans of Bush's Wars End up in Jail

By Penny Coleman, AlterNet. Posted September 9, 2009.


Far too many soldiers end up behind bars while the rest of us are free to ignore the human evidence of what our military ventures really cost.

As all the other justifications for the U.S. invasion of Iraq have fallen by the wayside, it is ironic that the one that remains is "freedom," because in the name of someone else's freedom, we train our own soldiers to behave in ways that may very well cost them their own.

Gordy Lane is a retired Syracuse police detective who served in the Marine Corps during the Vietnam War. As a cop, it was his job to put lawbreakers behind bars, but as a veteran, he understands that when you go to war, "you come back a little different than when you went over there."

"Listen," he says, "you pop up out of a foxhole, and you blow a guy's head open like a watermelon. The other two guys in the foxhole start patting you on the back and saying, 'Good job!' because you just did the worst thing that you can do to another person. How do you translate that into civilian life?"

For far too many soldiers, the simple answer is, you don't.

But with them behind bars and out of sight, most of the rest of us are free to ignore the human evidence of what our military ventures really cost. Even putting issues of compassion and justice aside, any number of alternatives to prison have been shown to save taxpayer money.

For example, the average annual cost of incarceration in New York state in 2008 was $44,000 a year. But a 2009 report by the Legal Action Committee found that for every individual diverted from prison into community-based treatment programs, the state would save between $62,492 and $88,892 a year.
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Think Vietnam Vets Were Screwed