Subject : FW: Epilogue to The New Soldier (1971)

From: Ron Leonard

We will not quickly join those who march on Veterans' Day waving small flags, calling to memory those thousands who died for the "greater glory of the United States." We will not accept the rhetoric. We will not readily join the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars--in fact, we will find it hard to join anything at all and when we do, we will demand relevancy such as other organizations have recently been unable to provide. We will not take solace from the creation of monuments or the naming of parks after a select few of the thousands of dead Americans and Vietnamese. We will not uphold the traditions which decorously memorialize that which was base and grim. . . . We are asking America to turn from false glory, hollow victory, fabricated foreign threats, fear which threatens us as a nation, shallow pride which feeds of fear.
John F. Kerry
Epilogue to The New Soldier (1971)

Those that do not learn from the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them. I guess those "fabricated foreign threats" took out the world trade center.

Ron

Ron Leonard
Diamondhead 085
Webmaster 25th Aviation Battalion
http://25thaviation.org

"Wars don't determine who wins, they only determine who is left"...