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Date Posted: Tue, May 24 2016, 12:27:38 PDT
Author: Steven Hall
Author Host/IP: 76-234-224-141.lightspeed.irvnca.sbcglobal.net / 76.234.224.141
Subject: Words from a President

On February 24, 1981, President Ronald Regan spoke these words prior to the ceremony awarding Master Sergeant Roy P. Benavidez the Congressional Medal of Honor. His words are as poignant now as they were then.

“Men and women of the Armed Forces, ladies and gentlemen:

Several years ago, we brought home a group of American Fighting men who had obeyed their country’s call and who had fought as bravely and as well as any Americans in our history. They came home without a victory not because they’d been defeated, but because they’d been denied permission to win.
They were greeted by no parades, no bands, no waving of the flag they had so nobly served. There’s been no “thank you” for their sacrifice. There’s been no effort to honor and, thus, give pride to the families of more than 57,000 young men who gave their lives in that faraway war… There’s been little or no recognition of the gratitude we owe to the more than 300,000 men who suffered wounds in that war. John Stuart Mill said, “War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. A man who has nothing which he cares about more than his personal safety is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.”
Back in 1970 Kenneth Y. Tomlinson wrote of what he had seen our young men do beyond and above the call of military duty in Vietnam—a Marine from Texas on his way back from an all night patrol stopping to treat huge sores on the back of an old Vietnamese man, an artilleryman from New Jersey spending his free time stacking sandbags at an orphanage to protect the children from mortar attacks, an Army engineer from California distributing toys he’d bought in Hong Kong to the orphans his unit had adopted…. None of the recent movies about that war have found time to show those examples of humanitarianism.
The stories go on and on. Bob Hope, who visited our men there as he had in two previous wars, said of them, ”The number of our GIs who devote their free time, energy and money to aid the Vietnamese would surprise you.” I guess you know what kind of guys your sons and brothers and the kids next door are.”
Well, yes we do know. I think we just let it slip our minds for a time. It’s time to show our pride in them and to thank them…”

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