I write this letter not with a heavy heart, but with outright indignation.The statements in it are directed to all segments of the American body politic, media and just uncaring and wavering citizens.You are held up toridicule by much of the world and it has nothing to do with our Government and military not bowing to the United Nations or some ‘ World Court.’ It is because of our lack of unity and the perception the average American does not know a thing about the rest of the world. That is unfortunately true.
You were led by the very same personalities and organizations down the road to your willing defeat in Southeast Asia. Not the defeat of our valiant military and those of our allies but, yours. NEVER AGAIN!
How easy are you to lead down the road to defeat? Please allow me to refresh your memories. Contrary to what the media and politicians put out today I andmy brave fellow warriors were participating in the Vietnam War when it was popular. Did our battlefield defeats, like the French, lead to a demand for us to quit and pull out? Oh no, it was you on the homefront who lost heart initially, listening to the very same voices you are listening to today. The claim was that American Soldiers and Marines could not find this elusive enemy and could not defeat him because this kind of war could not be won. We beat that five-foot tall, eighty five-pound sucker into dog dirt and our very own media called it a ‘defeat.’ Cronkite said it and you, not us but you, believed it then and too many of you darned fools believe it today. This time we will require truth and you will listen to us and not the mob. NEVER AGAIN!
John Kerry is not your President today because of us, the real veterans of the Vietnam War. He was not ‘SWIFTBOATED’; he was knocked out by we who actually know what a low-life nobody of war he was in his few months in Vietnam. The ‘Swift Boats and POWs For Truth’ are not some right wing lobby, they are us and we are them. You want to use our dead, many of whom may be rightly laid at your and Cronkite’s feet? Not this time you uneducated in warfools. You want to make movies and then tell us you are experts on the realworld? Sean Penn is a punk with no experience in the world, which allows him to sit in judgement on any real man. He is a pretender. That is his job! He,like Jane Fonda before him, has no special insight into politics or war. They are pretenders and it is their function to play real or imagined people and make themselves believable on the screen. But once again, they and you wantto extend that to real life? NEVER AGAIN!
You have the gall to allow Dan Rather to march out in front of you on the screen and proclaim himself a ‘former Marine’? He got the boot in boot camp and never made it to being a Marine. How dare you tarnish the image of a brave and legendary branch of service by allowing that quitter to claim he was one of them. You then want to hold up Murtha and Kerry as people to be listened to about the military and wars? They were the least of us and you want to shove them in our faces again and proclaim them ‘heroes’? Not this time boys and girls because we are not going to put up with it. NEVER AGAIN!
You want to come to our wall and use it to make some political point and bringanother generation to battlefield defeat? You are not going to shout us down this time. You come near that wall and it had better be with nothing but quietrespect. We do not ask this by appealing to you as fellow Americans. We knowthis does no good with your ilk. We require you to show respect to our fallenbrethren, those still missing, and those serving today and to us. This is nota request, it is an order. An order from the only group with the authority to give it: US! We earned the right on terrible battlefields, for you to listen to us and not Fonda, Penn, Kerry or even a fallen honorable man’s mother. He is us and we are him and if he died, it was with us and not with you. NEVER AGAIN!
In closing let me say that we by being who we really were on the battlefield, need not even raise our voices or fists to the mob. You shall by your very presence and bearing show you are greater men and women than any whom mount their podium. By merely looking them in the eye directly, you will say to those of ill intent on our sacred ground: YOU SHALL NOT PASS, NEVER AGAIN!
God Bless you all, at home and on the battlefield...and God Bless America. To those with losing in your hearts, NEVER AGAIN!!
MARK SMITH