Letter to the Editor: Real Heroes

By COLONEL (RET.) ROBERT POWELL U.S. Army Infantry Carrollton
GA

Editor,
Benedict Arnold of Connecticut was an American patriot and a hero at Saratoga early in the American Revolution. However, this fact was cancelled when he became a traitor later in the war.
I served three tours in Vietnam and commanded a recon platoon and three infantry rifle companies. In 1971, I was wounded for a seventh time.
In 1971, John Kerry was working with Jane Fonda aiding the enemy that we were fighting. They were burning American flags and carrying pictures of Ho Chi Minh and communists flags. The next year, propaganda posters could be found all over Vietnam’s jungles of Fonda wearing an enemy uniform, manning an antiaircraft weapon in Hanoi, and of Kerry leading a demonstration in Washington.
In 1971, Kerry published a book that was pro-Hanoi and whose cover mocked the flag raising at Iwo Jima. His book and speeches trashed an entire generation of the United States Armed Forces who fought in Vietnam.
These activities make John Kerry, Jane Fonda and all others like them, traitors in my book. The blood of thousands of America’s finest is on their hands, The North Vietnamese were encouraged to continue a war that they couldn’t win on the battlefield, but on our home front, A war that was fought for a noble cause to stop communism and to save South Vietnam was defamed, smeared and ultimately lost. Lost by the Kerry types, left-wing liberal politicians, most of the media, and hordes of college protestors and draft dodgers. The draft dodgers were later given legitimacy and called real heroes by Jimmy Carter. This is a slap in the face to anyone who ever served and the most disgraceful act of any president in our history.
Now, it breaks my heart to see the same thing starting to happen to our troops in Iraq. The attack against them is being led by many in the media. John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Tom Daschle, Max Cleland, Wesley Clark, the Michael Moore types, Al Gore, Jimmy Carter and others who have politicized our national security. These so-called patriots are greatly damaging the war against terrorism. They would also have us get permission from a corrupt and predominantly anti-American U.N. before defending our country. To their type, America is always wrong.
One last fact is that real heroes don’t daily beat their chests, like John Kerry, proclaiming their service and calling themselves heroes. Did you every hear Bob Dole, who went through far more than most, do such a thing when he was a senator or running for president?