I am a 73-year-old Vietnam vet. I listened to John F. Kennedy, when I was an 11th-grade high school student, as he said the words: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” Three years hence, I was in Vietnam, voluntarily, no questions asked. It was the right thing to do. To this day I hold those words dear.
To hear our current president and his gang disparage the honorable men and women who embraced Kennedy’s words cuts me to the quick.
I liked Dwight Eisenhower, George H.W. and George W. Bush, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama. Men of honor and integrity. Either Republican or Democrat and neither perfect. Of those elected, I stood ready to support them as commander in chief. Proud to have them as the guardians of the democracy.
But now I fret so. Over 50,000 GIs sacrificed themselves in that war. And for this?
I am so ashamed of us as a people, a republic, stained by hatred, greed and avarice.
I fear most of all for my grandchildren.
God save us.
Carl Gustafson
Gorham
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