Good afternoon. It is a distinct privilege to speak to you on this occasion and at this place. I am not a veteran. To have been chosen by veterans to speak about their sacrifice, and to speak in remembrance of those who sacrificed everything, is an honor for which I will always be grateful.
Rolling Thunder is the biggest gathering of its kind -- the largest group to gather on Memorial Day with the special purpose of remembering our prisoners of war and those missing in action. I know that many of you in the audience were personal friends in Vietnam of one or more of the men who never came home; and one of my points this afternoon is that the ties of comradeship, as well as the obligations of honor, that make it
especially fitting to remember those men on Memorial Day. And, here in the shadow of the Vietnam Memorial, I also want to share my thoughts on the extra debt we owe all those who served in the Vietnam conflict. I say an extra debt, because our Vietnam Veterans not only stood for America, as all veterans have, they stood for America at a time when their national leaders, and even many of their countrymen, were letting them down.
Memorial Day is important. Remembering the sacrifice of our warriors is important. No man who went to fight for America ever returned the same. Many did not return at all. One of the ironies of war is that military casualties are almost always young men, and it is of course the young who have the greatest reason and desire to live. Soldiers face death when they are most full of life. They sacrifice everything at precisely that time when they have the most to lose. Their courage deserves at the very least to be remembered with gratitude.
We cannot properly remember our warriors without contemplating the nastiness of war, the physical and emotional rigor of it. Many in the audience know these rigors better than I. You can remember what I can only imagine: the heat, the cold, the wet, the lousy food, the loneliness in the field, the mind numbing exhaustion of 20 hour days, day after day, monotony without sleep, tension without activity, punctuated by outbreaks of killing and being killed. The horror of war is what makes friendship in war vital -- so vital in fact that we give it a special name. Soldiers call those they serve with their comrades. The skill and loyalty of a soldier's comrades are his only protection from death, their confidence and hardness of character his shield against despair; their stories of home his lifeline to the past and the future.
It is comradeship, even more than victory, that redeems war. That is why a soldier will die for his friends before he will die for his country. And comradeship makes Rolling Thunder, and everything it stands for, a moral necessity. To lose a comrade in battle is terrible. To leave a comrade behind in battle is against the instincts of every soldier. To leave a comrade behind and abandon his cause -- to join a conspiracy that denies his ongoing sacrifice in captivity -- would be unthinkable.
So the comrades of those left behind gather each year on this mall, and those of us you have recruited over time gather with you in spirit, here and around America. Together, we say to our government and our countrymen: we will remember these men. On Memorial Day and Veteran's Day and days throughout the year, we will remember. Though the government denies that they exist, we will not deny them. Though the bureaucrats and functionaries hide evidence about them, we will keep looking. Though they have become an inconvenience to American foreign policy, we will not sweep them under the rug. Though our hopes are often disappointed, though our cause is ridiculed, no matter how many times we are discouraged or how many years go by, we will remember. We will remember until we have rescued them, or confirmed their death and written their names on that wall, or until we meet again in a better place, where there are no wars and there is no separation.
The bonds of comradeship, the instincts of honor, require that we do this.
Those who are struggling to remember and rescue their missing comrades -- struggling against a government often deaf to the pleas of honor -- are writing yet another chapter in the saga of the Vietnam conflict. Vietnam is America's elusive war, the war our nation cannot forget and does not like to remember. The reason is not that the government's policy in Vietnam resulted in defeat -- though it did. The reason America cannot come to terms with Vietnam is that on the home front we did not act in a manner worthy of those who fought for us in Southeast Asia. They were faithful to us, but we were not faithful to them.
I do not say this to provoke recriminations. Memorial Day should not be a day of bitterness. I say it because it is true, and because there is no healing, for America or her veterans, without confronting the truth.
What was happening at home while our soldiers were fighting the war in Vietnam? Our national leaders during that time, the so-called best and brightest among us, continued the war long after they now claim to have abandoned any hope of winning. They deceived the American people, and sacrificed the young men we honor today on the attar of mendacity and expediency.
At the same time, many of our students and opinion leaders were using the war as a hammer to strike blows at America's culture and traditions. While there was much in America that needed change, these social revolutionaries failed to distinguish the good from the bad or the war itself from those who fought it. In despising the war, they led many in the country to dishonor themselves by despising the warriors as well.
And what of the rest of us, those whom Richard Nixon called "the silent majority"? We had the numbers to have intervened decisively, and we had the instinct to know that something was wrong. Yet to our shame we were silent, in the only sense in which silence mattered; we chose not to know the details and not to act until it was too late.
It is that sense of shame felt by civilian, and corresponding betrayal felt by veterans of the conflict, that causes Vietnam to continue to be the elusive war, the war with which we cannot come to terms. But it does not have to be so. America can find peace in its memories of Vietnam, beginning today, on this occasion, in the shadow of the Vietnam Memorial, whose starkness and power convicts us of our failures. We can find peace by acknowledging the truth, and taking the action morally required by the truth.
Let those of us who were on the home front during Vietnam resolve today, we will never again fail those who serve us in battle. We will not allow our men to be sent into harm's way except for a good and honest cause - an American cause - and when they do go we will go with them, giving them our hearts and our full support, until they have achieved victory; and when they come home, we will make sure they all come home; and we will bind their wounds, and care for their families, and honor their dead. By such a resolution, and only by such a resolution, can we begin to pay the debt we owe to those who died, and those still missing in action.
And to the veterans here today who fought alongside those men, my prayer is that you will use this occasion, not just to hold on to the memories of the comrades left behind, but also to release for good any demons you may have brought back from the battlefield. I am not a soldier. I do not pretend to have your experiences or to have carried your burdens. But I know this: the veterans of Vietnam deserve the satisfaction that comes from knowing they did their duty, and did it under circumstances as difficult as any ever faced by American soldiers in war. Your faithfulness, and that of your fallen comrades, redeems America's honor before the bar of history. No nation can ask more of its soldiers, and no man should ask more of himself.
I can never think of our prisoners of war, and those missing in action, without recalling the words of the 139th Psalm, where the Psalmist takes comfort from remembering that no one is ever missing from the providence of God: "Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the Heavens, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, If I settle on the far side of the sea, Even there your hand will guide me, Your right hand will hold me fast."
May those we honor especially today always have the comfort of knowing that, no matter where they may be, we remember their sacrifice, and God's right hand holds them fast.
May God bless you and all, and God bless America.