Let me recognize the wisdom expressed in Jack Kenny’s op-ed, “A fitting tribute to our veterans” (Monitor Opinion, Nov. 18). He is a Vietnam War veteran from Manchester.
In his words: “We like to think that in every war, young men and women serving in the combat zones are fighting for our safety, our security, our liberty. Hardly. No Afghan, Taliban or otherwise has threatened us, our families, our right to vote, our freedom of religion, speech or the press, or the right of people to peacefully assemble and seek redress of grievances. Ironically, we do that ourselves whenever we impugn the motives and malign the patriotism of those who protest our military involvement in remote places in the world that have, at most, a theoretical or imagined relationship to our national security. That serves to keep the blood, the corpses and the weapons of war flowing, but does not make us more secure.”
Let us pay heed to these words from one who personally learned the tragedy of an unjust war, and with many of us, laments that our troops remain in Afghanistan, 18 years after we first sent them to that far-off land.
OGE YOUNG
Concord