Political Quotes

“I say in a very calm way, I listened carefully to my colleague. I take to heart what he has said. And I think it is very important. I don't question his generation in Vietnam. It was my privilege to be in the Pentagon at that point in time with the Department of the Navy. I went out across the country, spoke at the campuses, watched the extreme objection by his generation and, in hindsight, there was a lot of merit to that objection. I remember very well Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, under whom I served as Secretary of the Navy, saying, we have to figure out how to withdraw the United States from Vietnam. That is history. But in World War II, during which I served a modest period at the very end, and my colleague from New York, a somewhat longer period, our generation marched off under the old refrain, 'Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do or die.' We simply went, never questioned it. And as the Senator from Delaware said, there was greater clarity as to the enemy, the cause, and we had absolutely magnificent support on the home front. When I returned from Korea, then serving in the Marines for a short period of time, there was a marked difference between the attitude in America for the returning veterans of Korea and the veterans of World War II.”