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Each year, for more than 30 years, there has been a ceremony at the national Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the Vietnam Veteran Memorial Fund In Memory Ceremony and Father’s Day Rose Remembrance. Not this year. Due to President Donald Trump’s decision to stage a military parade on the day, the ceremony had to be moved away from the historic site honoring our Vietnam Veterans.
During the Vietnam War, five times young men were drafted in Trump’s place. If any of them made it home alive, they did not get a parade. Whatever the opposite of a parade is, that is what they got for a homecoming.
Trump was safe at home, but in later years equated his purported avoidance of STDs in his leisure time, to the military service of his peers in Vietnam. He has insulted our Gold Star Families and called our honorable veterans and service members suckers and losers.
In my view, Trump deciding he’ll preside over a military parade on his birthday is a slap in the face to our veterans and their families. He is prioritizing this frivolous spending over actual veterans’ benefits and services and legitimate spending the nation actually needs.
Donald Trump deciding that we, the taxpayers, including veterans and their families, will be paying for it? That adds insult to injury. Repeating the inexcusably horrible treatment of our Vietnam vets is unconscionable to me.
Jane Perry
Bangor
