A retired US soldier still fighting to preserve liberty!
Author: Captain Terry M. Hestilow, USA, Retired
Captain Terry M. Hestilow, USA, Retired, a "mustang" officer, served in the United States Army from 1970-2008. His combat tours include duty in Vietnam and Afghanistan. He holds two degrees from the University of Texas at Arlington.
I grieve today for many reasons; but I particularly grieve today with the good and honorable people of South Vietnam who lost their nation forty-nine years ago today to a communist takeover at the hands of their North Vietnamese countrymen and betrayal by American leadership who forgot our promise to preserve them from the growing communist aggression. Great freedom loving Americans fought and died with the South Vietnamese patriots and our faithful allies to stop the communist takeover of Southeast Asia, but a growing American pro-communism movement in American education, and a sick uncommitted political leadership in Washington that took over the Pentagon and our civilian government brought about a collusion with the communists to sell out the South Vietnamese people’s hope of freedom and the sacrifices of multiplied thousands of the Americans who paid mightily believing our post-World War II nation was still committed to freedom for all oppressed people.
We sent the best of America to fight the slavery of communism in Vietnam as we had likewise fought the National Socialism that threatenened the world in World War II; and so many of the best Americans never came home, never got married, never had children or raised those children with the great love of country and commitment to the great American values the world so desperately needs again today. Perhaps we lost America, too, forty-nine years ago today, as so many deceived Americans foolishly embrace the cancer of communism. I and my brothers and sisters came home, we thought, to the America we loved; but America had already suffered more loss than we could have known—and that loss is becoming horribly clear to us today.
While I grieve for the truly terrible loss suffered by the people of South Vietnam to the brutality of enslaving communism (the full grown product of all forms of Marxist Socialism), I rejoice that so many freedom loving South Vietnamese people risked everything to escape by any means available, often dying at sea, to escape communist slavery at home to come to the United States of America and have their own shot at the American dream.
In spite of all of our problems, the United States of America is far better today because in spite of the tragic loss of their homeland and families left behind in communist Vietnam, our Vietnamese brothers and sisters brought their fine values and culture to make all of America so much stronger and better.
Maybe America can come back, but if we do, it will have to be because we stand together, from whatever slavery we have fled, and to forever reject the Marxist Socialist pathway to communist slavery and restore the American and Christian values America was founded upon originally.
Whatever comes next, I want my South Vietnamese fellow American countrymen to know that I never sold you out to the communists in Vietnam when I was there fifty-two years ago, and I will not sell you out to the communism that threatens your new found freedom in America today. You are a blessing to me and to this nation that you have made to be your new home. I thank God for you and I am committed with you to keep our home free for all as long as God allows.
Welcome home. Let us together keep the United States of America truly free.
Your forever fellow patriot.
Captain Terry Michael Hestilow United States Army, Retired
I still care. Forty-nine years ago the United States government turned its back on every promise made to help the freedom loving South Vietnamese people defend against Soviet-backed communists. Our government also turned its back on the price service-members and their families paid because we thought we could trust our government. Turns out none of us could trust our government.
I grieve for the Vietnamese who were forced to flee their homeland because we were promise breakers. But I tell our Vietnamese-Americans that the United States benefited most in the end, because the Vietnamese communities in America are the best communities we have in the USA. Too bad that they had to lose their homeland in the exchange.
We all learned a lesson. Of course the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned us about in his farewell speech on January 17, 1961, made a fortune off our sacrifices.
On April 30, 1975, 49 years ago, we rewarded the communists with South Vietnam. Today we are rewarding them with the United States of America. Too bad no one listened years ago.
To my South Vietnamese friends, thanks for making us all better. I still care.
Terry M. Hestilow Captain, U.S. Army, Retired Vietnam, 1971-1972 European Cold War, 1975-1991 Afghanistan, 2007-2008 April 30, 2024
I have been working on a rewrite of four radio sermons of Dr. M. R. DeHaan, M.D., circa 1955. In one of the sermons dealing with “The Rapture of the Church,” and the daily news feeds today (2024) I thought that all of us would benefit from the opportunity to read an important prophetic word from Zechariah, an Old Testament prophet. I am including an introduction to the Scripture passage from Dr. DeHaan’s text. It is my prayer that many today will consider what the Word of God through Zechariah speaks about what I believe is a time very soon. This is most serious. Time is short.
Terry M. Hestilow, Captain, Infantry, U.S. Army, Retired
April 28, 2024
Dr. DeHaan:
Then there will follow a period of approximately seven years of terrible judgments on the earth, called the tribulation, the day of Jacob’s trouble, and indignation of the Lord, mentioned hundreds of times in the scriptures and described in great detail in the last book of the Bible, the Revelation. At the close of this period when the nations are gathered against Jerusalem the Lord Jesus Christ will suddenly return WITH HIS CHURCH which was caught away before the tribulation, and He will destroy the wicked enemies, deliver the nation of Israel and set up His glorious Kingdom for one thousand years, the literal millenium upon the earth. Zechariah says in unmistakable terms in Zechariah 14:1-12:
“Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, and thyspoil shall be divided in the midst of thee.For I will gather all nations against Jerusalemto battle; and the city shall be taken and thehouses rifled, and the women ravished; andhalf of the city shall go forth into captivity,And the residue of the people shall not becut off from the city.
Then shall the Lord go forth, and fight againstthose nations, as when he fought in the day of battle.
And his feet shall stand in that day upon themount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem onthe east, and the mount of Olives shall cleavein the midst thereof toward the eastand toward the west, and there shall be a very great valley; and half of the mountainshall remove toward the north, and half of it toward the south.
And ye shall flee to the valley of themountains; for the valley of the mountains shall reach unto Azal:yea, ye shall flee, like as ye fled from beforeThe earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah: and the LORD my Godshall come, and all the saints with thee.
And it shall come to pass in that day,that the light shall not be clear, nor dark:but it shall be one day which shall beknown to the LORD, not day, nor night:but it shall come to pass, that at evening time it shall be light.
And it shall be in that day, thatliving waters shall go out from Jerusalem;half of them toward the former sea,and half of them toward the hinder sea:in summer and in winter shall it be.
And the Lord shall be king over all the earth:in that day shall there be one Lord, and his nameOne.
And the land shall be turned as a plain fromGeba to Rimmon south of Jerusalem:and it shall be lifted up, and inhabited in her place,from Benjamin’s gate unto the place of the first gate,unto the corner gate, and from the tower of Hananeelunto the king’s winepresses.
And men shall dwell in it, and there shall be no moreutter destruction; but Jerusalem shall be safely inhabited.
And this shall be the plague wherewith the LORDwill smite all the people that have fought against Jerusalem;their flesh shall consume away while they stand upon their feet,and their eyes shall consume away in their holes,and their tongue shall consume away in their mouth.”
Think on this. The Biden Administration (Marxist pro-Communist Democrats seeking to destroy the sovereignty and prosperity of the historic United States of America) is now planning to send 61 billion dollars (that is with a “B”) to Ukraine.
In this time of economic destruction of the U.S. economy and the impoverishment of American families, think about how good it would be for U.S. citizens if the U.S. government would INSTEAD NOT TAKE the 61 billion dollars out of taxpayer’s pockets in the first place so citizens could spend or invest that money into America’s survival and growth? I’m talking about citizens spending their own money IN AMERICA, not the government taking American dollars and sending them internationally to support a nation we have NO trearties with nor obligation to support.
Democrats and Uniparty Republicans hate America and are working hard every single day to destroy American’s lives and prosperity. Throw them OUT!
Captain (Retired) Terry Michael Hestilow United States Army April 28, 2024
I’m just going to say right up front. When indoctrinated Americans take up the Muslim chant “from the river to the sea”; we need to ask them if they mean, “from the Mississippi River to the Atlantic? or from the Mississippi River to the Pacific? or both?” And immediately after asking them that; ask them why they believe that “native Americans should be put to death? or driven from their land?”
They probably will not have the critical thinking skills to understanding that in the same way that native Americans represent the oldest rightful People of the United States . . . so likewise the Hebrew nation have been the rightful People of the state of Israel for more than 4,000 years. So when ignorant white American college students and Democrats take up their chants of “death to America” and “death to Israel,” their logic of hatred is really to slaughter the native populations of Americans also.
Israel never abandoned their ancient homeland! They were scattered to the four corners of the world against their will.
The United Nations did not give the ancient home of Israel back to the Jewish People. The world, manifest in the United Nations in 1948 recognized that the Jewish People had a moral right to return to their homes; and the nations of the world recognized that civilized nations had a responsibility to honor the moral right of the Jewish People to return and be safe in the land they were brutally driven from.
Israel attacked no one; but over and over since 1948, Israel’s Muslim neighbors have attacked Israel because of their anti-Jewish racism. The People of Israel did nothing to be attacked.
The Muslim nations have consistently over the years since 1948 breathed out only hatred and death to the Jewish People—and now are joined by America’s government and the racist hatred against the Jewish People inspired by Democrats and educators to drive a new generation of jihadists to seek to drive Israel again from their homeland that God Almighty established for them.
The racist Muslims attacked Israel on October 7th; not the other way around. Israel should defend themselves and the United States People must NOT give aid to Israel’s enemies. All who take up the cause of destroying the Jewish People are not fighting the Jewish People; but rather, they are fighting against Almighty God Himself who will defeat all of Israel’s enemies. Let us never pretend we have a roll in fighting against God’s People. Be forewarned!
So, when you hear Left-Wingers calling for “death” to the home and claim on native Americans—and all whose roots are deep in American soil—Native Americans and all whose home is America the land many of every race have defended and kept free, and “death” to the Jewish People and Israel; ask them if they learned their racism and hatred from Marx, from their professors, from their racist parents, or the modern day Communist Democrat Party?
My dear friends, I just sent an email to my U.S. Representative, Beth van Duyne, R-TX-24, concerning legislation being prepared for consideration beginning the week of April 21, 2024, that is, in my sincere opinion, designed as a clandestine effort intended to result in the death–the assassination–of President Donald J. Trump in a jail cell, without the protection of the Secret Service.
Let that sink in. The Democrats have announced that next week, beginning April 21, 2024, they will introduce legislation to strip presidents convicted of a felony of their present authorized Secret Service protection detail. The Democrats are being deceitfully crafty by not specifically naming President Trump as the object of their legislation; but whom else, today, could be their legislative target?
And how would this legislation be used as a tripwire down the trail to President Trump’s assassination? It is very simple.
President Trump is already the target of legal persecution by crooked Democrat attorneys general, prosecutors, and judges at both state and federal level seeking to find ways to conduct “lawfare” against President Trump to destroy him financially and political because it is clear that they cannot defeat President Trump in the race for the presidency. They are at their wits end. So this legislation is designed to appear as a means of removing from “a president” their legal right to protection from the Secret Service. The legislation in not specifically worded to be limited to President Trump; but rather, is targeted to–“they,” whomever “they” may be–who may be a president “convicted” of a felony crime.
So, when the present court being conducted illegally on many levels, that can seat a jury with alternates in five days, being run by Democrats with a vested interest in Trump’s conviction, the stage is set for the Democrats to “Epstein” President Trump.
I am warning that if this legislation to remove a president’s Secret Service protection upon conviction is passed in the U.S. House of Representatives, it will be quickly passed likewise by the majority Democrat Senate and signed by Joe Biden at the speed of light. Then, when President Trump is railroaded and falsely convicted in this sham of a Manhattan court, and separated from his protective detail from the Secret Service, the court will immediately arrest President Trump and transport him to a solitary prison cell where the guards will fall asleep and jail cameras will stop working. Later as the lights come on in maximum security where President Trump has been secured–like in any Marxist prison or jail, they will find President Trump officially committed “suicide” precisely like Jeffrey Epstein before him–and who will have any evidence to say otherwise?
This Democrat legislation is the preamble to the assassination of President Trump in a jail cell by and on the behalf of the Democrat-Communist Party!
This legislation–and this illegal court MUST be stopped!
I am publishing this today, April 19, 2024, to ensure that Americans are able to see and link the betrayal of our Republican House of Representatives, led by Speaker Mike Johnson, to fund the $60B Ukraine endless war bill to continue funding the military-industrial complex (elites) endless weapons production—that President Dwight Eisenhower warned about in his farewell speech, January 17, 1961, provided below:
THE WHITE HOUSE TEXT OF THE ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT EISENHOWER, BROADCAST AND TELEVISED FROM HIS OFFICE NI THE WHITE HOUSE, TUESDAY EVENING, JANUARY 17, 1961, 8:30 TC 9:00 P.M.. EST.
My fellow Americans: Three days from now, after half a century in the service of our country, I shall lay down the responsibilities of office as, in traditional and solemn ceremony, the authority of the Presidency is vested in my successor.
This evening I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell, and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen.
Like every other citizen, I wish the new President, and all who will labor with him, Godspeed. I pray that the coming years will be blessed with peace and prosperity for all.
Our people expect their President and the Congress to find essential agreement on issues of great moment, the wise resolution of which will better shape the future of the Nation.
My own relations with the Congress, which began on a remote and tenuous basis when, long ago, a member of the Senate appointed me to West Point, have since ranged to the intimate during the war and immediate post-war period, and, finally, to the mutually interdependent during these past eight years.
In this final relationship, the Congress and the Administration have, on most vital issues, cooperated well, to serve the national good rather than mere partisanship, and so have assured that the business of the Nation should go forward.
So, my official relationship with the Congress ends in a feeling, on my part, of gratitude that we have been able to do so much together.
II.
We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations. Three of these involved our own country. Despite these holocauste America is today the strongest, prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.
III.
Throughout America’s adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among people and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt both at home and abroad.
Progress toward these noble goalsis persistently threatened by the conflict now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beinge. We face a hostile ideology — global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method. Unhappily the danger it poses promises to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle — with liberty the stake. Only thus shall we remain, despite every provocation, on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment.
Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements of our defense; development of unrealistic prograins to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion ni basic and applied research — these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.
But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: The need to maintain balance in and among national programs — balance between the private and the public economy, balance between cost and hoped for advantage – balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable; balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual; balance between actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress; lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration.
The record of many decades stands as proof that our people and their government have, in the main, understood thase truths and have responded to them well, in the face of stress and threat. But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise. I mention two only.
IV.
A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.
Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – – is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present — and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.
It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system — ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.
V.
Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time, As we peer into society’s future, we—you and I, and our government—must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.
VI.
Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud soufedazarion of mutual trust and respect.
Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield.
Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war — as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years — I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.
Happily, I can say that war has been avoided. Steady progress toward our ultimate goal has been made. But, so much remains to be done. As a private citizen, I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance along that road.
VII
So — in this my last good night to you as your President — I thank you for the many opportunities you have given me for public service in war and peace. I trust that in that service you find some things worthy; as for the rest of it, I know you will find ways to improve performance in the future.
You and I – my fellow citizens – – need to be strong in our faith that all nations, under God, will reach the goal of peace with justice. May we be ever unswerving in devotion to principle, confident but humble with power, diligent in pursuit of the Nation’s great goals.
To all the peoples of the world, I once more give expression to America’s prayerful and continuing aspiration:
We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings; that those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibilities; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.
I am often thanked by my fellow Americans for my military service. Don’t misunderstand me, I appreciate it! I remember after I returned home from Vietnam few of my countrymen wanted to look at me, much less thank me for my service. I was thankful at the change I saw across America after the attacks carried out by our enemies on 9-11-2001. When I landed at DFW for my mid-tour leave from Afghanistan (yes, I fought in both Vietnam and Afghanistan), the welcome we received almost overwhelmed me! What a welcome change!
But have we now forgotten our great warriors who are now being attacked and abused by our president and those in charge of our Pentagon? Do you know that thousands of our service members gave their everything serving tour after tour in combat to defend our freedoms (yours and theirs), your choices, your way of life in America, but today, those seasoned defenders of our freedoms are being harassed, punished, and driven out of service before their retirements because they are exercising their own constitutional and religious rights to refuse mandatory injection of a proved dangerous and ineffective experimental injection against their consent?
That’s right! Today, when it is more important than ever that we retain our combat experienced warriors in service, our own federal government has joined America’s enemies, including our federal courts, and are attacking our most loyal citizens and defenders of America in their war to overthrow our Constitution!
If you truly support our currently serving warriors who are refusing to submit to this illegal mandate, trying to make them surrender their health and wellness to the political tyrants who hold their futures and America’s freedoms in contempt because our heroes won’t let them cancel their lives and careers, will you now demand that our federal government and courts vacate these illegal mandates and restore them all to duty without any possibility of derogatory reports and punitive action against them for exercising their constitutional and religious rights as Americans?
Our men and women in uniform are giving their all for you! What are you actually doing for them? Demand now that Biden and his Pentagon, anti-American, anti-Constitution tyrants, stop persecuting our sons and daughters for exercising the right they fought for us to keep! Fire Biden and all Democrats and Uniparty traitors! Do it every chance you get! Fight for those who have fought for you! Don’t just say it; do it!
Captain (Retired) Terry Michael Hestilow United States Army April 18, 2024
If I become the next Defense Secretary under President Trump, and the wind farms proposed and being built offshore in waters off the coast of California which would interfere with our critical submarine production and aircraft carrier operations and which would also interfere with our national defense security posture, we might expect the Russians to sabotage the wind farm’s support structures in the area unexpectedly just like they reportedly blew up their own Nordstream pipeline that fed the energy needs of Germany.
You can just never tell what those crazy Russians will do next!
For a sound national security posture we might need to help the whales and ourselves.
Captain Terry M. Hestilow United States Army, Retired April 18, 2023
combatsoldier 