B.B.Bell ICAS Liberty Award Address

ICAS 2014 Liberty Award
Acceptance Remarks

General (Ret.) B. B. Bell
December 5, 2014
Cannon Caucus Room
United States Congress
Capitol Hill Washington DC

General Shin, Kyoung Soo thank you for your comments. I'm certainly not as deserving as you noted. To both Bruce Klingner and Christopher Chung, your introductory remarks are greatly appreciated and I thank you.

My deepest personal gratitude goes to Vice President Sang Joo Kim, President Synja Kim, and the ICAS Board whose leadership of the Institute for Corean-American Studies continues to be an inspiration for all humanity who cherish their lives, their liberty and their opportunity for the pursuit of happiness.

What an honor. I'm not only honored, but deeply humbled by this recognition. Frankly, I am certain that I'm undeserving, so it is with halting but sincere gratefulness that I accept the ICAS Annual Liberty Award on behalf of all the military personnel with whom I have Soldiered over my 39 years of service in the American Army.

Most, both American and Foreign military, served with courage and honor; too many were injured or wounded in the course of their duties, and some of the very best gave their lives in service to their respective countries. All understood they served to protect their citizens' lives, liberty and pursuit of happiness.

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Of course, these most fundamental truths of the human condition first erupted on the modern scene in the American Declaration of Independence. These seven words, with their pure clarity and conviction, well articulate inalienable rights of mankind throughout the ages. Indeed, all men and women who have ever inhabited this globe have deserved and continue to deserve nothing less.

These rights are universal and God given, and they are not subject to interpretation, minimization, or declination by those in leadership positions. Indeed, it is the solemn responsibility of leaders -- leaders now and over the ages -- to preserve these most fundamental gifts for the betterment of man.

And it is with great regret and sadness, which we all know so well, that these purest of rights are all too often withheld by tyrants -- from the very people to whom they were spiritually granted. Tamerlane, Ivan the Terrible, Robespierre, Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Mao Tse-tung, Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier, Idi Amin, and Pol Pot are but the tip if the iceberg of the most despicable over the last centuries.

They are joined today by the likes of Al Qaeda and ISIS and other horrific and inhuman terrorist groups. And, there are also the likes of Kim Il Sung, Kim Jung Il, and now Kim Jung Un to whom the bells of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness totally fail to ring. What is it that creates, then motivates, these monsters? What brings them into our midst. Perhaps we will never know how such evil springs from the hearts of humans.

What we do know, however, is that those who cherish Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness have always come forward; they have come forward in the darkest of times, with sword in hand, to meet and ultimately defeat those who would deny us our most basic freedoms. Patriots have sprung forth across the centuries to save their citizenry. There have been thousands, indeed millions, who have answered the call.

Tonight, we honor all of them. Most were and are anonymous, living fairly hidden and normal lives until the clarion call to duty came. But when that call came -- the call to march to the sound of the guns -- these unknowns have always banded together into powerful forces for good. Tonight I want to mention two of them.

First, an American, an Army Officer, a great patriot, and my friend. On September 11, 2001, Lieutenant General Tim Maude was working as the U.S. Army's Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel in the Pentagon, just across the Potomac River from here. Very few had ever heard of Tim as he quietly pursued his duties of protecting American lives, their liberty and their guaranteed pursuit of happiness.

At 9:37 on the morning of 9-11 ruthless Al Qaida terrorists crashed American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon savagely killing Tim and 124 other military and civilian Patriots, along with the 64 passengers aboard the aircraft. I was here then, on Capitol Hill, for office calls with selected Senators and Congressmen, having just left my Pentagon liaison office across the hall from Tim's.

It was from here, on the steps out front, that I watched my friends die at the hands of pure evil, and from here where I asked the question which haunts me to this very day, "Why was I spared?" God bless Tim and the others.

Then there was 27-year-old Sergeant Yoon, Jang-ho, a soldier with a South Korean engineer unit in Afghanistan. Very few had ever heard of Sergeant Yoon either as he quietly pursued his duties of protecting Korean and coalition lives, their liberty and their opportunity for pursuit of happiness.

On February 27, 2007 Sergeant Yoon was killed in a coward's suicide bomb attack at the front gate of Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan. I believe that Sergeant Yoon was the first deployed hostile fire casualty from the Republic of Korea Armed Forces since the end of Vietnam War. I was the Combined Forces Commander in Korea when he died in Afghanistan, but I had passed through that very gate at Bagram Airfield many times. With his family present, we forever memorialized Sergeant Yoon in a peaceful grove on Yongsan Garrison in Seoul.

These are but two of the tens of thousands -- indeed millions -- of modern day patriots who have donned the uniform of their country to meet and defeat those who would deny all of us our freedoms -- freedoms of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And, these patriots are at work for us tonight. Mostly in anonymity they stand in the frigid cold of Korea's first snow this year along the Demilitarized Zone to prevent the tyrant Kim Jun Un from fulfilling his dream of the enslavement of all Koreans.

In anonymity, they stand with Iraqis in the Kurdish city of Erbil to deny the despot Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the evil leader of ISIS, from enslaving and terrorizing huge swaths of our world. They stand in the eastern areas of Ukraine vowing to preserve their citizens' sweet taste of freedom in the face of an engulfing and expansive Russia and their KGB spawned ambitious leader, Vladimir Putin. They stand, willing to fight and die, literally around the globe, wherever tyranny rises from the darkest depths of the earth.

Again, it is for these mostly anonymous patriots that we gather here tonight. We honor their unending sacrifice, service, courage, and commitment to the simple precept for which the Institute for Corean- American Studies offers its most important annual Liberty Award -- Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

Thank all of you for coming here tonight to be part of the continued march for freedom. Thank you for recognizing me with the Liberty Award. I am extremely appreciative. Mostly in anonymity we shall prevail. Good will overcome evil. Right will displace wrong. Those who would deny us our Freedoms will ultimately crumble into the dust of history. The will of mankind is to be free -- To value life, to seek liberty, and to pursue happiness.

May God bless all who on this day are taking a stand for freedom in the face of despots; may God bless each of you here tonight for your commitment to these ideals, and may God continue to bless the Republic of Korea and the United States of America, both standing firmly at the center of the battle for human dignity and freedom. Thank you. Katchi Kapshida.

This page last updated December 12, 2014 jdb

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