Medal of Honor Recipient: I Hope We Planted 'Seed of Democracy' in Middle East

Medal of Honor recipient Clinton Romesha tells Newsmax TV that despite the rise of terrorism by Islamic extremist groups, he hopes his service in the Middle East changed a few young minds about who the good guys are.

"I still have hope that just in the time we were there on deployment, maybe at one point we planted a seed with one of those kids we handed candy to, gave a soccer ball, gave a backpack," former U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Romesha said Wednesday on "The Steve Malzberg Show."

Maybe one of those kids will grow up and understand what we were really trying to do there and to plant that seed of democracy and know that there's still hope. You never want to give up on that."

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Romesha is author of the new book, "Red Platoon: A True Story of American Valor," published by Dutton, a firsthand account of the fourteen-hour firefight at the Battle of Keating in Kamdesh in the of Nuristan province in eastern Afghanistan.

The 2009 battle resulted in 8 Americans killed and 27 wounded whilst the Taliban suffered an estimated 150 killed.

Romesha told Malzberg his unit was just two weeks away from leaving the area when, "unfortunately, the Taliban had other timelines."

"We were still leaving in two weeks, so it was a target opportunity that they couldn't lose either way," he said.

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