Veteran's Day
Today I spent my first Veteran's Day in the continental United States of America (I did, admittedly, live in Hawaii for a while) since I was a baby. Veteran's Day is a holiday without "pomp and parade" -- and this is perhaps appropriate. It is, after all, a day of remembrance, not a celebration. Yet many people probably didn't give a second thought as to why they were off from work or school today. That is too bad. I'm not necessarily saying that every American should go out and shoot fireworks today, but I think that it is apropos to at least think about the millions of brave veterans that this country has laid to rest.
I heard on TV today that the veterans of World War II are passing away at a rate of approximately 1,000 per day. Before the passing of the next decade, those veterans may be nothing but a memory. My eyes well up when I think about that. Nobody in my family that I am close to served in WWII, yet the burden of losing one of American's greatest generations is a burden that I almost cannot bear without breaking down.
Now, some critics of American foreign policy may say that the motives of the American government weren't as pure as they have been portrayed. "WWII wasn't about freeing people," critics might say, "it was about ensuring the status quo of global power." The same critics say that Vietnam had nothing to do with helping people or promoting democracy, and that the war on Iraq is only about oil. And you know what, those facts are wholly irrelevant to Veteran's Day. Veteran's Day isn't about glorifying American policy. I'm not writing this to convince you that America is always right; I'm writing this so that you'll bear our vets in mind before this day is over. Whatever the ulterior movies of the American government may have been, American soldiers DID fight for freedom, and they DID fight to help rid the world of evil.
And many of them died in the process. We should remember that.
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