Just a quick REMINDER of what, along with the traveling & the reveling, & the seared flesh on the barbacue what this “holiday is all about”.. let’s ALL, right.. left… Dem.. repub… take a moment to REMEMBER.
http://www.slate.com/id/2112318/fr/nl/
Thanks to ALL who serve..
No one should ever forget the sacrifices people made for us and think about the fallen much more than one day a year.
Being a Vietnam Veteran, I am very relieved that those who served and died in Vietnam on both sides are finally getting the respect they always deserved. What is sad is that in the 21st Century we should know better than to start wars for the twin sins of economic gain and political expediency.
…and please remember those who fell after the war, victims of Agent Orange and other horrors. I’ve lost two beloved friends to lymphoma traced directly to that defoliant. And to all the men and women (nurses in Vietnam, combat vets now) who came home wounded in spirit and mind if not body. Remember how many are living on the streets, people whom we failed over and over again. Remember how many still can’t keep a job because they cannot ease their minds of what they saw. And did.
We support the revocation this week of DADT, but one minister wrote to me and said we really needed DADT – to force ALL people out of the military. There’s the rub. Of course, until the entire bulk of humanity grows up, we need a military and people make livings and careers from it. But how sad that we still send them to kill and be killed even in the 21st century. How do we balance these things?
To all those who served to whom we never said thank you – thank you. You did the horrible, hard work, and the fact it was not a “good war” has no meaning in respect to who YOU are, what YOU did, and what YOU sacrificed for us, for your country. You are our brother, father, uncle, neighbor, friend – and we do care.
Memorial Day. Remember the fallen but also remember the living. We don’t need to wait until November to say again, we’re glad you’re here with us. You fought to keep us free, and we need to work to keep you free. It’s the very least we can do in thanks.
Well spoken, c’lady. On Memorial Day, I often think, also, of those who risked their “lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor” to oppose war. People have gone to prison or had to leave the country for following their consciences. People, like Muhammed Ali, have endured severe damage to their careers because they held to their principles. This, too, takes courage. These, too, are unsung heroes.
Indeed, kes! There are surviving conscientious objectors from WW II, and their lives were especially difficult since it was, and I agree, the “good war”, in which opposition was seen as cowardice or treason. Their principles were not respected at all.
I so admire the veterans. I so admire those who refused to kill. I am speechless with anger at the Dick Cheneys of the world who “had other priorities” but gleefully sent others into peril. One man who’d gotten a pass as an aeronautical engineer, loved the war and hated the COs. He said to me that he was “too good” to be cannon fodder, so sitting in his fancy apartment sipping white wine from long-stemmed glasses was what was just and right for him to do.
Those people – deemed “chickenhawks” by late columnist Mike Royko – are the scum of the earth. They do no justice to the veterans or the men of conscience. They are parasites and the lowest form of humanity.
But – this is the weekend to remember the honorable and good, and they live in our hearts and society with our thanks that can never be enough.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorial_Day