veterans day

[Minimalist]

It is a dilemma probably because the meaning of the day has been co-opted by right-wingers as a celebration of war rather than a remembrance of those who fell.

Since the draft was abolished we now have a professional army which does remove the whole "poor-old-boy-down-on-the-farm-finds-himself-in-battle" mythology. A cursory glance at history shows that we manage to remain almost constantly at war with someone in recent times. As noted above the soldiers don't start the wars but they certainly can't claim that they have no idea what they are getting into and the mission of the reserves has changed completely since Dubya used them to get out of going to Vietnam. Now, the reserves provide most of the support functions so they are almost a guaranteed way of going rather than not going.

The notion that anyone is fighting for our "freedom" however is laughable. They are fighting because politicians send them to war AND they fight for the reason that all soldiers fight: they fight for each other. The only group attacking our "freedom" are the fascist shits running this country into the ground.

[frankiej]

I don't need a day set aside to remember fallen soldiers. A lot of them will have my respect any day of the year.
I hate stupid traditions like this.

[Rhythm]

I assure you we at least fought for our freedom to not be shot. The rest of it is pretty dicey I agree. So did many of the people I served with, including wiccans, tree huggers, openly gay soldiers, etc etc etc. Some of us were as adamantly against the use of violence as any monk (objector status infantry). If nothing else, just trust me that the service can be an extremely shitty job, and if people didn't volunteer they'd just draft the rest of you. Lets at least give governments the credit for being that shitty. None of that has anything to do with vets though, who should be able to take as may holidays as they please. Especially in the case of wounded vets, who should get to take a paid holiday for every piece of metal that hit them. So, happy belated veteran's day (I went and got bombed out of my gourd with an army buddy in Ohio).

"Prepared for all things"