70th Anniversary of D-Day

[Brian37]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-27700479

I've been to the Normandy beaches and seen the memorials over France from the 2 world wars.

If you've never been it's very emotional. IT's difficult to stand there and read those names without feeling something deeply sad within you. I've never seen the horror of war except through archive footage or news reports, but you get a very small feel for what it's like just standing somewhere surrounded by the signs of death and destruction.

Those poor sods that crossed the channel, never to see home again. Many still teenagers. I've lived a decade longer already than some of them.

Thanks for the posting....it is fitting and just that those men/boys are honored for the sacrifice they made. It is also to be respected that many of them were sure they wouldn't be coming home...and went anyway.

The American soldiers in WWI were of the same kind as were the soldiers on both sides of the Civil War, and certainly the citizen soldiers of the revolution.

One has to wonder tho....even taking into account our present day military (despite a few "bad apples")....whether the same kind of citizens exist in this country today? Given what is seen/heard of today's "younger generation", it is doubtful if they would be able to stand tall and make the same kind of sacrifice if it were called for.

I hope they don't. Here is why. In evolution fights will happen between tribes. There doesn't seem to be a way completely around this. Having said that, I really don't like images of honor and valor as motifs. We need military and cops and firemen. But those are necessities and should not be viewed as defaults. If we are going to be ethical, we should be a species that does not default to those things but treat them as a last resort.

If I run a platoon or police department, the last people I want on those jobs are people who want them just to want them. The ethical ones I consider moral are the ones who do it knowing it needs to be done but wish they didn't have to do it.

Even with WW2 vets, I've heard plenty, including my atheist friend Ben, who say things like, "I did it because it needed to be done, but I did not enjoy killing another human being".

So it depends. You will always need people in a society to protect that society. But I do not want a society of worshipers or ideologues who think patriotism is blindly following. I think we have seen far too much of what happens when people go "gun ho" blindly.