Actually, I read your post on Vet’s Day and war, clicked on comments and somehow ended up here. Go figure. [hic.]

Veteran’s Day was emotional for me. I received donation items from 600 kids to give to soldiers serving right now. I watched a slide show in which a photo of me hugging my kid home from Iraq flashed across an entire gymnasium wall. I watched tears run down the cheeks of WWII vets, and was stunned when THEY thanked ME after the ceremony. I insisted that I was the one that was honored with their presence, and that THEY were to be thanked.

I didn’t expect this turn in my life. I’ve met, talked to, and worked with soldiers from every era in the last 2 years. (Not even 2 years! 18 months!) I haven’t met a man yet that signed up to kill. Or to die.

In a way, I do give them automatic hero status. But when I learn more about the people I encounter, it’s not merely because they’re soldiers that I find them to be heroes. My son? He’s a hero because I got called to the high school a few years because he’d been fighting: Another kid had ripped $2 out of the hands of a kid in a wheelchair, and Brian set him straight. He’s a hero because he hits the brakes and jumps out of his car to help up old man that’s fallen on the ice. He’s my hero because he aches when people are embarrassed, or humiliated, or bullied.

He has his reasons for enlisting; it was not a light decision for him. He didn’t enlist because he was blind. He didn’t enlist to kill people. He didn’t enlist because he was too stupid to do anything else. He didn’t enlist because he had no other options.

I ramble. They’re soldiers. They’re veterans. Despite what the politicians do and say, or don’t do and say, they deserve a day. Teachers get a day. Nurses get a day. Bosses and Mothers and secretaries get a day.

They should have their day.

Lori, I know my opinion on this subject is both unpopular and unrealistic. I have said here before that I’m a one-issue guy, and that issue is war. This war or any war. I’m horrified when I think of what it does to people, and it takes only a cursory look at history to see that wars are self-perpetuating, that each war sets up the next one, and that the claimed reasons for going to war are seldom if ever the real reasons.

I have heard many times the argument that there is evil in the world and that we must be prepared to defend our way of life. In practice, this boils down to each nation building the strongest army they can muster, and getting it ready to do battle. When you are an empire, as we are, you project force around the world, putting your troops and tanks and forts and battleships wherever you think you have a national interest. Eventually, what this looks like is a bunch of armies standing toe to toe, armed to the teeth and staring at each other across the border. As you might expect, this is not a blueprint for peace. It’s a recipe for disaster, as we have proven over and over for millenia.

I’m not naive or foolish. I know my proposal is crazy. But I have seen the people of this country stop a war by standing up and saying “hell no, we won’t go” (among other things) and it makes me wonder if that method might work again, and then again and again. The profits of war are shared by only a few, while the suffering is spread to all the rest of us, whatever side we may find ourselves on, whether we are fighters or innocent victims. I’m not saying that a soldier in the field wouldn’t stop to help another human being if he could, but let’s be clear: that is not his mission. In any case, I’m pretty sure that if you took every single instance of “good” (any definition you choose) done by soldiers on the battlefield, they will not begin to counterbalance the pain, anguish, injury and death caused by military action. And need I say that somewhere down this road lies a nuclear holocaust, which is sure to ruin everyone’s day? Shouldn’t we try everything, even naive and foolish stuff, to prevent that?

I like you, Lori, and I don’t want to offend you. If they’re heroes to you, then they’re heroes. What I object to is the way the our politicians throw that term around to pump up artificial patriotic fervor among our fighting-age population. I agree that some of them do truly heroic things. I think most of them would be uncomfortable with the title though — at least the ones I know.

We are a militaristic society. We think it’s cool to kick ass. Our so-called leaders dehumanize the “enemy,” claim that God is on our side (not theirs), make up lies about nonexistent threats, easy conquests and being greeted as liberators. The troops march off to fight, many give their lives, many more take the lives of others, and in the end it’s the Halliburtons, the Blackwaters, the Exxons who thrive.

I don’t care about “the next bill of goods we shouldn’t fight for.” This is the one I’m not buying.

I can’t argue with you. Of course it would be nice, if we all just decided not to fight. I contemplate your suggestion that no one enlist. No military, no wars. But at what point would no one in the world ever have to fight?

What would be the next “bill of goods” that we shouldn’t fight for? I can’t figure out at which point in a trickle-down scenario that the extinction of warriors will ever translate into the extinction of evil. We get rid of the miltary. No world wars. Then what? No police, no street violence? Then?

The bottom line is that being a warrior isn’t *always* about killing someone. It is just as often (and MORE often, I like to think) about protecting or someone. My son’s most vivid memory of Iraq is being chased off from helping an older Iraqi women that had been shot in the shoulder: No man can touch a woman there. He meant to help her. He is a warrior.

I am also a warrior. I’ve fought for, and won, custody of a young girl whose father was a serial pedophile. I hauled my ass into their lives, and hauled that kid OUT of there. It wasn’t war on a worldwide scale, but baby, it was war. It wasn’t all my doing, but there was a family left in wreckage. A divorce. A suicide. But I helped save a kid. What if I’d have said “I’m not fighting?”

You may think it’s a whacked out analogy, but I do not. Some simply must fight on grander scales to save people. It’s all, still, saving people. Protecting them.

Most of us–well, MANY–will fight for, and protect our families, our friends, loved ones, and complete strangers on different basis every day of our lives. Would that we not have to do that: Beautiful.

Soldiers aren’t heroes? Veteran’s aren’t heroes? Because they FOUGHT? They enlisted? Thought bought a bill of goods? Of all you’ve ever written to me, this offends me the most. Anyone that bothers to help out another human being, on any scale, is a hero. Soldiers, police, firefighters, EMTs, parents, teachers, counselors.

Heroes all, Lar.

I’ll give it to you: It would be nice, though.

See?

Blue Girl - I am NOT wrong! I have a DEGREE!! You CAN’T win!!! (You’ve told your friends about us? Jeez…)

kStyle - I wonder if “top” and “bottom” had the same connotations when Mr. Porter was writing his song?

Imagine all the people living life in peace….

Your words poetic
Are not pathetic
On the other hand, babe, you shine
And I can feel after every line
A thrill divine
Down my spine