This one has recently heard an intresting and rather controvercial qoute.
"No Soldier should be honored for doing what is expected."
-- Halo 3
But this brings a disturbing question foward: What are we expecting, and why?
What is expected of todays warriors is all too often too much to ask of any person. Particularly at this dark point in our history where partician politics has become the status quo and the men and women of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines are caught in the middle of situation so hard to understand by anyone in anytime in history.
Many of our uniformed men and women are being forced to follow orders from government officials they do not believe in, and many who no longer serve being ostracized by right-wing lunatic fringe groups simply because they have spoken their minds. Those groups have even called actual combat veterans "phony soldiers" and even used the word "traitor" to describe veterans who speak their minds. But all too often, the veterans themselves, whether for or against the policies that dictated their orders, are simply forgotten. Suddenly a frightening quote comes to mind:
"Old soldiers never die, they just fade away." -- Gen. Douglas MacArther
On this Veterans Day we must NOT take light of the fact that so many have sacrificed sanity, personal safety, and physical well-being for the sake of government that has abused their loyalty, and a country that remains oblivious to the totality of what they have suffered and continue to suffer. And we must also come to realize that too many of these brave souls are almost never appreciated after the headlines have ended, many ending up as homeless relics on the streets, forgotten and unrecognized by the very people they sought to defend, and the government which sent them into conflict. And while historians may later shame or praise the government, officials and leaders who started the conflict, rarely is there mention of those who survived through it. It is time to mention them.
Tribute is only a gesture, but perhaps it can ignite the fires of action within those of us who have yet to take any. This one.....I.....pay my tribute to the troops by calling on all of us who owe something to our veterans to give something back. Draw a picture, donate to a Vet center, write a letter, post a journal, anything......anything you can do to let our veterans know, that we appreciate them, even when the government they served may not.
And we must, above ALL else, NOT let them fade away!
Let your heart tell you what is right, let your soul show you where it is, let your mind tell you how to get there.