Remembering Those Who Served
On Veterans Day, we will remember those who served and risked their lives to protect the rights and freedoms we generally take for granted today. To fully understand the true meaning of this commemoration, we need to consider who the veterans are and why they are different from citizens or civilians.
For our military and military, your service is probably the defining event in your life, it will shape who you are and what you will become. Basic training is a process that has literally been refined over millennia. People who focus on their own wellbeing. In 1989 the Berlin Wall fell and somehow he couldn't help feeling that they had won their own personal battles.
Most have children and families and believe that they could evolve and live in a safer world, they deserved more and their efforts would have made it a reality, although unfortunately I have to find that it has become a naive idea.
Within a few years they were fighting an Iraqi tyrant in Kuwait. The "new world order" turned into chaos. One catastrophe after another marched around the world. Conflicts resurfaced from the Balkans to Somalia.
Every generation is like that.
Our "doughboys" who have returned from the Great War should have the idea that they have destroyed the savages. They became a struggle to end all wars. But reality didn't speak like that.
In just over two decades, Hitler had brought the free world to its knees. Pearl Harbor reminded us that the enemy was literally on our coast.
It took the greatest generation to restore stability. Surely they must have thought that their victims really made the world a safe place for democracy. It was not like that.
The 9/11 attacks reminded us that barbarians are always at our door. We have sent our soldiers back to the borders of the empire in Afghanistan and Iraq to protect our civilization.
Many of those who fought in the Global War on Terror were deployed multiple times, away from their families and loved ones.
One can only imagine the effects of these long missions with the simultaneous trauma these soldiers suffered in battle. Brutes will always knock on the door of freedom. The safety of each group depends on the efforts of the previous one. The next generation it will. Never be safe without the victims of the previous one.
We should always be grateful for the blessings we have received through the sacrifices of our predecessors. Since our inception, some proud have stood up against those who have tried to harm us.
Fortunately, we still have courageous men and women who stand up to this vigilance.
May God give peace to those who gave their lives for us, watch over those who serve today, and bless those who did in the past.