November 11, 2022

November 11, 2022

Armistice Day

Remembrance Day

Veterans Day

Veterans Day - http://www.va.gov/opa/vetsday/vetdayhistory.asp

We have many service members scattered around the globe - this is now a very select minority of our population.  When we "talk tough" please remember that these service members (and their families) are the ones paying the bill - physically and emotionally, not the politicians in Washington.  

From Robert Laurence Binyon's "For the Fallen" - the "Ode to Remembrance"...

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

Full poem - http://www.greatwar.co.uk/poems/laurence-binyon-for-the-fallen.htm

From the Kohima Monument in Myanmar (ex-Burma) - attributed to John Maxwell Edmonds;

When You Go Home, Tell Them Of Us And Say,
For Their Tomorrow, We Gave Our Today

"In Flanders Fields" by John McCrae (May, 1915) - http://www.greatwar.co.uk/poems/john-mccrae-in-flanders-fields.htm

Many of the global political issues of the 21st century are founded in the post World War One era - the growth of the United States as a world power, the middle east, the recognition of Japan as a global nation, the creation of many of the Eastern European nations, the dissolution of the Russian Empire, the foreign domination of China and Asia, the the concept of "self-determination" of peoples and the failure of the League of Nations (including the United States refusal to join).

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In the 21st century the United States asks it's military services to do many things - and we increasingly appear to try to "do it on the cheap".

Whether we should be involved all over the world - is a valid question. But we should never cut back on the support we owe to those we ask to do the "dirty work" and their families.

High-tech weapons, elaborate bases, big contracts are all well and good. But in the end someone has to put their life at risk to "finalize" the deal.

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