If you're not in the mood for me to sound like a prick, stop reading now.
Today is Veterans Day in the United States, Remembrance Day in many other places. Newspapers, blogs, and television will be full of people who want to make sure veterans are properly appreciated for all they've done. "Thank you for serving and protecting my rights and my family..." and on and on, and they all leave out the part most of them feel most strongly about:
"...so I didn't have to."
If you want to show appreciation for veterans, pound your elected representatives to get medical care and counseling for them. Raise hell to ensure they get the proper equipment and armor so those serving now have a better chance to live long enough to become veterans. VA hospitals should be state of the art; they're better than they used to be, but considering what they used to be, that's damning with faint praise.
Talk is cheap, and the paeans offered by politicians are the Wal-Mart of talk . I wonder what could be accomplished for veterans if they got the money spent on the new engine for the Joint Strike Fighter, which the military didn't want but got shoved down their throats.
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If you ever get the chance, read Rudyard Kipling's "Tommy."
Here’s a link to the poem:
http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/tommy.html
The last stanza sums it up nicely:
You talk o' better food for us, an' schools, an' fires, an' all:
We'll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.
Don't mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face
The Widow's Uniform is not the soldier-man's disgrace.
For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Chuck him out, the brute!"
But it's "Saviour of 'is country" when the guns begin to shoot;
An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please;
An' Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool -- you bet that Tommy sees!
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