Let’s talk about War and the veterans who fight them.  And those who don’t fight them but sign up anyway, in case they have to fight them.

I don’t think War is a great thing that deserves celebration, but I do think that those who fill the boots deserve our respect and praise. Wars are fought by the young, over fights that the old people are having. Rarely do the old people die in these wars.

The old people supply the bullets.

Likewise I am not anti-war and do not foolhardily believe that War is unnecessary, or that we can abolish War. Some evils simply must be addressed with brute force and violence. If the world didn’t contain these evils, then War would not be necessary. But it does contain these evils. Perhaps we should abolish evil, instead.

There are people who spat on soldiers coming home from Vietnam, threw bags of this or that thing at them, and those things were never pleasant smelling. Some of these soldiers were wounded, or had just seen their friends and leaders killed. These young soldiers were, and are, signing up to preserve the integrity of a nation, and defend those who cannot defend themselves. Even if you don’t agree with the premise of the war, your disagreement is with some old man somewhere, not a soldier.

I find it disgusting when soldiers are treated with anything less than great honor, for being willing to leave their families behind, travel into a strange and hostile environment with only a few items they can carry and their training to comfort them. They are forced to take action following the orders of those who are following orders of those who are the old men quarreling.

When they return home they have seen and done things that they have to question and live with and move past. They should never have to come home to a nation that is more hostile to them than the one they were fighting in. When I see images of Iraqi’s and Afghani’s bringing tea or water to front line soldiers and understand that these men and women want to be freed from oppression, and they don’t have enough young men or bullets to throw at the old men in their country to make it happen, we can offer them shelter and hope. Our young men and women offer themselves.

Our old men offer their bullets.

Veterans are the ones who make sure we can sleep without starbursts and bombs and mortars in our own back yard. Many countries don’t have peace. Some do when we leave.

I am proud to be an American, where a few have such love of country and patriotism that the men and women we need to fight these wars are there and willing to stand up for our sovereignty.

I do not like war, I do not like evil, but I do love our veterans, because they hate those things enough to stand up and fight them, rather than to just blog about it.

Trust me when I say, that for every peace loving flower child who opposes war, there is a soldier that hates war even more, because they understand war and why it’s necessary, and because they have lived it. They hate it because they have seen what the world looks like without soldiers. They protect those peace loving people from what they cannot see… that there would be no peace without WAR.