I Hate That I Hate Veterans Day

[WilliamPitt]

Source: Wikipedia

I Hate That I Hate Veterans Day
By William Rivers Pitt
BuzzFlash at Truthout | Op-Ed

Tuesday 11 November 2014

My deepest and most sincere apologies to all of my veteran friends, but I need to be honest: I simply hate this day. I've had this low-and-slow weeping thing going on basically from the moment I got out of bed this morning. Tomas Young is dead, and I can't stop thinking about all the letters I've received from the loved ones of so many other fallen soldiers over the last 12 years.

What's worse, this maudlin weepiness makes me sick because my emotions are making it about me, and not them, and that sucks big rocks, but I can't seem to help it. When I was 13 years old, all I wanted was to serve the way my father who volunteered for service in Vietnam did. An accumulation of experiences and opinions culminated with the recruiter sitting in my living room some 25 years ago, days after my 18th birthday, telling me Saddam Hussein was worse than Hitler and his army was vast, but if I signed up right then and there, I probably wouldn't see combat for at least four years, and the only thing going through my head was BULLSHIT BULLSHIT BULLSHIT THIS GUY IS FULL OF BULLSHIT, so I didn't sign, and I never served, and I'm glad of it, because it was the correct decision...

...but all these years later, on this day of days, I recall that decision, and I think of the men and women who went when I didn't, and how very many of them are gone, or damaged, or simply done. We're averaging 22 veteran suicides a day these days. Once upon a time, I wrote that when a person dons the uniform of the armed services and swears the oath, the nation to which they have pledged their life also owes an oath: not to cast that precious life onto the pyre of profit and political ambition. I weep slowly today, to no small degree, because the other half of that oath has not been kept.

A nation that does not care for its war veterans has absolutely no business making new ones. All the treacly televised nonsense singing the praises of broken men and women whom the networks cheerleaded into a bloodbath so they can now run commercials praising the very people they invited into the meat grinder of war makes me want to tear my teeth out. I simply cannot stand it. I hate this day. I'm sorry, but I do. A soldier will die in agony tomorrow, or the next day, or the next, for the same wretched, failed, flawed reasons as the soldier who died yesterday. That raw fact makes this day grotesque, and there is no getting around that truth.

I hate this day. I hate the reasons why I hate this day. On this day, I hate.

http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/william-rivers-pitt-i-hate-that-i-hate-veterans-day

[Scuba]

1. No apology necessary; lots of us vets don't like it either.

[WilliamPitt]

2. (((hug)))

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

3. When I joined up, Fidel Castro was the scary bogeyman.

In boot camp we got one of those "Why we fight" lectures from a Captain who looked to be about 12. One of the reasons he gave us for wanting to kill Cubans was that Fidel had a "dirty, smelly, beard". Which even as an 18 year old seemed a pretty thin reason to murder somebody. Not to mention that it fortified my position that I had made a really big mistake when I signed on.

[Journeyman]

4. I observe "Armistice Day" instead, share that promise with others, and my life is richer for it. . .

[DrDan]

5. I never understood a holiday called "Veterans Day"

Celebrated by giving 22-year old bank tellers and letter carriers the day off.