Veterans' Day

On Austin Bay where A Conversation in Bagram went online yesterday, and over at the Mudville Gazette where How The War Was Won (might take a very long time to load) was posted on the 9th, you have two among thousands of online sources to read what people who are fighting the Global War On Terror have to say about their experiences.

Veteran's Day honors those who died in service to this country, so if you're not going to go out and observe or participate in the official activities of this day, then the least you can do is seek out and read what the living veterans of the current war have to say about their experiences.

This is all a very nasty and gruesome situation the world is in today. Whether any of us are glibly for or against the war while sitting in the comfort of our homes and surfing around on the internet, there is true horror and evil afoot on this planet right now.

Where any of us who are against the war may believe that those who fight it are somehow brainwashed and misled, the enemy they are fighting is far, far beyond such a tenuous shadow of political sway. The enemy they're fighting in the GWOT isn't really a product of religion, it isn't really a product of the word of God or Mohammed, and it isn't even involved with the indistinct and shadowy political differences we can easily think we comprehend.

The enemy they are fighting are products of such abject poverty and ignorance, that we can hardly comprehend what it is. Each individual veteran of this current war faces what is described here (and I make that link a second time so that you'll at least read that one... even if you don't click on the first two links at the beginning of this post).

No matter how much the administration and congress have taken a corrupt ride in this activity, no matter how badly the war has been conducted or skewed by political greed, the men and women who are on the ground in the battle zones, those who are the living veterans of this current war, deserve at least this one day when all of us can honor them by spending this time to comprehend what it's actually all about for them. At the very least, especially on this day, we can try to comprehend who their enemy really is.

Our brothers and sisters in uniform aren't fighting for the oil companies or the political machines, they're fighting just to stay alive out there...

...in the face of an enemy that wants to see all of us, here in America, dead.