Countdown to Veterans Day – Our Country, made possible by our Veterans
By Paul M. Lacayo
On November 11, for the second time in the calendar year, we honor those that fought and continue to fight for this, our country. While Memorial Day emphasizes the memory of those we have lost during conflict; Veterans’ Day emphasizes those still with us who have served and presently serve.
Let me start by saying that I have not served this country in uniform and now in my early 40’s, I guess I am too old to enlist and serve.
But I have the greatest respect and admiration for those that have and do sacrifice their livelihood, time with their families and their very lives for us, here on the home front.
Their sacrifice makes it possible for us to text message our friends, email our families, grab a cup of Starbucks during the day, walk in the mall and shop, play our Xbox 360, Playstation and Wii consoles, bet on sporting events, order the DirecTV Sports package, enjoy a day at Disneyland or a night at the movies or time at the beach, go fishing or camping on the weekends, take a cruise to Alaska or down the Mexican Coast or vacation in the Caribbean, bitch, moan and complain about our boss or job, honk the horn in frustration at being caught in traffic crush hour, protest what we think isn’t good or right with the country, burn the flag, criticize or deride our government and our country's very way of life.
Yes sir, all continually made possible by the men and women that have served and continue serving our country. For that I say an emphatic thank you!
Thank you to those in far away lands and on the high seas.
Thank you to those whose wife's or husband’s embrace you sorely miss.
Thank you to those whose babies have yet to lay eyes on their father's or mother’s face.
Thank you to those whose children long to see their parents again after months of separation.
Thank you to those whose parents ache at the thought of losing their offspring to a bomb or bullet and to those who disastrously, have already suffered this excruciatingly painful loss.
Thank you to those who have lost family members while overseas and could not be there for their interment.
Thank you to those whose families have disintegrated because the separation was too long.
Thank you to those who have fallen in order to make it possible to live our lives.
Thank you to those who still are with us.
Should one look back to the end of the 19th Century and the beginning of the 20th, the intervention of and occupation by American Military Forces in such countries as the Philippines, Cuba, Nicaragua, Panama to name a few, in protecting American Interests and projecting the American way of thinking - at that time - around the world was much more belligerent than today. Last time, we checked, none of those countries are still currently occupied by American Forces. In fact, two of those countries mentioned have governments unfriendly towards the U.S.
One can guarantee you that would not have been the case if Fascist Germany or Soviet Russia would have triumphed over the respective Alliances arraigned against them and have intervened in any of these aforementioned countries.
Throughout the 20th century, the growth of American Military Power also grew alongside the idea that people and nations were free to determine their own fates, free from other nations' imposition of what they thought was best for them. With the end of the Second World War, came the end of Colonialism, the dissolution of the preeminent British Empire and its sister European neighbors' overseas territorial holdings.
American Military forces did not replace their European counterparts that had run their overseas possessions. Not one square inch of was claimed by the U.S. as its own. Our country’s military men and women came home to pick up their lives and try to live in peace.
However, one thing that many people fail in recognizing is that nation states will always look after their own respective self interest first and will ally themselves with others that can benefit or advance that interest. Those that attack American Foreign Policy as Imperialist fail in recognizing that the actions that guide it are to preserve the ideal of freedom against those that would squelch and obliterate the very criticism that is protected by American self interest in its sphere of influence. As a Superpower, that sphere of interest is worldwide.
When the U.S. President is called a dictator, the definition becomes trivialized and minimized. At the same time, the countless lives of those who perished at the hands, swords, guns, tanks and planes of callous, egotistical, maniacal and brutal individuals and governments who not for one instant hesitated in annihilating those that questioned their policies and rule are dishonored and disrespected.
Where would these same individuals be if they spoke up against an American Government that actively imitated the same policies that Hitler, Stalin, Paul Pot and Saddam Hussein implemented and Kim Jong-il, Fidel Castro, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, among others practice in North Korea, Cuba, Iran and elsewhere?
Whichever and whatever manner that a nation can achieve their best interest and maintain its sphere of influence is what the entity will pursue. It can make for unlikely bed fellows, as was the case with Communist Russia allying with Capitalist United Kingdom and America during WWII, or in more recent times when the U.S. favored Iraq over Iran.
In our present struggle, this country will do and must do to what it can to preserve the idea and the practice that people have a right to choose their own government and live their lives free from authoritarian control.
These are the struggles that have shaped us since World War I, indeed since the foundation of this, our country’s beginnings.
This is why with all our failings and with all our shortcomings, people seek our land to make their lives better. They seek it to live in dignity; to give their children an opportunity they could never have where they came from. Some of those have arrived have also put on the uniform of the United States Armed Forces and have served to make it possible not only for themselves but for countless millions seeking a better future here.
Veterans honored should also be remembered as being protectors of our way of life. Those that criticize it have the right to do so but should also be reminded that if not for these protectors, their appeasing ways would land them in the blood stained chopping block of those whom we now fight, as infidels. They would either be compelled to submit or be eradicated, period!
Turning to two statements by Former Secretary of State and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – Colin Powell, I leave you with his views on American Power and the value of our Veterans:
1. “There is nothing in American experience or in American political life or in our culture that suggests we want to use hard power. But what we have found over the decades is that unless you do have hard power — and here I think you're referring to military power — then sometimes you are faced with situations that you can't deal with.
I mean, it was not soft power that freed Europe. It was hard power. And what followed immediately after hard power? Did the United States ask for dominion over a single nation in Europe? No. Soft power came in the Marshall Plan. Soft power came with American GIs who put their weapons down once the war was over and helped all those nations rebuild. We did the same thing in Japan.
So our record of living our values and letting our values be an inspiration to others I think is clear. And I don't think I have anything to be ashamed of or apologize for with respect to what America has done for the world. [Applause.]
We have gone forth from our shores repeatedly over the last hundred years and we’ve done this as recently as the last year in Afghanistan and put wonderful young men and women at risk, many of whom have lost their lives, and we have asked for nothing except enough ground to bury them in, and otherwise we have returned home to seek our own, you know, to seek our own lives in peace, to live our own lives in peace. But there comes a time when soft power or talking with evil will not work where, unfortunately, hard power is the only thing that works.” (1)
2. “[F]ar from being the Great Satan, I would say that we are the Great Protector. We have sent men and women from the armed forces of the United States to other parts of the world throughout the past century to put down oppression. We defeated Fascism. We defeated Communism. We saved Europe in World War I and World War II. We were willing to do it, glad to do it. We went to Korea. We went to Vietnam. All in the interest of preserving the rights of people.
And when all those conflicts were over, what did we do? Did we stay and conquer? Did we say, "Okay, we defeated Germany. Now Germany belongs to us? We defeated Japan, so Japan belongs to us"? No. What did we do? We built them up. We gave them democratic systems which they have embraced totally to their soul. And did we ask for any land? No, the only land we ever asked for was enough land to bury our dead. And that is the kind of nation we are.” (2)
Please remember to take time this November 11 – however short it may be – to thank those who have served you and I, this land, our country.
In closing, as Dennis Miller says:
"That's just my opinion. I could be wrong."
References:
1 – Responding to a question and answer session by former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey, following his address to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on January 26, 2003. Source: about.com, urban legends: http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl-colin-powell.htm
Dispatches from Davos by Chris Anderson, Editor of Wired Magazine:
http://www.slate.com/id/2077083/entry/2077603/
2 – Responding to a question on MTV’s Global Discussion on February 14, 2002 about how he felt representing a country commonly perceived as "the Satan of contemporary politics."
http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl-colin-powell.htm
http://www.state.gov/secretary/former/powell/remarks/2002/8038.htm
