Veteran's Day

I went to wish a "Happy Veteran's Day" to a friend of mine who was a Navy pilot in the Gulf back in the '90s.

But I'm not sure "Happy" is the right prefix for Veteran's Day.  If you consider the historical context of 11/11, the only "happy" thing about the armistice was that the slaughter was temporarily abated for 20 years.  But out of that armistice came the conditions that precipitated an even greater slaughter.

And while we can all value the immense sacrifice Veterans have made on our behalf, to be a veteran of a war seems to me to signify more our own failures as the human race to resolve our difference short of wholesale slaughter.  What veterans have done is valiant, self-sacrificing and necessary.  But why is it necessary?

We are finally winding down the second longest war in our nation's history.  Hopefully, we will begin to wind down the longest war in the next two years.

As a new generation of veterans come home, we need to do all we can to ease them back into a life that will seem alien and strange to them after the adrenal madness of war.  We will need to understand why they get sweaty when they see an abandoned couch by the side of the road.  We will need to support them when they become "irrationally" sad or angry.

But we should also dedicate ourselves to making sure that there are fewer veterans to thank in the future.  Fewer men and women who have had to sacrifice their lives, their limbs and their peace of mind because the rest of us failed to find a way to live in peace.