Our
View: Forgotten veterans
You
would think that in a time of war, veterans
would be the most honored, the men and women
that our government has heralded as saving
freedom, justice and the American way. Sorry
Superman.
Veteran's
Day can be marked by the adorable great
generation men, sitting in front of grocery
stores and offering small plastic poppies
in exchange for a donation to the Veterans
of Foreign Wars. It is a time when military
cemeteries are a mass of flowers, balloons
and memories, and our thoughts are full
of the people who have fallen, for right
or wrong, too far away from home.
But
what has happened to this federal holiday,
this time of remembrance in a country born
of war? Today at least 34,000 people are
not honoring and remembering. We should
ask ourselves why? We don't want to spend
an extra day catching up either, but a national
holiday is a national holiday. Has it been
combined with Thanksgiving?
The
true issue here is not that we aren't getting
a day off, who really cares they'd just
give us extra work anyway. It's that is
the veterans have given so much to our nation,
then how is a state-run institution not
observing the holiday? How has it just been
swept under the carpet? And when will they
be honored, is this all part of Bush's scheme
to only talk about the good things, not
celebrating the people who have died for
what our nation calls freedom.
What
next? Are we going to stop celebrating Columbus
Day? Oh right, never mind.
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