The nation finds itself gradually winding down from a decade in Iraq and winding down as well our involvement in Afghanistan after just as many years.
We have lost more than 4400 Americans to the insanity of war, and civil war among the modern people of these two places who run their nations as though competing tribes control its destiny.
And it isn’t just competing tribes but competing religions, people who hate and who often tend to slaughter one another because of their heritage or because of the form of Islam they practice.
Isn’t that nice?
Brave Americans have given their lives and continue to give their lives so these people can play their petty games where their religion is more important than having peace and prosperity in their nation, where Taliban burning schools, blowing themselves up at funerals and weddings, are actions as accepted as an after game fist fight at an American football game.
In Iraq, the Iraqi’s don’t want us. By the end of the year, they will have their country to themselves so they can again subjugate their many millions or slaughter them because of their competing religious beliefs.
At least our brave men and women will be home, away from the madness of that ugly sandpit where brutality and ignorance above all else reign.
This will leave our men and women in Afghanistan still living everyday in harm’s way – and for what? For people who don’t want us, who consider us the enemy? Enemy of what?
The Afghanistani’s have proven for almost 1000 years that they are not interested in the world or education or rights for women or music or lives of plenty for their children.
These are tribal people who care nothing about justice or democracy, peace or prosperity.
We must ask ourselves, what the hell were we doing there? How did we get into the situation again of being in a place that is closer to the end of life than the beginning?
The men and women of the United States Armed Forces who served bravely in Iraq and in Afghanistan and who continue to serve bravely, have shown what the young men and women of this nation are all about.
We sought no territorial advantage. We practiced no imperialism. We didn’t steal or rob anything from anyone – and we could have robbed Iraq of every barrel of its oil.
Our brave men and women fought these two wars with distinction. They served with honor. They suffered like heroes and now finally, they are coming home.
At least here in America, where Iraqis and Afghanistanis are protected by a constitution that allows them to be who they are and to pray as they like, they come to understand that this nation of ours, these young heroes of ours, are the real thing.
Taliban don’t get to close schools or degrade women in our nation. Those type of people are put in jail where they ought to be.
Bottom line, Veterans Day 2011 marks the end of these wars to integrate hopelessly ignorant, religious and violent people into the modern world that cries for justice today.
We honor our dead on this day.
We honor our brave and true – and we do this with pride and in the knowledge that when they were called upon to carry out their orders, they did so in the finest tradition of our armed forces throughout history.
For this we thank those who served and we remember all those who died.