Remembrance Day has come to be a day of thanks for me. This year I'm lucky enough to be spending it with my 89-year old Dad, a 90% disabled veteran of WWII - one eye gone, half a stomach, who knows how much of his gut and shrapnel scars from his chest to his knees.
No one is quite sure how Dad has made it this long. All his high school pals are long gone, he's one of the last. He's battled the war ever since it happened. Time after time his wounds have come back to try to claim his life. The close calls never quite leave your mind. Tough stuff when you're a kid and it's still tough in a way.
He's never complained and he's always thought he was one of the lucky ones - he survived to come home and continue as a great husband to become a terrific father to his sons. A lot of his pals weren't that lucky. The lieutenant who replaced him was killed leading the platoon into his first combat.
In my turn, I too served - in the RCAF - but I never had any illusions as to what war did to the men and to their families. Some wars need to be fought but all too often our politicians, civilian to the core, send willing young men and now some young women into harm's way.
If you read my posts you'll quickly discover how much I despise war but not remotely as much as I despise politicians who send our best and brightest to their deaths in meaningless quests for their own personal advantage. I loathe Stephen Harper. I loathe Bush and Cheney and all the other Chickenhawks who scurry for cover but speak so bravely when others do the killing and the dying for their glory.
Stevie - take "Flanders Fields" and shove it all the way up your vainglorious ass. You and your ilk don't have the right to recite its verses.
1 comment:
You forgot to loath Mr. Chretien and Mr. Martin who put our soldiers in harms way in the first place, you also forgot to lothe Bill Clinton who, has exprssed concerns that Canada will not have the stomache to stay in Afghanastan. What I lothe is people like you, who, know full well that it was a Liberal PM and a Liberal party that involved us in Afghanastan, its a Conservative PM that is extending the very same mission, but, for a few political points, use your past service record and your Fathers service to this country as a way to further your political slant. If Stephen Harper is to "pull" something out of his ass, he'd have to get it out of Chretien's first. Its disgusting to watch the NDP us Afghanastan for more votes in Quebec, its disgusting for the Conservatives to call people who object to the war the "cut and run crowd", and its disgusting for Liberals to call this "Harpers War", just as it is disgusting to read a post that, for political reasons, fails to represent the actual truth about Afghanastan. Somewhere in the middle of your blog and half the Tory Blogs lies the truth, but your rhetoric and their rehtoric muddy's the waters so to speak. Carry on with your hate and lotheing.
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