We Will Remember Them

I know, I know, it might sound sappy, but today is Veteran's Day. And these past few years it's meant even more to me than before, mainly because I am so sick at how the veterans of this war will remember their time in service.

People are very quick to say, "well, they signed up for this. I don't feel sorry for the soldiers... this is their job." Ok, they signed up to defend the country. They knew they'd be asked to follow orders and that they'd be at the beck and call of their Commander-In-Chief, and they knew that would include some pretty bad stuff sometimes. Maybe even stuff they are morally opposed to.

They did not, however, sign up for this. They didn't sign up to be lied to and sent into harm's way based on a lie.

They were lied to, and their families were lied to. They were sent into Iraq based on falshoods, half-truths, exaggerations, and misconceptions, with no training in the culture, no training in the language, and the expectation (based on what their Commander-In-Chief was telling them) that the civilians would be greeting them with open arms.

They didn't sign up for what happened.

Every day those soldiers are being told that Al Queda and Sadaam Hussein are one in the same. Read the 9/11 Commission's report... they're not. They never were. There is no tie. The soliders, the American people, and the rest of the world were lied to.

Every day those soldiers are being told that we have found weapons of mass destruction. As everyone knows now, there were no WMDs. Bush's father and the Clinton administration made sure of that by keeping a sanction stranglehold on the Hussein government for the entirely of the 1990s. He couldn't build them. The Gulf War was effective. We were all lied to, including the soldiers.

Every day the terrorists use their presence as an opportunity to recruit and attack. Every day the civilians who didn't appreciate being invaded gather up arms and fight back. Imagine a 19 year old Iraqi soldier driving down your street in a tank, screaming at you in a language you don't understand, and shooting at your church. All because his government doesn't like the way your president is running your country, so he was sent to invade your country - a sovereign nation.

You think you'd take kindly to that? Do you think you'd sit back and take it?

So no. The soldiers didn't sign up for this. They never would have enlisted if they thought their Commander-In-Chief would be so callous and so morally bankrupt as to lie to them to settle a grudge.

Think about that as (if you're a state employee) you lounge around today watching "E! True Hollywood Story."