I have respect for most vets. For our grandmothers and grandfathers, great grandmothers and great grandfathers, many of whom lost most of their brothers and sisters. They supposed that they were fighting the war to end all wars, and that their sacrifices would not be in vain. Here we are, still fighting. I'm not naive enough to believe that we can always avoid conflict. We can't. Conflict is an inevitable consequence of two opposing viewpoints with too much pride or faith to engage in any sort of meaningful discourse. We shouldn't fail to realise though, as pre-Great War military leaders failed, that the inevitability of conflict does not equate to a necessity for war.
For our peacemakers, trying to settle international conflicts, to distribute hope to those who suffered in the wake of our hundreds of years of colonization and oppression. This is a noble task, also worthy of our respect. I have friends with parents who are serving as peacemakers overseas. To essentially forfeit your family and life for an indefinite amount of time is an incredible thing.
It kindof irked me today (by kind of, I mean, really fucking pissed me off) that during the minute of silence, a bunch of Asian kids in the library started giggling and photocopying. But hey, obviously you don't appreciate the country you're in and the sacrifices people made to make it the way that it is, and are just like our own freeloading buggers that rather take advantage of it because it's easier to be ignorant than not. *shrug*
I'll chalk it up to a combination of the following: goofy extremist tolerance which I dare to call radical relativism, which opposes truth on a fundamental and flawed level because it assumes itself to be true when it states there is no such thing as truth, and it essentially undermines all human existence and strips meaning from everything; and goofy religious fanatacism which claims to possess all truth and seeks to destroy all opposing viewpoints rather than analyze or reconcile them in any way. Each of these views fuel the other's fires and only serve to create falsity and hate. Both views are ignorant, and both views are what will continue to create wars in the future. Its a shame that both of these views are so prominent in today's world, too. Just goes to show that we still have a long way to go.
There's something to be said about not glorifying the horrors of war. I'd be devestated to lose my brothers. I'd be devestated to lose my friends. I'd be especially devestated if I lost them over something stupid, pointless, unnecessary, unjust, illogical, and immoral. We have wonderful lives because of others who have made sacrifices, and we owe them everything. We can never forget that. We have to be smart enough, though, not to fall into lazy romantic complacency and begin to believe that war is glorious. War is everything but glorious. Tell line after line of soldiers being sent over the top that being mowed down by machine guns in pointless slaughter is glorious. Tell victims of chemical weapon attacks that blind them, turn their lungs to bloody slurry, and gangrenize their wounds that their suffering is glorious. Tell people systematically executed for their beliefs that it is glorious. To families shattered, homeless, with nought for the future that it is glorious. ... To fall into the trappings, the blindness that occurs over time, to believe as our culture once did that war represents something proud and honourable - I would interpret that as a greater disrespect than anything else. We need to move on from that idea. People have done what they've had to do, what was a last resort for them, and that is courage; that is worthy of respect. But for us to turn our backs on that and actively search for conflict so that we can participate in the age old tradition of dehumanization and meaningless slaughter... That is not respecting their sacrifice.
War should only ever be a last resort, when all other means fail. Never a first resort, never an initial reaction, never something we do just because it will be good for the economy, or because the population is bored. If we haven't yet learned that, then we really haven't learned a damn thing. We owe it to our fallen to pursue a path of truth, justice, goodness, and beauty. We fail them when we take the quick and easy way out by escalating and retaliating. We must have the strength that they had, to keep us on the right path in dire straights. Conflict is inevitable, but war is not. As Eleanor Roosevelt said, "No man is defeated without until he is defeated within", and if we give up hope for the future, then we doom ourselves to destruction, so we destroy any meaning the past might have held.