Is It Veterans’ Day, Veteran’s Day, or Veterans Day?
As November 11 approaches, some people may wonder how to write the name of the November 11 American holiday that commemorates the end of world-war hostilities in 1918 and 1945 as well as all who have served the U.S. Armed Forces. Do we use an apostrophe when spelling Veterans Day?
The answer is no. According to the U.S. Department of Defense, “The holiday is not a day that ‘belongs’ to one veteran or multiple veterans, which is what an apostrophe implies. It’s a day for honoring all veterans, so no apostrophe needed.”
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Can we not celebrate the people who have made sacrifices for their country and for ideals like freedom, and support those people because they have inadequate support from the government who ordered their sacrifices, while also decrying the actions and behaviours which we see as morally wrong?
I struggle with the cognitive dissonance with it.
I mean by struggle that I vacillate between “no standing military!” versus “the VA should be funded to infinity and beyond”. I struggle to think about the actions of Americans in southeast Asia and Vietnam versus loving my family members that were there doing some things that they can’t talk about to anyone because war never changes.
I don’t want to see another family member broken by war. And then I’ve got family that thinks war is what we need.
That makes it harder to appreciate the day we set aside for honor and sacrifice of veterans of wars. I had never wished any of them to go, and I still believe we need all of those people here at home.
But what I try to use is compassion and sensitivity to imagine how scared I would be to be shot at, bombed, stalked by another human with a gun. The misery of digging holes in the snow with a shorthanded shovel hungry and cold, and losing those that one relies upon over and over again.
None of that makes any sense to me. If I were alone dying bleeding out in a muddy field, gutshot, I would call for my mom not for a holiday.
So I struggle with it.
The VA should be abolished… as unnecessary with universal healthcare.
Got us in the first half…
Professional killers are not heroes.
Easy to say when your home country isn’t involved in a war
The US has been involved in war for almost every single year of its existence, so actually it’s easy to say even when one’s home country is involved in a war.
No matter the context, I stand by my point.
A necessary evil is still evil, that’s a sad truth but it doesn’t make it more moral.
I think war has a way of proving the fallacy of a binary moral stance. Good and Evil aren’t as clear cut as we would like it to be.
The only thing it’s good at is at showing who is heroic and who is craven. Heroic isn’t perdefinition morally good, it’s selflessness.
And what is selfless about killing people?
Protecting people with risk of death of injury from those who want to kill them
Sacrificing your life, your innocence and morality in order to secure your lands from imperialist threats that would see millions of your people wiped out or oppressed?
is it not selfless to damn yourself to whatever form of oblivion awaits you so that the next generations might not have to?
Why do we have to kill each other though? Why can’t war just be a giant fist fight or like WrestleMania’s Royal Rumble? Why not conduct war in a video or board game?
Why even use soldiers? Let the leaders fight each other! They’re the ones having beef!
(This is rhetorical)
Are Ukrainian soldiers evil for defending their homeland? What about republican fighters in Spain in the 30s? What about the partisans in italy in that same time? Or the french resistance? Killing an evil person, or evil people, doesn’t make one evil.
What about the veterans on the other side of those wars? Do you celebrate them as a “super man” (übermensch)? I’m sure they thought they were fighting for a good cause too.
There’s a somewhat antiquated idea of honor that accounts for that. A good man can definitely be on the other side, and you need to kill him anyway.
I believe that moral sacrifices performed to protect others deserve respect just like physical ones. A necessary evil may still be evil - but it’s also still necessary, which means that someone have to do it to prevent much greater evil. If you happen to benefit from the prevention of that greater evil, it is not right for you to condemn those who have dirtied their hands and soiled their souls to bring out that outcome.
I’m not saying it should be glorified, of course - that would just encourage the ones who actually enjoy that greater evil while making the ones who feel conflicted and guilty about having to do it feel even worse. But you should not criticize them either. Save that for the leaders who actually had more options, maybe even some non-evil ones.
Man, that’s a uniquely disgusting way to remember the folks killed to save their country and other countries from domination.
You might try and fuck off with that attitude for one day
I mean you have a very filtered view on American wars. Almost none of them were in order to save America and didn’t result in a better situation for the country.
And most of the WW2 vets are dead so this old geezer was in Korea or Vietnam.
If he was enlisted, fair enough, probably got drafted as a slave soldier for capitalism, but officers are almost always volunteers.
To be fair, that’s memorial day not veterans day.
I never said they are not useful or necessary. But I refuse to consider murder to be something heroic. Now if your moral structure allows you to consider that killing can be good, I just hope for you that people who don’t like you don’t think the same.
I hope you’re not responding to me, because that would not be murder, it would be slaying a monster.
Once again, I hope for you that people who see you as a monster don’t think the same.
Well, when I intentionally mishandle a pandemic disease in order to wipe out part of a population and request testing be slowed down to influence statistics, I’ll let you know.
And yet they’ve all failed to kill the orange despot.
they are when the folks they killed were fascists. Also, hot take here, I’m pretty sure that the US occupation o Afghanistan was better than the current system in place there.
Of the 18 million veterans alive in the US, only 66,000 are WWII veterans who fought against fascists. The rest of them did nothing but murder children in asia, south america, and the middle east for drugs, oil, and money.
But many of those older soldiers were slaves, which is what a conscript simply is when the actual security of a nation isn’t being threatened.
It’s only after Vietnam that American wars have been fought entirely by volunteers.
Also, hot take here, I’m pretty sure that the US occupation o Afghanistan was better than the current system in place there.
True, but then again, “better than the Taliban” is a really low bar. Also important to remember that the USA indirectly led them to power via Operation Cyclone
a ‘hot take’ not just perpetuating united states state department talking points
I dunno man, an official government which forbids women to literally even speak sounds a lot worse than the shit the US pulled when we propped up Hamid Karzai.
Whats happening in Afghanistan did not start or end two minutes ago, that’s such a simplistic take.
Don’t presume everyone you engage with online is a man. You’re dismissing a woman while pretending to champion women.
they are when the folks they killed were fascists
Ah but it’s OK because the people I killed were all baddies!
Yes, actually. I’m not saying that all killing is moral. but there are actually objectively bad people and organizations in the world. In one or two wars the US fought in, the US soldiers were actually fighting against objectively evil people and organizations. It’s fine to shoot nazis and slavers.
Obviously most people agree that WW2 was justified to stop the Nazis conquering the world, but you can’t just say “it’s OK to kill someone because they’re X”, because then you just need to label whoever you dislike as part of that out-group and suddenly you’ve justified killing whoever you want.
It’s never fine to say “it’s fine to kill all X”. You need to stop fascists, but you can do that without fucking killing anyone you’ve decided is evil.
it’s fine to kill all X when X is objectively evil, like Nazis and slavers. They aren’t your friends, they’ll kill you and everyone you love without a second thought. It’s not time to play the nuance game and say “but but but killing is bad!”, yeah it is. it is bad.but the only way to stop fascism is by killing it. y you can’t debate it when the boot’s on your neck.
I’m assuming the person you’re imagining to be objectively bad is either literally Hitler or a skinhead neonazi with swastika tattoos and a history of violence, right? What about people who joined the Nazi party because the alternative was having their lives destroyed, or the kid with a bad home life who was radicalised by a gang of thugs who are his only friends? They’re both fascists and victims of fascism, where do you draw the line at who should be killed?
The line being drawn isn’t based on morality, it’s defending yourself and even more innocent people. By the time that radicalized guy has already become a Nazi, it no longer matters why he did it - he’s a danger to everyone, a rabid dog.
It absolutely sucks to see this happen to someone who used to be a person.
o7
