[© 1994, 2010, 2012, 2014 Robert A. Haines, Jr. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED]
Today is a time of reflection and remembrance.
I would like to make a few points that I hope are relevant to Americans, veterans and non-veterans alike.
President George Washington said, “The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional as to how they perceive the veterans of earlier wars were treated and appreciated by their country.”
When remembering the millions of people who have been liberated by American forces around the globe by history’s most evil oppressors, another cliché’ rings true, “Never was so much owed by so many to so few.”
Approximately 25 million of our fellow citizens once carried the title of Marine, soldier, airman, sailor, Coast Guardsman, National Guardsman, Merchant Mariner, and now carry the title of veteran. We know them as our neighbors, friends, colleagues, and family members. They make us proud to be Americans.
Veterans understand profoundly the meaning of service and sacrifice – so they are not the kind of people who take life for granted.
Many of you once swore to uphold the security of our country and I thank you for that service.
. . . 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 . . .
The armistice to end the great war (WWI) to end all wars went into effect at that time.
It is indeed an honor to mark a date set in history, a day to give thanks for the sacrifices made for us in the past, to celebrate our progress from those efforts, and to rededicate ourselves for peace in our future.
On this day, in this month, at this hour, our nation remembers the moment when the guns of World War I went silent — and we recognize the service and the sacrifice of our nation’s veterans. From Valley Forge to Vietnam, from Kuwait to Kandahar, from Berlin to Baghdad, our veterans have borne the costs of America’s wars – and they have stood watch over America’s peace. The American people are grateful to the veterans and all who have fought for our freedom.
On this Veterans Day, we give thanks for the millions Americans who strengthened our nation with their example of service and sacrifice. Our veterans are drawn from many generations and from many backgrounds. Some charged across great battlefields. Some fought on the high seas. Some patrolled the open skies. All contributed to the character and to the greatness of America.
On this Veterans Day, we also honor a new generation of men and women who are defending our freedom. Since September the 11th, 2001, our Armed Forces have engaged the enemy, the terrorists, on many fronts. At this moment, more than a million Americans are on active duty, serving in the cause of freedom and peace around the world. They are our nation’s finest citizens. They confront grave danger to defend the safety of the American people. Through their sacrifice, they’re making this nation safer and more secure — and they are earning the proud title of veteran.
We are deeply grateful to the men and women who rise every day in defense of America and our friends. Today’s generation of American service members are performing their duties with skill, with effectiveness, and with honor. They are deployed on many fronts in the war on terror, tracking the enemies of freedom and holding them to account. And at this hour they continue their work — striking hard against the forces of murder and chaos. Members of the active duty armed forces, National Guard, and reserves have faced hard conditions – tough duty, long deployments, and the loss of comrades.
Veterans Day is an American holiday honoring military veterans – all veterans, men, women, combat and non-combat, overseas and stateside of all ranks and occupations. Today we honor, not only the infantry in the field, the special forces and recon troops behind the lines of combat, but the mail clerk, the cook, the humvee and jeep drivers, the engineers, the medics and corpsman, and, yes, even the chaplain, lawyers, doctors – we honor ALL veterans who have served, stateside, as well as overseas, on the seas, and in the air.
We are not celebrating to debate whether any war was right or wrong, or any thing such as that, but simply to honor our veterans. Thank you veterans.
Simply put, Veterans Day is largely intended to thank living veterans for their service, to acknowledge that their contributions to our nation’s national security are appreciated, and to underscore the fact that all those who served have sacrificed in many ways to have done their duty.
As we celebrate another Veterans’ Day, I wonder just what its meaning is to the ones that did not serve in our military.
A day to relax and have fun. I wonder how much of the history behind this holiday is being taught in our schools today, and if the high school students, especially the ones that are nearing graduation, are aware of the sacrifices that the veterans made that ensures these students the rights to make decisions as to what they are going to do with their lives when they finish school. They can choose whether to get a job, or go to college, or join the military.
As a Vietnam Veteran, our choices were limited, it was college or military and most of us couldn’t afford to go to college so we were drafted or volunteered for the service. And a large majority of us went to Vietnam. World War II and Korean veterans didn’t have any choice, it was go to war. That is why I’m adding this little tidbit, so that if there are any young people here, that they might understand the sacrifices that was made in the past to give you the freedom to make the choices you have today. If you appreciate these choices, take the time out this Veterans Day to thank a veteran.
By the way, if you are a bit confused about why we have two days each years to pay homage to military people, Memorial Day in May honors service members who died in service to their country or as a result of injuries incurred during battle. Deceased veterans might also be remembered on Veterans Day but the day is set aside to thank and honor living veterans who served honorably in the military – in wartime or peacetime. Again, thanks, vets for your service.
Today our nation pays tribute to those living veterans who have worn the uniform of the United States of America. Each of these men and women took an oath to defend America, and they upheld that oath with honor and decency. Through the generations, they have humbled dictators and liberated continents and set a standard of courage and idealism for the entire world.
America’s veterans have placed the nation’s security before their own lives, as well as the comfort of their families. Their sacrifice creates a debt that America can never fully repay.
Again, a new generation of Americans is defending our flag and our freedom in the first war of the 21st century. The war came to our shores on September the 11th, 2001. That morning we saw the destruction that terrorists intend for our nation. We know that they want to strike again, and our nation has made a clear choice. We will confront this mortal danger to all humanity.
We will not tire or rest until the war on terror is won.
In the few short years since September the 11th, the evil that reached our shores has reappeared on other days in other places. In the past years, we have seen terror offensives. All these separate images of destruction and suffering that we see on the news can seem like random, isolated acts of madness. Innocent men and women and children have died simply because they boarded the wrong train or worked in the wrong building or checked into the wrong hotel. Yet, while the killers choose their victims indiscriminately, their attacks serve a clear and focused ideology, a set of beliefs and goals that are evil but not insane. Some call this evil “Islamic radicalism,” others “militant jihadism” and still others “Islamofacism.” This form of radicalism exploits Islam to serve a violent, political vision — the establishment by terrorism, subversion and insurgency of a totalitarian empire that denies all political and religious freedom. These extremists distort the idea of jihad into a call for terrorist murder against Christians and Hindus and Jews and against Muslims themselves who do not share their radical vision.
Many militants are part of a global, borderless terrorist organization like al Qaeda, which spreads propaganda and provides financing and technical assistance to local extremists, and conducts dramatic and brutal operations, like the attacks of September the 11th. Other militants are found in regional groups often associated with al Qaeda — paramilitary insurgencies and separatist movements in places like Somalia, the Philippines, Pakistan, Chechnya, Kashmir and Algeria.
Still others spring up in local cells, inspired by Islamic radicalism, but not centrally directed.
Islamic radicalism is more like a loose network with many branches than an army under a single command. Yet these operatives fighting on scattered battlefields share a similar ideology and vision for our world. We know the vision of the radicals because they have openly stated it in videos, in audiotapes, in letters, in declarations and on websites.
These extremists want to end American and Western influence in the broader Middle East, because we stand for democracy and peace, and stand in the way of their ambitions.
Over the past few decades, radicals have specifically targeted Egypt and Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and Jordan for potential takeover. They achieved their goal for a time in Afghanistan, and now they’ve set their sights on Iraq.
With the greater economic and military and political power they seek, the terrorists would be able to advance their stated agenda – to develop weapons of mass destruction, to destroy Israel, to intimidate Europe, to assault the American people and to blackmail our government into isolation.
Some Americans might be tempted to dismiss these goals as fanatical or extreme. They are fanatical and extreme, but they should not be dismissed. Our enemy is utterly committed to their goals, as Zarqawi has vowed: We will either achieve victory over the human race or we will pass to the eternal life. And a civilized world knows very well that other fanatics in history — from Hitler to Stalin to Pol Pot – consumed whole nations in war and genocide before leaving the stage of history.
Evil men obsessed with ambition and unburdened by conscience must be taken very seriously, and we must stop them before their crimes can multiply.
Like the ideology of communism, our new enemy is dismissive of free peoples, claiming that men and women who live in liberty are weak and decadent. Leaders of terrorist movements have noted that Americans are the most cowardly of God’s creatures. But let us be clear, it is cowardice that seeks to kill children and the elderly with car bombs, and cuts the throat of a bound captive, and targets worshipers leaving a mosque. It is courage that liberated more than 50 million people from tyranny. It is courage that keeps an untiring vigil against the enemies of rising democracies. And it is courage in the cause of freedom that will once again destroy the enemies of freedom!
The terrorists’ goal is to overthrow a rising democracy, claim a strategic country as a haven for terror, destabilize the Middle East and strike America and other free nations with increasing violence.
Our goal is to defeat the terrorists and their allies at the heart of their power, so we will defeat the enemy in Iraq.
The work ahead involves great risk for for our American forces. We’ve lost some of our nation’s finest men and women in this war on terror. And, it involves patience for the American public.
The terrorists are as brutal an enemy as we’ve ever faced, unconstrained by any notion of our common humanity or by the rules of warfare. No one should underestimate the difficulties ahead, nor should they overlook the advantages we bring to this fight. Some observers look at the job ahead and adopt a self-defeating pessimism. It is not justified.
With every random bombing, with every funeral of a child, it becomes more clear that the extremists are not patriots or resistance fighters; they’re murderers at war with the Iraqi people themselves.
And our debate at home must also be fair-minded. One of the hallmarks of a free society and what makes our country strong is that our political leaders can discuss their differences openly, even in times of war.
We don’t know the course of our own struggle will take or the sacrifices that might lie ahead. We do know, however, that the defense of freedom is worth our sacrifice.
We do know the love of freedom is the mightiest force of history, and we do know the cause of freedom will once again prevail.
I encourage you all to make an effort to educate our young people of the sacrifices that all veterans have made in service to their country and remind them that the freedom they enjoy in this great country, the United States of America, that freedom is not free!
I am reminded of a story I heard while serving as a Navy chaplain. A man with bird in his hand said to a wise man; “Is this bird dead or alive?”
Well, the wise man knew that if answered that the bird was dead, that the man could let it go proving that the bird was alive. If he answered, “alive,” the man could crush it to death, proving that the bird was dead. Finally, the wise man said, “The answer is in your hand.” The bird is a symbol of your life and the spirit of humanity. You can kill it or keep it alive.
As we show our flag and our pride today, we remember that the men and women of America’s Armed Forces serve a great cause. They follow in a great tradition, handed down to them by America’s veterans. And in public ceremonies and in private prayer, we give thanks for the freedom we enjoy because of their willingness to serve.
Well over two centuries have passed since George Washington first took command of the Continental Army. Yet we can see in today’s military the same virtues that won this nation our independence, and which have safeguarded our country despite all the challenges of history. The men and women who wear the uniform in the year 2012 follow in a long, honorable, and unbroken tradition of service passed down to them by our veterans. To every veteran, this nation owes a debt we cannot possibly discharge but we will always acknowledge. And so on this day of reflection and appreciation, I offer our esteem and gratitude to all the veterans of the United States Armed Forces.
To all our veterans we have a simple yet heartfelt message – thank you – all of you, for your service. We want you to know that your example serves to inspire others who follow in your footsteps. Thank you for your selfless-service in peacetime and war, here in this nation and throughout the world. For all veterans, regardless of their service and the era in which they have served, have paid a price for the freedom we enjoy.
Let us thank them not only today — Veterans Day — but every day. Remember our veterans and the price they paid physically and emotionally to keep this nation safe. Remember our troops – America’s future veterans – America’s sons and daughters, who have selflessly made the decision to defend your right to make the decision to come here today – and for your decision to be here today to honor our veterans, I thank you and applaud you for your decision. You set the example for all Americans, and should be justly proud.
Additionally, remember that veterans’ families also have paid a price for freedom. We may never be able to adequately thank our veterans, our Soldiers, and their families, but we must always support them.
The freedom of the press, the freedom of religion and the right to vote. These are freedoms that are granted to us by the Constitution of the United States. And they are freedoms that are protected every day by the men and women who courageously serve in our armed forces.
I thank you for honoring those who serve today, and for honoring those who have set such a sterling example – our nation’s veterans. May God bless our veterans, may God bless all who wear the uniform, and may God continue to bless the United States of America.
Veterans, we salute you.
