Memorial Day

My father was a veteran serving as a Navel Aviator in WWII.  My brother died in a training flight while doing the Air Force ROTC in 1975.  Grandma’s brothers served in WWI.  My ancestry has a lineage tracing back through every major wars before that.

Memorial Day is a federal holiday in the United States for remembering the men and women who died while serving in the country's armed forces.  War is a place that old men send young men off to die.

A truly heinous atrocity is being perpetrated on our veterans that have survived.  The Veterans Administration hospitals are now a grossly underfunded dump site for ailing veterans.  From CNN, “At least 40 U.S. veterans died waiting for appointments at the Phoenix Veterans Affairs Health Care system, many of whom were placed on a secret waiting list.  The secret list was part of an elaborate scheme designed by Veterans Affairs managers in Phoenix who were trying to hide that 1,400 to 1,600 sick veterans were forced to wait months to see a doctor, according to a recently retired top VA doctor and several high-level sources.”

This veteran abuse is unacceptable on any level except for by our politicians in Congress, the President and the Federal judges to allow this to continue unabated.  I got one vote and that is being trumped by mindless idiots selling theirs to the highest bidder in the campaign wars.  The Koch brothers and the rest of the 0.1% are beating democracy and common decency to a pulp.  It is time for a 21^st century version of the Sherman Act to protect our country from Citizens United (aka Money Unlimited).

I am grateful for the sacrifices of those veterans who gave their lives for our country and sorry for their loss. 

War quotes from About.com

Gregory Clark

Are bombs the only way of setting fire to the spirit of a people? Is the human will as inert as the past two world-wide wars would indicate?

Albert Einstein

A country cannot simultaneously prepare and prevent war.

Benjamin Franklin

Never has there been a good war or a bad peace.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.

Emperor Hirohito

All men are brothers, like the seas throughout the world; So why do winds and waves clash so fiercely everywhere?

Ernest Hemingway

Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.

Gandhi

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?

George McGovern

I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

An unjust peace is better than a just war.

Georges Clemenceau

War is too serious a matter to entrust to military men.

General Douglas MacArthur

It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.

William Shakespeare King Henry V

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, Or close the wall up with our English dead! In peace there's nothing so becomes a man As modest stillness and humility; But when the blast of war blows in our ears, Then imitate the action of the tiger: Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood.

Albert Einstein

So long as there are men there will be wars.

Albert Einstein

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

Winston Churchill

England has been offered a choice between war and shame. She has chosen shame and will get war.

Joseph Heller, Catch 22

"Let someone else get killed!" "Suppose everyone on our side felt that way?" "Well then I'd certainly be a damned fool to feel any other way, wouldn't I?" "Englishmen are dying for England, American's are dying for America, Germans are dying for Germany, Russians are dying for Russia. There are now fifty or sixty countries fighting in this war. Surely so many countries can all be worth dying for?" "Anything worth living for," said Nately, "is worth dying for." "And anything worth dying for," answered the old man, "is certainly worth living for."

Kosovar

You know the real meaning of PEACE only if you have been through the war.

Peter Weiss

Once and for all the idea of glorious victories won by the glorious army must be wiped out. Neither side is glorious. On either side they're just frightened men messing their pants and they all want the same thing - not to lie under the earth, but to walk upon it - without crutches.

Plato

Only the dead have seen the end of war.

Ronald Reagan

History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.