Veterans Days 2008 and beyond

This week our family is observing Veterans day twice – both Monday and Tuesday.  We do have a veteran of World War II in our family, but that wasn’t our reason for taking off forty percent of our work week for the holiday.  My son’s preschool is off on Tuesday, and my daughter’s elementary school was closed on Monday.  I’d forgotten about the oddity of our family calendar in all of the post-election celebration and relief.  But perhaps celebrating Veterans Day twice is what we should all do for the next few years in payment for requiring long tours of duty and the decreasing health and mental health benefits we’ve given the troops and their families since the wars in the Middle East began.

 

The rows of flags at the Veterans Memorial cemetery on Sepulveda Boulevard in Los Angeles are flying.  There are a few of them panhandling with shopping carts under the 405 freeway and near the Veterans Administration complex in West LA.  But other than that, the veterans are as invisible as they always are, banished from the newspapers and their caskets off-limits to the press.  Thankfully the election is over, so politicians are no longer talking about American troops as if they were symbols rather than human beings.  In the afterglow of Barack Obama’s victory, American troops are still entrenched in two foreign wars and returning home with many fewer veterans benefits than ever before.  Here’s to hoping that the new administration makes it a priority to right the many wrongs of the Bush preemptive war doctrine.  For the soldiers and veterans who’ve served in good faith in Iraq and Afghanistan, we have honored them by electing a Commander in Chief who has pledged to treat their lives, sacrifices, and their families with more respect than the departing president.  One could hardly do worse than Bush and Cheney have.