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#     Veterans day
Friday, June 22nd, 2007

“Take my hand
We’re off to never never land.”

In exactly one week from now, Holland will celebrate it’s National Veterans Day for the third time. This new-born tradition (founded in 2005 and followed by the UK in 2006) is an initiative by the Dutch government “as a gift to all Dutch veterans. An homage to those who fought for peace.” In Afghanistan and Iraq for example.

With the worlds growing disdain for war, the countries who are seeking wars or are actively involved in them are in need of some sort of tribute to their own efforts. Because when you’re investing billions in cash and risking thousands of lives, you have to establish acceptance in the minds of your people before they flip and go “WHAT THE FUCK?!”. When something smells bad, first thing to do is to take out your can of aromatizer and start spraying around, not? In this case, honoring war vets and boosting the feelings of national unity might be the perfect way to do just that. Putting the focus on soldiers of “peace forces” makes it look even more righteous. But stop for a second there, am I the only one who thinks the word “peace” looks a bit odd when it’s standing right next to the word “force”?

I actually agree that we should give these brave people some credit. Being a peace soldier is very taxing to body and mind. The body part is obvious of course. The mind part does need some more explanation (no pun intended):

Times are getting more and more confusing for Western soldiers. Back in the old wars, a soldiers tasks used to be much more clear. The enemy was the fool wearing the enemies uniform, making him a pretty evident target. The prime objective was to kill or capture him or be killed or captured by him. And the endpoint of war was when one of you had taken over the other one’s land and/or belongings. Well, goodbye good old war times! Today, a peace soldiers pre-war briefing probably sounds something like this:

“Okay, here’s the deal. We’re going to invade this country here, as friends. Our aim is to free its people from this bearded/mustached dictator here, and inject… I mean bring a democratic system into working here. When we enter the capital city, our troops will be embraced by the local civilians here.

We have reason to believe that they will load our tanks with flowers, money and goodies. But it could also be just flowers, our intelligence hasn’t figured that out exactly yet. We’ll see how it works out from there. Any questions? Good. Go go go!”

The truth often turns out to be quite different. The peace soldier, no matter what his objectives to go to war were in the first place (be it a warm heart, the promise of higher education, or simply too many games of Command and Conquer), can become very desillusioned, very fast. When your enemy doesn’t wear a recognizable uniform, when the same people who you’re supposed to protect have grown to hate your guts and want you out of their country a.s.a.p., well then that kind of war just ain’t fair! Every day you’ll see comrades fall and there’s no telling where all this will lead to. Chances are you become a tad confused. And confused people do strange things in these types of circumstances!

Four days ago, another dutch fighter returned dead from Camp Holland (in Uruzgan), which once again shows the schocking truth that war ain’t a picknick and even peace soldiers might actually get killed in it! Not to speak of the thousands and Thousands and THOUSANDS of innocent civilians a.k.a. collateral damage. Yes let’s not speak of them, cause in about a week, it will be Veterans Day! So hurray for that!

Veterans Day TV commercial #1 - Veterans Day TV commercial #2 - Veterans Day TV commercial #3 - Veterans Day radio commercial #1 - Veterans Day radio commercial #2 -Veterans Day radio commercial #3

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One comment on “Veterans day”

1. Bonjour Runnergirl,

   You are totally right and it could not be said better.
   I’ll put you on my bookmarks.

   Totziens
   Georg

   George - June 26th, 2007 @ 4:50 pm
   http://washingwithoutgettingwet-georg.blogspot.com

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