Remembrance Day

November 11, 1918, 11:00 AM. The Great War finally stopped. The war to end all wars.

Of course, this didn't happen. Sure, one war was over, but another was coming just around the corner. We went on to fight World War II, followed a few years later by the Korean War.

The Americans would soon after be embroiled in a little postage stamp sized country called Viet Nam. Canada would see duty in Cyprus. Both countries would send troops later still to Bosnia and Kosovo.

The British would send troops wherever and whenever they could to help other UN and NATO forces around the world, all the while having to deal with the IRA in Ireland.

Iraq attacked Kuwait and the Gulf War ensued. And on 9/11, 2001, the world changed yet again.

Terrorism spread to our hemisphere when the World Trade Towers crumbled to ashes after being hit by separate, flying bombs called airplanes. The Trade Centers symbolized America's wealth. The Pentagon, it's military might. Some 3,000 lost their lives when the Towers came crashing down. Another 125 died when the Pentagon was struck. People of all nationalities and from around the world were at the Towers. And as one voice, the world cried.

We faced a new enemy. One no one really knew how to fight. Not an army from some foreign land. But a belief based on the imperfect, fanatical interpretation of a religion most of us knew very little about.

World Wars I and II were trench warfare. You knew who the enemy was and stood across from him, trying to kill him before he killed you. Viet Nam brought us guerilla warfare, where the enemy was more subtle and didn't draw battle lines but broke you down by sniping, hitting you here and there, when you least expected it. Viet Nam was not a popular war. Too many young men died at the hands of an enemy of such small numbers that the mighty USA finally shook its head and gave up the mission. Like the French before them, the US could not fathom how to fight their opponents, the Viet Cong. Unlike the French, the US backed off to reconsider and make itself stronger, better, more able to cope with this type of warfare.

Having used an army of conscripts and convicts, the Americans realized that if someone doesn't want to fight, he will probably be less than a perfect combatant. They stopped the draft, started sending their prisoners to jail instead of the army and rebuilt their fighting force with volunteers. They still had young men, but they were eager men, dedicated men, men who believed. And the lessons learned by the USA were available for all its Allies to also learn. Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and others learned. And together they coalesced into a formidable fighting force, the likes of which the world had not seen before.

After being stalled by the UN time after time, the US went into Afghanistan to look for the murderer responsible for the attacks of 9/11. It looked to its Allies for support and got it. Unlike the Russians before them, the States arrived in this desert outpost carrying a grudge. As the only remaining superpower in the world, you do not want the States to have a grudge against you.

Killing terrorists is one thing, but you also have to stop the people who train them. And when you find a despot paying the families of suicide murderers for their sons or daughters role in eliminating 'The Great Satan', you go after him too. No one much cared at the time if the despot was killing his own people in despicable ways. It was his country and he could pretty much do as he pleased while we all sat around, navel gazing, suggesting diplomatic ways to end the genocide. But when he trained terrorists, and supported other training camps to send men and women to harm the people of civilized, western culture, the war came to him.

It is another unpopular war but it is one which must be waged. And whether people support the war or not, they should support the troops who are doing the fighting. Because they fight for us.

They always have and they always will. We write letters to the editor every day moaning and complaining about this, that and the other thing. We stand on street corners and denigrate our governments about the latest scandal and how high our taxes are. We protest gun laws, immigration, death penalties, the seal hunt and the new strip bar opening up down the street. We send our kids to school to become doctors, lawyers, accountants and even philosophers. They can become auto workers or artists. They can work at McDonald's or become CEOs. The world is their oyster and they are free to follow whatever path they choose. Some become bums, others become the rich and famous. All thanks to our vets.

Try that in places like Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan or North Korea. You won't get very far.

The following is an excerpt from an editorial in the Toronto Sun. I think it is fitting, especially today.

What do we owe our vets? We owe them everything - our freedom, our peace, our prosperity, our very way of life. We can never repay them and their comrades who died, who sacrificed everything fighting on the orders of our governments, on our behalf. Our debt to them is eternal.

It does not end when the last soldier who fought in World War I, or World War II or in Korea, or in our current mission in Afghanistan, dies many years from now. But one small way we pay some of our debt is by buying poppies - the money goes directly to assisting war vets - and wearing them on Remembrance Day, N ov. 11. On that day, we pause for two minutes of silence in their honour, at 11 a.m., marking the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, the official end of World War I. And in those two minutes, we remember them. Not just this year. Not just next year. Every year. Forever
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Lest we forget.