For all those that are, that have, and that most assuredly STILL will, give their last full measure to serve, protect, and defend the freedoms of every single person here - enjoying the right to speak, to read, to walk freely down a road, to own a home,  to marry,  to learn,  to have ANY right, just simply to even *have a right in the first place*,  and to be a part of this great nation, and one that far, far, too many, still take for granted,

 
I am forever humbly aware of this sacrifice, and wish to deeply return every possible respect, kindness, care, friendship, advocacy, defense of, and any courage possible in return, that every single one of you, your families, beloveds, and still fighting even this moment, most seriously deserves.  

 
While millions are waiting for a long weekend, off from work, off from school, drinking, partying, laughing, enjoying, and living fully in every moment, there are still thousands sitting in a desert, sitting in a swamp, sitting in a cell, sitting in a VA facility waiting for respect and fair treatment, and their families, children, beloveds, and fellow brothers and sisters, wait for them, miss them, mourn them, pray for them and their safe return, and are also attending services, everyplace in this country, to remember them this weekend. For this. For them. For all of you.

 

Salute.

 

Most respectfully, always.

 

TheAngelaGirl

is effing hilarious!!!!  You irreverent SOB!

... have sacrificed for wars that were ill-advised or whose causes had nothing to do with freedoms.  Yes, this nation is one in which its citizens still enjoy many freedoms.  Enjoy them while you can while they slip from our weak, shallow grasp by government measures disguised under misleading names such as the patriot act, and privacy breaches masquerading as 'anti-terrorist' measures such as those revealed by Edward Snowden, a true freedom fighter now branded as a traitor to the 'land of the free'.

Sacrifice doesn't automatically imply an honorable cause.  Look deeper, pierce the veil.

Well put sserviceman! While we enjoy more fredom than any other country in the world, our democratic government is slipping away... Many would call the US an Oligarchy, including myself. Babylon!

looks like the powers that be felt my post was a little too irreverent.

I'm as patriotic as the next guy or gal...I just thought that a tranny chat room is a strange place to wave the flag.  

 

This was not intended either as an endorsement of warfare nor the stupidity of politics and powers at play, to the till and toil of all that have sacrificed arms, legs, eyes, ears, hands, hearts, minds, family, sanity, worse, and most certainly life itself.

 
The human history of the warrior and my own personal respects are: can we hate war and the so called "need for it" as we try to survive actually being a warlike species to begin with,  yet can we also unquestionably love the warrior, and do so with honor, with undying respect, care, consideration, kindness, and REAL awareness of the stupidity behind so many "righteous causes", which they give their all for, and more, and learn from it ?  

 
Yes. I agree and think we must, and I sure as hell hope that we still can, before it's too late.

 
In memorial for those of our own citizens, friends, neighbors, brothers, fathers, sisters, mothers, sons, daughters, that fearlessly do, that unquestioningly will, and that already most assuredly *have*, in every culture, in every age, in every cause, paid for almost every major turning point of progress in humanity, and often with real courage, integrity, sacrifice, and your very lives for eons, yourself most likely included, love...  Yes.

 
...but blindly honor any coward, or turncoat, or any desk pushing political profiteer that turns a hero or real freedom fighter into a traitor, with no more awareness of courage and actual life and death sacrifice than a rock, or a stink beetle, or the horrible power play of politics, media, and industry, which all too often shift the very winds of human conflict to favor power-mad interests that often lie far outside of true good ?  

No freaking way in hell.  

 
Respect, Honor, remembrance, aid to their faithfully loved ones, hopefully even the barest modicum of justice, and solemn Memoriam for those which DO deserve it?  

 
Hell Yes.  

 

(and I absolutely did not mean just blind, unaware, &/or obtusely jingoistic platitudes, love...)
 

"When the power of love, overcomes the love of power, then the world will know peace".  
~Jimi Hendrix~


-- Modified on 5/24/2014 12:58:25 AM

"He's five foot-two, and he's six feet-four,
 He fights with missiles and with spears.
 He's all of thirty-one, and he's only seventeen,
 Been a soldier for a thousand years.

 He'a a Catholic, a Hindu, an Atheist, a Jain,
 A Buddhist and a Baptist and a Jew.
 And he knows he shouldn't kill,
 And he knows he always will,
 Kill you for me my friend and me for you.

 And he's fighting for Islam,
 He's fighting for Christ,
 He's fighting for the USA,
 And he's fighting for the Russians,
 And he's fighting for Freedom,
 And he thinks we'll put an end to war this way.

 And he's fighting for Democracy,
 He's fighting for the Jews,
 He says it's for the peace of all.
 He's the one who must decide,
 Who's to live and who's to die,
 And he never sees the writing on the wall.

 But without him,
 How would Hitler have condemned them at Dachau?
 Without him Caesar would have stood alone,
 He's the one who gives his body
 As a weapon of the war,
 And without him all this killing can't go on.

 He's the Universal Soldier and he really is to blame,
 His orders come from far away no more,
 They come from here and there and you and me,
 And brothers can't you see,
 This is not the way we put the end to war."
 
War should be quarantined by nations, not participated in and thereby escalated !

Amen

 
I also think this was a beautiful and deeply meaningful thing to share. In the perfect world without greed, hatred, strife, war, conflict, ignorance, quest for power, struggle for greed, approval of spite, nastiness, rudeness, brazen coldness, intention of ill, superficial statism, media and industry driven influence, political positioning and appearance.. and so many more disgusting ills and harms... this would be the most meaningful thing to say.  As it stands now, this is not the case. May it be that we may see a day when such things and this kind of awareness penetrates and is the rule instead of the exception ?

 
That would be a good thing. Until then, I choose to give respect and honor to you and all others that have given their all, and much much more.

 
LoveRespectAlways