At the risk of turning this political, but being old enough to have lived through the Vietnam era as an adult, I offer this historical perspective:
Commencing with the end of World War II, our foreign policy was dominated by adversarial relationships with both the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China and the advent of the concept of "limited war" because nuclear war was unthinkable. Truman tried it in Korea. Eisenhower and JFK propped up dictators and sent advisors and CIA covert operatives into Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. (My Mother was a high level State Department employee who was in charge of creating covers for CIA operatives and had an annual budget of $100 million to carry out her responsibilities.)
Then Johnson and Nixon escalated everything into a hot war based on lies that attempted to intervene in what was essentially a Vietnamese civil war and not a threat to U.S. national security.
The majority of U.S. citizens supported this in the early years. Eventually the protests and the realization that we were being lied to by our government changed a lot of minds. Then came the
Kent State shootings and opinion change accelerated. The Watergate scandal and Nixon's resignation were the nails that sealed the coffin of public trust in our government and our leaders.
A list could be made of all the distasteful dictators, governments and activities our foreign policy has perpetrated, but you get the idea. And now we come to a simple discussion of how we should treat our veterans and active duty military be they volunteers or conscripts. We come up divided with differing points of view. The difference can certainly be seen between older and younger members. It can also be seen as it was during the Vietnam era between the hawks and the doves. Listen again to a song of the times ...
Universal Soldier, that posed the question of the legitimacy of military solutions. Listen again to
Ohio.
My convictions are that we fought one just war in the 20th century, World War II. And one in the 21st century, Afghanistan. I believe, however, that we've exceeded our justifiable goals in Afghanistan.
I do believe that we should honor our veterans. Unconditionally those who fought in just wars. And still the rest simply because they served when called or volunteered for their own reasons ... but more on the same level that I honor and respect a volunteer serving in a soup kitchen, disaster relieve, or teaching an illiterate person to read.
