This morning's pet peeve

[minx]

Veteran's Day.

Not the day itself, but the fact that we have two separate days - Memorial Day for the dead, and Veteran's Day for the living.

So every year, you see the reminders to keep the two days apart.  But then you also see all the articles and facebook posts about family members who served but are DEAD.
No - that's MEMORIAL DAY.  Veteran's Day is for those who served and are still ALIVE!

I truly wish we'd do what Canada, the UK and France does.  They have one day - Remembrance Day to remember all soldiers.  Those who served, those who are serving, and those who gave the ultimate sacrifice.

Off the soapbox until May

[Dave's Not Here Man]

As you know many of us are poorly educated. And many more that have been led to knowledge yet have no recall.

[minx]

Truth. Which is why I say to just have a day and leave it at that.

November can be Remembrance Day - a day to celebrate those who serve and those who have died in service.

May can be Summer Day, Sales Day, whatever. A day to have off and party.

[Dave's Not Here Man]

I would keep Memorial Day and ditch Veteran's Day. You served in the military, so what? I'm not trying to be an asshole but how many people serve and continue to serve their country, community, etc. directly, without a calendar memo? I would say make Veteran's Day into First Responders Day but that is still too narrow when you have doctors, nurses, volunteers, those who brave the storms to get your power back on, clear the roads, all the truly unsung heroes. No day for them- no day for the "veteran" that did their 2 or 3 years picking up trash on base. I had an old friend that was in the AF that cleaned AF1, basically restocking the plastic cups with the Presidential Logo. Thank you for your service, here's your free scoop of ice cream.

[minx]

Agreed. And because I'm an asshole, I want to mention that the vets who served only in peacetime and bitch about the VA services piss me off big time. There are vets who served in wars and have serious physical and mental trauma from it - those folks should automatically move to the front of the line.

To give many veterans their due though, many are proud to have served, but don't make a big thing of it. They didn't do it for glory or any type of special treatment. Both of my uncles served. Older one was stateside during the Korean war, and the younger one deployed in Vietnam. You'd never know either had served if you met them afterwards. They didn't brag or want anything but to resume a normal life.

[k9krap]

My dad did 2 tours in Korea and came home with a Purple Heart. He refused to talk about. Both his ears froze several times, including the drums. And mom said he would shake and turn pale every time a helicopter flew near in the months following his return. But he never, ever wanted to discuss it.

[minx]

All I know about my younger Uncle's service was that he volunteered (they told him volunteers had a smaller chance of deploying - LIARS), and that he became a dog trainer. Story has it that when he was first deployed, another soldier was having issues controlling a dog and he stepped in then said he was a dog trainer (he had trained his Irish Setter and that was it). But they transferred him to the canine corps. He's never told us anything else.

But I suspect he saw a lot of things that no one else should see. And he was exposed to Agent Orange and now has ALL from it.

[k9krap]

My dad enlisted - tried every thing: Air Force first (he wanted to be a pilot), but they turned him down; then Marines, nope; then the Army took him and put him in infantry. He was on the front lines in Korea. And he volunteered for a second tour. He was a true patriot.

[minx]

That's very impressive Pam. And yes, a patriot for sure.

I know it's not popular, but I would like to bring back the draft. For both men and women with no exceptions except for documented medical disability where a person is physically or mentally unable to work at all. And bone spurs are not a medical disability - I'm talking about things that would prevent you from working at all.

There are plenty of things that need doing stateside, so if you don't deploy you can do things like work with border security, maintain trails and other things in national parks, help out people with paperwork for government programs, do maintenance and repairs on military housing - the list would be fairly long I'd suspect.

If deployment is needed, the units going over would be selected at random - everyone would be trained in combat readiness at the start of their draft period.

Would help make everyone perform their patriotic duty and make keep us out of future wars - Daddy Warbucks would raise a lot of objections to Baby Warbucks being deployed. For it to work however, there has to be NO exceptions. Not for higher education, or single parents - lots of parents deploy now and have to find a caregiver while they're gone. I would allow an exception for a pregnant woman for up to 6 months after birth, but no more cause I'm a total bitch.

I do think that one thing it will do is provide on-the-job training that could transfer to civilian life afterwards. You spend two years re-wiring base housing to bring it up to code, you have your electrician's certificate right there if you want a job for example.

Will never happen of course.