While I spent a peaceful night sleeping in the comfort of home, rising early to work at home, then prepare to fly to New York City for the Pajamas Media launch, I thought about the people who’re helping to keep me free and safe.
Four years ago, foreign enemies, allowed into the United States through lax immigration policies, declared war on the United States. In that single event, 3,000 people were murdered.
Though suspicion was raised when some of the foreigners attended American flight schools, the government did nothing to stop them. Despite complaints about our government’s many flaws, it’s still the best system ever conceived.
To the men and women who pledged to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, traveling to foreign lands to face the enemy, I thank you for your sacrifice. Know that your service is exceedingly more important and necessary than all the chattering we talking-heads and pretend-pundits will ever do.
Those willing to take up arms to protect these shores ought to be respected, and I’m one American who respects and honors you every day of the year.
Veterans Day 2005
History of Veterans Day
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It’s still worth something today, thirty years after I left the Middle East, eighty-seven years after the Armistice that ended the World War. (Little did anyone suspect in 1918 that there would soon be another World War, worse than the first.) Fear, left unchecked, eats the soul. The soldier acknowledges that fear, and presses on regardless. For that, and for so much more, we thank him on this day.
Today we celebrate the living. The survivors. We honor the dead in May. Except today we honor the dead, too. We can’t help it. The bonds of combat soldiery are tightest because of those who went with us but didn’t come back, they took the low road while we took the high.
Are you paying tribute to veterans? Trackback, and I’ll link.
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Update (1:38 p.m.): George Bush:
Some have also argued that extremists have been strengthened by our actions in Iraq, claiming that our presence in that country has somehow caused or triggered the rage of radicals.
I would remind them that we were not in Iraq on September the 11th, 2001.
The hatred of the radicals existed before Iraq was an issue. And it will exist after Iraq is no longer an excuse.
The government of Russia did not support Operation Iraqi Freedom, and yet the militants killed more than 150 Russian school children in Beslan.
Over the years, these extremists have used a litany of excuses for violence: the Israeli presence on the West Bank, the U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia, the defeat of the Taliban, or the crusades of a thousand years ago.
In fact, we are not facing a set of grievances that can be soothed and addressed. We’re facing a radical ideology with unalterable objectives to enslave whole nations and intimidate the world.
No act of ours invited the rage of killers and no concession, bribe or act of appeasement would change or limit their plans for murder.
On the contrary, they target nations whose behavior they believe they can change through violence.
Against such an enemy, there is only one effective response: We will never back down, we will never give in, we will never accept anything less than complete victory. (Emphasis added)
Now I remember why I voted for him.
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