Several things were on my mind yesterday, as the world observed a day of remembrance for the tragedies of war.
1) Remembrance Day should be a statutory holiday. I remember the argument a number of years ago that children would be able to remember better in school than having a freebie day off, but when we celebrate Civic Holiday, Labour Day and now Family Day with statutory holidays, it seems somewhat embarrassing that we don't afford Remembrance Day the same respect. I have a view of the cenetaph from my office and I suspect the crowd that gathered would have been significantly larger if not so many people were working. This needs to be revisited again.
2) Just because you dislike war (as we all do) doesn't mean that you can't respect the sacrifices that people made to defend freedom.
There were a lot of good people who have died in wars over the years to help protect innocent people from tyranny. Remembrance Day is a day to honour those men and women. It is not a day for anti-war protests. There are 364 other days a year for that.
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I don't take up some moral position here, like "war is bad, mmmmmkay?" This is about pointing out that the "fighting for freedom" thing is a pile of crap.
I've got no problem with violence or with killing people. My problem is with the dumb patriotic story that goes with the killing.
If the willingness to kill and/or die for freedom was really so present, the U.S. would have seen some domestic violence over the recent economic flap.
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