Memorial Day, May 27th, 2019

This is technically not my dad's holiday.

After fighting in Europe as a unit of the Army Corps of Engineers attached to the 3rd Army and then transferring over to Asia as part of occupational forces in the Philippines and Japan (he told me how huge the koi were in the Emperor's collection, since he got to see them firsthand), he got to come back home. The only major injury he suffered was a permanently bent finger that he got as a result of a section of a bridge falling on it that he was working on either in northeast France or southwest Belgium. Barring that, he came back intact.

Others weren't so lucky. 

Many others, in fact. And this is their day.

I'm no pacifist. I'm also no militarist. There are times when you have no choice but in engage in warfare, but armed conflict should always be the last option you resort to and not the first. The stakes in terms of lives lost and troops permanently disabled or psychologically mangled are far too high for anyone to claim that war is some glorious adventure that has no consequences for its participants. Pardon my language, but this is grade-A horseshit. It has nothing but consequences, and this is why any politician who starts advocating war as an ideal solution to any geopolitical crisis is either a opportunistic demagogue or a complete idiot. History has proven over and over that this is not the case. Cemetaries the world over are full of their mistakes, as well as soldiers who died in far more justifiable conflicts. It remains the responsibility of historians and survivors of those conflicts alike to decide which is which. 

So consider this: this is more than a Federal holiday or a nice day to barbecue with friends. This is a far more important day than that, and we should all remember it. And we should also try to make sure that the next time we have to memorialize someone's military service, it gets celebrated on November 11th instead of late May.