Memorial Day

Today is Memorial Day and although a lot of people confuse the event with Veterans Day, this day does not serve to celebrate those soldiers who returned to civilian duty (although you should still tell these brave men and women how important they are) but rather focuses on those who never returned home.  Also it needs to focus on those who returned home in body but not in spirit.

There is more than one way to be a casualty of war.  The most known way is to be killed in the line of duty.  But what about those ones who return home and have deep seated issues that are not addressed?

Suicide is becoming a serious problem for those troops that return home.  In today's world, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in some ways is even more prevalent in the military than ever before.  While advances have been made in Psychology in peace time technologies, they have also made their way to being used as weapons for war.

As a civilian I cannot claim to know I understand what it is like to be in a hot spot, but I am sure that any can agree with me that read this post, that if a child on drugs is running at me with a bomb strapped to the chest, I may have second thoughts of shooting that enemy and enemy it is.

Unlike what the media shows, what really tends to occur is that warlord leaders take captured children, put them on drugs that alter their brain and sometimes cause them pain as well.  Then they strap a bomb to the already confused and now crying child.  Next, they instruct this child that if they run that way (ie towards American Troops) the pain will stop.

These soldiers are then forced to make a choice that sounds easy on paper but is quite difficult in the moment to decide.  Them or us?

Those types of choices do not go away lightly or sometimes ever.  These types of choices can weigh on a person's soul the rest of their life.

So I call upon any who read this to remember what Memorial Day is all about.  It is a time to remember those who have lost their lives to make the ultimate sacrifice so that people like me can write freely and people can go about their days as they choose.  We must never forget that those choices sometimes occur off the battlefield as well.

  I also call upon all who read this to help make our veteran's lives better so that we can honor the heroes who died defending our country from our enemies and not the ones who died after they returned to the United States and were discarded and abandoned.