Veteran's Day

It's hard to believe that our citizens have been fighting on foreign soil for five years now.  So many brave men and women gone. Tens of thousands more wounded.  All of them fighting to protect our country.

Cozi and I are wargamers.  We push around bits of cardboard on maps, roll dice, develop strategies, watch our pieces win their victories and suffer their defeats.  You would think that we might feel cavalier about war.  That we glory in war.  That because we play games about war, that real war is just a game to us.

I think the opposite is true.  Wargames have made me acutely aware of what war costs.  Every piece that is tossed into the "dead pile" represents the price paid for victory.  In even the most decisive victories, there is a cost.  On the gaming table it's a "division" or a "battleship".  In the real world, it's tens, hundreds, thousands of brave men, fighting for what they believe in.  Men with families.  With hopes and dreams for the future.  Men struggling to protect those they love, or, as is the case in Iraq, to help people with whom they have no kinship live free from oppression.

My daughter and I read "All Quiet on the Western Front" recently, and it struck me that, in every age, whether or not you agree with the goals of your government, the men and women on the front lines are ordinary people doing extraordinary things.  I'm proud of America's soldiers. They're my soldiers.  They're fighting for me and my family, risking their own happiness and that of their loved ones.  

So, on veterans day, to every veteran reading this:  I honor your service and wish you safely home.

"We must be ready to dare all for our country.  For history does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid."  -Dwight Eisenhower, 1953