Thanks, Veterans!

[synkr0nized]

It's been another year, another Veteran's Day finds us.

Do you folks outside of the US have a similar holiday?


In any case, thanks to all of you who have served, regardless of country!

[Aerozord]

In any case, thanks to all of you who have served, regardless of country!

Unless it was germany in the 40's, you guys were kinda dicks

[Daimo Mac, The Blue Light of Hope]

In Canada we have Remembrance Day where at 11:00 we have a moment of silence for those who gave their lives for peace.

We will remember them.

---------- Post added at 09:52 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:51 AM ----------

Unless it was germany in the 40's, you guys were kinda dicks

And fuck you.

[Aerozord]

In Canada we have Remembrance Day where at 11:00 we have a moment of silence for those who gave their lives for peace.

We will remember them.

Thats memorial day here. Veterns day is for those that are still alive and kicking. They get free pancakes

[synkr0nized]

All right, let's keep it civil.

[Karrrrrrrrrrrresche]

Since it's America and nobody knows what it is or what day Remembrance day is I've been wearing a poppey pin most of the week.

Unless it was germany in the 40's, you guys were kinda dicks

This was wholly uncalled for and I hope you realize how bad of a thing it was to say.

That said, you have it backwards. Memorial day is for those who died during a war, Veterans day is for any who served, living or dead.

[Daimo Mac, The Blue Light of Hope]

At our Remembrance Day ceremonies, we had a crowd of 300 (town size is roughly 2000) and the legion was packed. Our minister did a wonderful job and mentioned an editorial cartoon regarding the ottawa shooting. My father, grandmother uncle and I laid a wreath at the cenotaph and made me miss my grampa alot.

[Flarecobra]

I got a free lunch at the local VFW post, and took part in a little ceremony. Was kind of funny that I was the only female there, as well as the only Marine as well.

[Solid Snake]

For whatever it's worth, I'm pretty sure the vast majority of German soldiers serving in World War 2 A: didn't really care for the Nazi party, as a majority of German citizens didn't vote for Hitler, and/or B: were swept up in Hitler's nationalistic fervor, which was based on a lot of lies and misinformation and substanceless speeches, you know, the exact same thing every country does to some extent to fool their populaces into supporting wars.

The Holocaust is an incredibly ugly can of beans, but it's based on the same kind of objectively horrifying dehumanization that America employed to great effect against Native Americans and African American slaves, the Turks employed against the Armenians, the USSR employed against all of its minority ethnic groups as well as classes of farmers like the Kulaks, the Chinese employed against its own citizens and Tibetans, the Belgians employed against the peoples of the Congo, the Zulu Kingdom employed against minority tribes in modern day South Africa, the pre-Nazi Germans committed against civilians in their southwestern African colonies, the Spanish and Portuguese committed in pretty much all of their South and Central American colonies, natives then committed in retaliation against colonial civilians of European descent, the Japanese committed against the Ainu in Hokkaido, the Qing Dynasty committed against the Dzungar Oirats, the British committed against natives in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and around the globe of their empire, as well as the Great Irish Famine, similar atrocities committed by the French in their territories, the genocide the Russian Tsarists committed against Muslims and other dissidents in the Russian Empire, the genocides the Ottomans committed against the Assyrians, Greeks and Kurds, the Nanking Massacre, the systemic execution of all Haitians in the Dominican Republic, the genocide committed by the Indonesians against the East Timorese and the Papuans, mass killings in Ethiopia, the systemic obliteration of tribal peoples in Brazil, the countless conflicts between Tutsis and Hutus, not to mention Rwanda, Cambodia and Sudan...

You know what Nazi Germany's become? The whipping boy we focus all our negativity on to convince ourselves that we're better than that. We convince ourselves that it was just Hitler and some fucked up Germans who'd ever act so inhumanely so we never have to confront the inhumanity within ourselves. Don't get me wrong: Hitler and his stooges were utterly contemptible human beings. But at one point or another we need to give the Germans a fucking break and realize that antisemitism was absolutely a thing in all our countries and the Nazis only made explicit what had been implicit for centuries upon centuries.

Every nation has been the Nazis at some point during its evolution, and countless soldiers representing every nation in every conflict have committed wartime atrocities. The vast majority of soldiers on all sides of modern conflicts don't commit atrocities against civilians, at least insofar as we're talking about the era of human civilization when we've had clearly delineated international maxims about such conduct. So I have no problem whatsoever celebrating the sacrifices made by soldiers who were just doing their jobs, while saving all my pent-up aggression and ire for the fuckwits who ordered them to do all kinds of stupid shit because powerful, privileged people in positions of authority are generally awful shitstains.

[Seil]

lryRLRNkKG8

VIMY
(Steve and Rob Ritchie)

CHORUS
Raise your flask; aim your rifles high
I've had a dream, I've seen we three should have no fear at all
You'll die in Kenora, Billy; you, Jim, in Winnipeg
And I will end my days in Montreal

These people come to see me in my bedroom
With faces dim and names I can't recall
Some woman with a golden ring she comes to comb my hair
Then she dresses me and walks me down the hall
Well I can still put one foot before the other,
If someone points the way for me to go
Today the sun is shining and a crowd has gathered 'round
They put circles of red flowers on the stone

Chorus

Old Jim Rankin stood behind me in the tunnel
Spat on his bayonet and he wiped it with his hand
And he rocked from heel to heel, blew out his cheeks and whistled
While we waited for the signal to advance
Jimmy Rankin he was twenty and we thought him an old man
He said he'd fathered children by the score
By girls back in Winnipeg and girls in Calais
And he bragged, by God, there'd be a hundred more

Chorus

And Billy Whitefish from Kenora: jet black hair and eyes like coal
We all called him 'Chief' behind his back
He never smiled or laughed or joked or spoke that much at all
Just sat and smoked while we waited to attack
Well they poured shells over our heads into the hillside
In thirty yards our kit and boots were full of mud
But as we made the ridge, Jimmy went down on both knees
And he coughed into his sleeve and there was blood

Chorus

The last sound I ever heard was an explosion
And bodies flew like apples thrown by boys play
When I could see again, I was alone Jimmy wasn't there
And a crater marked the hillside where he'd lain
And Billy Whitefish from Kenora wound up in a German trench
Where he captured their machine gun all alone
And held them off until his ammunition was all spent
And they swarmed around and they hacked him to the bone

Chorus

Now every day I still remember what I told them
My two friends who that day from this earth were torn
And the craters and the trenches where they died now bear the names
Of the cities and the towns where they were born

Chorus

2F_PxO1QJ1c trmG0mgrkM8 o1JnQq66F6g T_inJd37q_k

---------- Post added at 10:08 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:42 PM ----------

iBpweLRwrjc

[Aerozord]

Guys, I was joking. I know all about how soldiers are conditioned to perform tasks on command, the pressures to obey authority, and how every army in all of human history has committed horrible acts. Our own is no exception and it could be argued the United States during world war two committed the greatest war crimes.

Sorry everyone took "nazi suck" so seriously


That said, you have it backwards. Memorial day is for those who died during a war, Veterans day is for any who served, living or dead.

They serve the dead pancakes?

[Aldurin]

Guys, I was joking. I know all about how soldiers are conditioned to perform tasks on command, the pressures to obey authority, and how every army in all of human history has committed horrible acts. Our own is no exception and it could be argued the United States during world war two committed the greatest war crimes.

Sorry everyone took "nazi suck" so seriously

It's still very much inappropriate to make light of a serious topic like respect for soldiers, who go through some awful shit to keep their homeland safe and in many cases do not get the proper recognition and compensation for it. In cases like this the best choice with how to properly present your joke is not at all.

[Karrrrrrrrrrrresche]

They serve the dead pancakes?

As it turns out, getting free pancakes is something of an ancillary part of the commemoration that occurs on Veterans day.

Also, kind of wish you'd just say "Sorry I said that thing" instead of "Sorry you got offended by it."

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

There's a time and a place for jokes, Aero. This thread was not one of them. Come on, even I know when to keep my mouth shut on certain topics.

[Daimo Mac, The Blue Light of Hope]

Guys, I was joking. I know all about how soldiers are conditioned to perform tasks on command, the pressures to obey authority, and how every army in all of human history has committed horrible acts. Our own is no exception and it could be argued the United States during world war two committed the greatest war crimes.

Sorry everyone took "nazi suck" so seriously



I take that seriously because I have family who was forced to fight for the Nazi's. I have gotten into fights over. Your joke was not funny so fuck off.

[Amake]

I give thanks to the soldiers.
I am thankful to every soldier who ever served, be it under liars, thieves or murderers.
I am thankful to every soldier who was ever cheated, bullied, enslaved or frightened into service.
I am thankful to the soldiers who had to kill.
I am thankful to the soldiers who had to die.
I am thankful to the soldiers who had to live.
I am thankful to the soldiers who threw down their guns.
I give thanks to those who have tried to help.

[Seil]

YvDtOigTH-gOZ_15XjYssY

[Osterbaum]

Yeah, thanks for dying and murdering for nothing. I sure am glad I've still got the "freedom" to go die and kill for "my country".

I don't give thanks on veterans day or remembrance day or independence day or which ever day any given country uses to "celebrate" the veterans of brutal massacres.

Eugene Debs had it right 94 years ago (https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/11/the-exploitation-of-veterans-day/).

And that is war in a nutshell. The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and all to lose — especially their lives.

They have always taught and trained you to believe it to be your patriotic duty to go to war and to have yourselves slaughtered at their command. But in all the history of the world, you, the people, have never had a voice in declaring war, and strange as it certainly appears, no war by any nation in any age has ever been declared by the people.
They are continually talking about your patriotic duty. It is not their but your patriotic duty that they are concerned about. There is a decided difference. Their patriotic duty never takes them to the firing line or chucks them into the trenches.

[Amake]

Ties in pretty well with something I've been thinking. Yes, the the soldier is an intricate part of a terrible machine that uses up human lives, manipulates peoples' beliefs and perpetuates a culture of fear, greed and inequality just to give more power to the most powerful. It's important to remember that, just as it's important to remember the soldier himself usually isn't given a choice, or enough information to make a valid choice, but is one of the most powerless and abused members of our society.

To thank them seems inappropriate when the obvious thing to do would be to make no more soldiers, and make no more war. But then, it's not the most absurd politeness in our society I have had to adjust to, lacking an effective way to implement any alternative.

[Osterbaum]

It's absolutely, at least in the grand scheme of things, not the individual soldiers fault. Though of course we do always hold some responsibility as individuals.

Rather than thak someone for "their service" I'm more inclined to feel sympathy towards them. Or you know if they committed atrocities then I'd be more inclined to feel rage. "Just following orders" isn't a particularly good excuse.

[synkr0nized]

Thanks for turning a simple thread of thanks into a political statement. After the poor "joke", I suppose that's the natural evolution.

We're done here.