Veteran's Day





Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate...we can not consecrate...we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government: of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

President Abraham Lincoln spoke these words several wars before Veteran's Day came to be. And still the dead from wars die and die again. You would think we would learn.

Comments

  1. The Blog of BeeNovember 11, 2009 at 1:14 PM

    You would think we would but we don't and we don't because politicians run countries and don't listen to the people who run the armies. Whilst there is greed for power, for oil, for sovereignty, for self glorification the wars will continue and the really, really sad thing is that the wars we are now involved in, are not ours. The politicians made them ours because they wanted to keep the Middle East from uniting. It's better for 1st world countries to keep the area destabilized. I don't condone what Saddam Hussein did and could never do so yet George Bush Snr knew when to leave well alone working on the theory that 'better the devil you know....' would that his son had had the same attitude. Saddam Hussein was a tyrant and needed to be stopped but was this way, the way? Now there are new monsters in Iraq - same power hungry people killing their own in a bid to destabalize their own new government.

    where as we celebrate Armistice Day in the UK, will it all end? If ever?

    ReplyDelete
  2. IntelliblogNovember 15, 2009 at 5:37 PM

    I think that if women (and especially mothers) were prime ministers and presidents, wars would become scarce. Not only are women more sensible and blessed with better negotiation skills, what woman would send her children to a war to be killed?

    ReplyDelete

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