A THOUGHT FOR OUR VETERANS

Two thoughts, actually. The first is that this year, the retailers have come up with a brand new institution: the Veterans' Day sale. At least around here, all the department stores are advertising like mad about it. It seems to be the latest way to move the Christmas season earlier, and encourage the people who are smart enough not to be caught dead trying to do their holiday shopping on the Friday after Thanksgiving to get ahead of the game. Is there any holiday that can't be turned into a sale? They've already done it for King's Birthday, so I'm not sure there's anything left, except maybe Good Friday. In the Pakistani neighborhoods around here, there are sales just before Ramadan, so I can't even blame Western civilization.

The other is that, amid the Democratic landslide, the only viable Democratic candidate around here who didn't win was Tammy Duckworth, the Iraq War veteran who lost both legs in a copter crash. The GOP spent an amazing lot of money buying huge amounts of air time for some of the slimiest negative ads I have ever seen. They weren't actually putting that much effort into most of the other races (which may be why they lost so many of them) but they were really determined not to let Duckworth win. She lost by a very small margin, but it still bothers me that she lost at all. The campaign against her reminds me all too much of the Swift Boat ads in 2004, against yet another war hero. The GOP gets really fierce about liberal veterans, more than about most other liberals, even. Maybe what they really are is scared, that liberal veterans could expose the current batch of Republicans for the gutless chicken hawks that they are, willing to put everybody's lives on the line except their own.

Anyway, next time you see a panhandler, remember that chances are one in three he's a veteran, and treat him decently--at least give him a smile, if you can't donate.

Also, a poetic remembrance of all departed warriors:

ARLINGTON

The bloodied sun sinks in the west,
And lights us all with glory;
Here sleep the brave in honored rest;
The bugler tells our story;
O dulce et decorum est pro patria mori;
O dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

Go tell the people, passer-by,
Read the stone before ye,
'Tis sweet and fitting that we die
For our country's glory;
Obedient to your will we lie
Pro patria mori;
O dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

From under stone we've often seen
These lures to empty glory;
We know what deaths these words can mean,
Lonely, cold and gory;
We find these Latin words obscene,
Pro patria mori,
O dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori.

We have no country of our own,
We who sleep in glory;
We died your hatreds to atone,
Still you shun our story;
Oh write no more on any stone,
Pro patria mori;
O dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori.