Thank You

One thing you could do is actually thank a member of the armed forces in person. I have done this in the past. A few months ago I saw a uniformed RAF man standing at Green Park tube waiting for the train: I simply walked up to him and asked him he was returning from a deployment overseas. He told me that he was returning from Afghanistan and I simply said "Thank you" to him.

I wouldn't have said the UK lacked it. Every year when I was a kid I would take part in the Remembrance Sunday parades as a Girl Guide, and there was definitely a massive feeling of respect and admiration for these brave men. I'd always get tears in my eyes when an octogenarian bent double under the weight of his medals recited Wilfred Owen.

I guess less so with the current armed forces, since the threat was further away, and fewer of us were touched by it personally (most people I know have grandparents who were involved in one of the Great Wars; not everyone knows a modern-day serviceman). Plus the issue of the war itself; I believe anti-war sentiment about the recent wars is higher than it was for WWI and WWII, and what there was then is very much blurred by time, victory and countless readings of war poetry in high school. Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori.

I wonder if that is just a trick played by society to make more people assume bad jobs? The emphasis of heroism and personal sacrifice just makes the rest of society become freeloaders. Sorry that I can not formulate it better.

I hope the pay for soldiers in the US is OK - maybe the height of the pay correlates with the "solemness"? Like suppose every soldier would get 1000000$ per year, would they still be solemnly thanked?

The US and Canada don't have troops on their streets recently shooting at their own population (or at least that sector that believe in transubstantiation)

To me the entire Hacker Ethos, Culture, and quite possibly the majority of its inhabitants are here today for the same reasons I am here today. Try to imagine an alternate history where the Fascists controlled Europe. Look around. Do you see you colleagues and customers? Would there be a Silicon Valley? What would America be like?

The question of fighting for true freedom and equality is deeply connected with the motivations behind startups and hacking in my brain.

That's why I posted it here but not on reddit.

update: In the USA it is Veteran's Day, not Remembrance Day. So there has been quite a bit of discussion here about thanking living veterans and veterans of all wars, some of which are controversial. But my post thanked an unnamed soldier who died in a conflict where we were fighting for human justice. I had WWII in my mind when I wrote it very specifically.

Even if you disagree whether it belongs on HN, I hope you now understand why I thought the question of what our world would be like had Fascism prevailed and who would or wouldn't be here and who would or wouldn't fraternize with each other would be "Of interest to Hackers."

pax.

I won't down vote you for that, I have no problem with questioning the political reasons why wars are waged. But that doesn't stop me also honouring the men and women who fight in them. To me these things are quite distinct.

So, I might think that Britain's involvement in Iraq was a mistake and should not have happened, but I would shake the hand of any British serviceman who served there and thank them for doing so.

I'll upvote you for sincerity, and I have thought about my message for a long time. I encourage everyone else to think about what it really means to go to engage in war and when you should or shouldn't do so.

My situation may be different from yours. Perhaps I am being too selfish: I sincerely believe I would not be here today had the Canadians sat out WWI and WWII. I sincerely believe that almost everything I love about Hacking and Hacker Culture would not exist in Canada and the USA had Fascists dominated Europe. If I make a list of people in this industry that I admire, I keep coming up with ethnicities and gender preferences that would have been oppressed and/or exterminated.

My message is somewhat overwrought and emotional, but I'm very clear on how I am the recipient of the greatest gift of all.

War is evil and ought not to be entered into lightly. It is somewhat boring to make that observation because everybody agrees with it. Yet looking at history forces me to conclude that we would not have been able to build our civilization without engaging in this evil a few times. And I think our civilization is one worth celebrating - certainly it has made a dent in many of the other evils that have plagued mankind since the first ape dared to walk upright.

Moreover, it takes courage to enter into the armed forces and be one of the people who sacrifices their personal goals to protect our civilization. So we have a holiday set aside for those people.

I don't think the wars in Vietnam or Iraq were very wise, either. But it seems out of place and immature to sound that drumbeat on this holiday, like an atheist who feels compelled to demonstrate outside of churches on Christmas.

War is often a necessary evil. Yes there are the cliched arguments that all wars are about resources,etc, but I believe that war arises sometimes because there is a genuine need to defend [oneself,family,civilization] from harm from evil people (or, more PC and nihilistic, from people that would take it away). Life is about living, not dying. But sometimes we have to fight and kill, in order to live.

I don't know what to say... this is a very emotive subject on both sides and I have conflicting forces pulling me in both directions. But for something that is stunning beyond compare, is the equal of any and all great things ever said, I can recommend few things with more passion than Charlie Chaplin's Great Dictator[0]. It's a film that sums up the genius of the man, and the power of film. But, more importantly, it speaks of the nobility of the human heart... I'll let him say it better than I could ever hope to. He apparently regretted making the film as it was made before he was aware of the full horror and attrocity of the concentration camps... but it's a beautiful and timeless piece of cinematography that inspires me.

[0] - His closing speech: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcvjoWOwnn4

Thank You to all men and women everywhere who fight for liberty... however that may be.

I appreciate the thoughtful responses, especially from raganwald (my original comment was directed primarily at this discussion thread rather than his post).

The common thread in your responses seems to be that politicians, not soldiers, are responsible for wars. My response to this idea is that one must not conflate "dying for freedom" with "killing for freedom". We should certainly oppose the enemies of liberty, but not by glorifying violence. It has always been, and will forever be, possible to oppose something without killing your fellow human beings. For this to succeed, however, you must have the courage to enter the fray with your arms at your sides.

What I think is most telling about that is McNamara's response to Morrison; rather than attempting to paint all dissent as traitorous, or to claim (as would surely be claimed now) that Morrison 'hates the troops', McNamara accepts the moral responsibility for the killing being done and attempts to come to terms with it.

I think a day like today has as much room for Norman Morrison as it does for the soldiers currently suffering and dying on our behalf. I'll remember both, if I can.

I agree with you that there are wars I wish we had not fought. But at the same time, far more fought and died in wars where I believe our cause was just.

I see what you're saying, but it's also possible to argue that that man killed the father of a young baby.

Although on a positive note we are becoming more and more peaceful as a global society! That the wars of the past seem remote and detached is, in one way, a good reflection on modern times.

Says the man who lent his good name to the Manhattan Project. I saw a pretty detailed documentary about this, explaining how he was eventually persuaded that the dangers of Hitler getting the bomb first outweighed his initial reticence to promote the project. If Einstein had not signed the letter sent to FDR suggesting development of this weapon, FDR probably would not have taken it seriously, and the bombs would not have been available to drop on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, at least at that point in time.

I wonder if this quote came before or after the Manhattan Project.

It's all too common that scientists, and engineers in particular, consider society to be a machine that can be tinkered with, oiled, something that, through progress, can be made to run better.

As well articulated Einstein's observation is, it is hopelessly naïve, as well as ironic, considering his membership of a group that owes it's very existence today to large-scale heroism at command and killing under the cloak of war.

Einstein was a great physicist. But try this test: if you saw this posted, without attribution, as a comment on Reddit about an article on Veterans' Day, would it seem out of place? (Except for the Edwardian idiom, obviously.)

I'm not replying to start a debate with Dennis_, but I'd like to say, as a vet myself, that any appreciation, however big or small, is appreciated.

It's not 'peace' that you are paying for (with bloodshed and violence), it's interests of giga-million(?) corporations which might coincide with yours e.g. cheap oil/resources.

Everything else is propaganda and lies you've been telling yourself so you can sleep at night.

My girlfriend is German-Canadian (her grandfather immigrated to Canada after the war), and this topic always comes up around this time of year. Basically we think this:

Remembrance day is about honouring the terrible sacrifice of soldiers, and reminding ourselves of the horror of wide-spread warfare. All soldiers, regardless of their allegiance, were compelled to fight by forces out of their control, and driven by political motivations they had no hand in. Therefore I honour the Germans as easily as I honour and remember my own grandfather who fought in Italy.

I think your comment was more directed at Germany as a country, but I thought I'd throw in my two cents.

> Stupid question: are the Germans allowed to commemorate their dead as well?

Who would have the authority to forbid it? Naturally, they don't do it on the 11th of November, they have [Volkstrauertag](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkstrauertag) (the "national day of mourning") which takes place "two sundays before the first of Advent", which yields the Sunday nearest to the 16th of November (can be any time from the 13th to the 19th, this year it'll be on the 15th).

The 11th is actually the starting date of the German Carnival.

That is indeed a stupid question. If you're just asking it anyhow for info, ok. If you're trying to imply something nasty, you've picked a horrible example. The Germans, without our prompting at all, have very... mixed feeling about their involvement in WWII, and in particular the atrocities so many of them were complicit in committing. There are very few groups of people who A: lost a major war but lived to tell the tale as a group B: in which they committed one of the most notorious ethnic cleansings in human history (note I said "notorious", not "largest", though it was up there in size) and C: which the populace has enough conscience to regret the results. I think they are far more ambivalent about the whole thing as a result of those factors than they might otherwise be, and that has little or nothing to do with the attitudes or compulsions of the victors; it comes from within.

(Further edit: It is, in some sense, a credit to them. I had to include C because there are many examples in history of ethnic cleansings conducted with no evident regret, before, during, or after. The Germans may be disturbed by their history, but anyone who has taken the time to learn how it happened must also come away disturbed, as it is so easy to see it happening in other places as well, even right where you live, and stopping it is easier said than done.)

Dont forget the war ended for them that day too: whether a winner or loser in the war we are all winners in the long term (i.e. our ancestors survived!) - that is worth celebrating and remembering those less lucky. :)

So, yeh, they do commemorate but not today.

(although it must be said that whilst sombre remembrance is an excellent thing a carnival is, in my eyes, no less of a celebration; being of the belief that the best way to honor the dead is celebrate/appreciate life :))

Of course they are, this day is not a celebration of victory, it's a sombre reflection on the costs of war and an opportunity to honour and thank veterans of past wars for their service on behalf of our respective countries. It is for example not uncommon for Allied and German veterans of WWII, once enemies, to unite for Remembrance Day services throughout the British Commonwealth.

Whether there are public tributes to soldiers in modern Germany is obviously a different issue, given that country's understandable ambivalence to its soldiers who fought in WWII, but that does not take away from the fact that, in the West, the events marking today are neither triumphant nor overly militaristic. In fact, today's events were started as a commemoration of the end of WWI, a war which had shaken the world to its core with its till-then unprecedented horror, brutality and human toll.

Not today anyway. November 11th being the start of carnival season in Germany, since long before WW1...

There is a Russian song from the 80's called "The Black Tulip" - the helicopters that transported the fallen Soviet soldiers out of Afghanistan were called that. By the time the singer got to the verse about Kandahar, most people already had tears on their eyes.

Every time I turn on the news and hear about Kandahar and Jalalabad I remember this song, written almost thirty years ago. What in the hell is wrong with humanity? Do we really need to go through this all over again?

Thanks to all those who serve so that we can go to sleep without fear every night and wake up peacefully every morning!

OP is Canadian, where Remembrance Day is observed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembrance_Day). We honour all those who have sacrificed for their country, including veterans and those killed in service.

I, too, have been saying this for several years now. I think it's worthwhile to remember what we fight for (peace) and why we thank our veterans for doing it; WWI didn't turn out to be the war to end all wars, but maybe that day will still come.

(Beats spending the day grumbling about how I am still opposed to the US being in Iraq, at least.)

He is thanking soldiers who fought in World War I or subsequent wars, because today is Remembrance Day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembrance_Day

I thought he was the recipient of an organ transplant for a moment...

It's Veteran's Day in the US today.