Eleven Eleven

Some guys I knew in college had a band with that name, and i thought it was pretty cool. Two of them were Army, one was a kicker on the football team. I always thought it was a subtle hat-tip to veterans, and I thought that was classy. And this was the 90s when it may not have been all that cool.

I like that we have a Veterans Day, but have always been confused about why we dont do more in an organized fashion to celebrate it. There are ceremonies here and there, but nothing to draw in all of us who dont have a veteran in the immediate family. There is a ceremony at dawn in one of the cemeteries in Cedar Rapids with the guys on their bikes and in their VFW jackets that's pretty cool and that I always think of . . . just a dawn flag raising but still.

The other thing I love about Veterans Day are its populist origins. A guy in Emporia, KS in 1953 pushed for Armistice day, which was an outgrowth of WWI, to be applied to all veterans, and campaigned for it to happen, and eventually it did. Eleven eleven has been a federal holiday since 1978, when that big-time loser Jimmy Carter had the audacity to make it so. Lovin that. Can you imagine? Veterans as a little-d democratic cause? You won't see this on Fox News. Stick with me, you'll go far.

I actually worry that in recent years, Republicans and right-leaning military support organizations have tried to elevate 9/11 to the status of a de facto Veterans holiday. Obviously there is room and a need to observe both, but I cant help pointing out that one happens before Election Day and the other after. That has to be my liberal paranoia creeping out, right? No American would exploit the flag and the soldiers who have fallen beneath it for their own political gain.

A final Veterans Day note. I was home in Cedar Rapids this last weekend, post-election, and as I got out of my car at my parents' Obama-promotion-center of a home, the woman who lives katty-corner to them across the street was getting out of her car that featured a single bumper sticker reminding me her husband had been protecting my freedom. This is a guy who, when he first got back from Iraq last year, went for a lot of walks up and down the street. I dont really have a reference point for that experience. It had to be life-changing.

But this woman, as I got out to go into my parents' house, gave me a really long dirty look. Now this would not be the first dirty look I have received, and some of them were earned. But I can't get her face out of my mind and I can't help but believe she might be thinking that those of us who worked so hard to change the incompetent civilian leadership of this country that wrecked our best efforts in the war on terror with the Iraq blunder, somehow don't have the appropriate level of respect for the men and women who gave part or all of their lives in that effort.

I can only speak for me, and I wish I had felt like I could tell her: Those soldiers have done their jobs, and done them well, and that benefits us all, and we are a better country for it no matter the outcome. The greatness of this country is its people, and the best of the best have worn the uniform.