Conquer Club

To any and all veterans who may be on this forum, I wish you well on this day with my heartfelt thanks and gratitude for the personal sacrifices you have endured keeping our nation safe. Thomas Paine said it best: “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country. But he that stands now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.” You, as veterans, truly deserve the "thanks of a grateful nation."

DogDoc wrote:To any and all veterans who may be on this forum, I wish you well on this day with my heartfelt thanks and gratitude for the personal sacrifices you have endured keeping our nation safe. Thomas Paine said it best: “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country. But he that stands now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.” You, as veterans, truly deserve the "thanks of a grateful nation."

Hear hear! There's no better way to say it.

awesome quote. Thomas Paine truly was a great man, and a very good patriot.

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
John Stuart Mill (1806 - 1873)
My favorite quote. Thanks to all who have served.

(Just a post to get this back towards the top of the list - want this to be prominent for a little while longer.)

Indeed, have a good one to any vets who see this.

My grandfather was a veteran, he died of heart disease at 95.

Neano wrote:War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
John Stuart Mill (1806 - 1873)
My favorite quote. Thanks to all who have served.

That quote goes against so much of what society is, and shdoul strive to become.

I commend all veterans for doing something that i would never have the courage for, but i believe that when we risk the lives of people on BOTH sides of a war it shouldn't be for something frivolous.

John Stuart Mill's view would be fine if the people declaring a war were the ones risking thier lives in it. We take our armed forces for granted until we need them to protect us. We should use our troops sparingly and only for things that are of utmost importance.

After being in Iraq myself I really don't think what has happend to the Iraqis at the hand of Saddam is "frivolous". I wont argue that there aren't other countries that need the help just as much or more. And we can obviously throw out the WWD argument. Go and talk to the people who have been beaten or had family members killed. Or how about the Kurds in the north who have been gassed by their own country. My dad was in the first war there and he is in Iraq right now, I spent a year there, my uncle is there right now, and my brother just graduated basic training. I can't speak for all soldiers but my family and the soldiers I was there with all felt we needed to be there. I wont argue there haven't been mistakes made and this couldn't have been done better though. I guess we will have to see how things go with the new secratary of defense.