Remembrance Day

If you are easily upset by the ramblings of an insensitive, opinionated, argumentative, 31 year old woman then you should stop reading now. I have a huge a beef with Remembrance Day. I do feel bad for all the soldiers who were forced to go to war back in World War 1 and 2 and I do believe we should remember the things they did to give our country freedom. The problem I have is that the powers that be have changed Remembrance Day into a giant recruitment day for new soldiers. Originally the day was started to remember the horrible things that happened during the world wars and to prevent more war from happening again. The purpose was the remember the horror so that we didn't recreate that again in the future. Unfortunately, somewhere along the line it turned into a day of remembering the wonderful contributions the soldiers of yore put in for us and it somehow glorifies being a soldier. Its like we are rewarding those who fight in wars. We call the soldiers "heroes" and say they are brave and strong. We act like they are a higher form of human being than someone who chooses not to be a soldier. We throw parades for them and have the "highway of heroes" to honour them when they die. We forget that they signed up to be a soldier so they could fight and kill. They use weapons and kill thousands of people. There are so many innocent lives that are taken during wartime, and yet we practically force our young people into war. By having these huge celebrations to honour war and its "heroes" we are basically telling our young people that they are not worthy if they don't sign up and become a licensed killing machine.
Think about it this way. If I took an able bodied 18 year old boy and taught him everything he needed to know about fighting and combat. If I trained him in brutal techniques designed to destroy whole cities and taught him how to turn off his emotions so that it didn't bother him to do these horrible things. If I then gave him access to every weapon he could imagine and made sure he knew how to use each one to maximize the damage he could cause. If I sent him into your town to destroy all the evil and corruption, how would you feel? Would you be overjoyed to see this young man coming in to solve the problems of your town with his weapons of mass destruction? Would you cherish the thought of him hunting down all the wrong-doers of your society and killing them openly in the streets? Would you accept the fact that there would be innocent casualties because they might get in the way of the end goal and nothing, NOTHING, can stop the end goal? Would you be O.K. with that? Would you watch him gun down thousands of people, tearing men away from their families because they are of the same ethnic background as his enemy, and not say anything? Would you call him a hero? I wouldn't. But I guess I am just a cynical bitch.
I just always thought we were told never to solve our problems with violence. Maybe its just me.