Veteran's Day 2006
All politics aside, 3,125 Americans have died in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Many, many more have been wounded physically and psychologically.
I pray for those who serve, their families, and those have served throughout our tortured history. I wish to honor all of our fallen soldiers. They have given the supreme sacrifice for freedoms we hold dear.
Though I am a veteran, I never served during hostilities. For those who have in the past or do, I salute and honor you.
The following portion of John Donne's poem was an epigraph for Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls. I hope it is fitting and appropriate.
No man is an island, entire of itself;
every man is a piece of the continent,
a part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less,
as well as if a promontory were,
as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were:
any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind,
and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
it tolls for thee.
