4.0 DELI SCRUBS

I know we like to keep it light here on sdscrubs.com. So the picture of the Vietnam Wall that I used on the home page to mark this Memorial Day is, no doubt, something of a downer.

Your generation’s war is going on right now in the middle east. My generation’s was Vietnam. I say a word of thanks most days that I didn’t have to go. But plenty of friends, acquaintances, classmates did. Of those I knew who went, the names of six are among the 58,260 on the Wall. Guys whose life stories ended much too early, at age 19, 20, 23, in a jungle or rice paddy far from home on the other side of the world.

As you read this, young American lives are ending violently in unknown deserts and hardscrabble cities in Afghanistan, Iraq and other far-away places. The right or wrong of it isn’t the point here; the awful reality is.

Half of you are married. Some of you are starting your families. My probably naïve wish on this Memorial Day 2010 is that the scourge of war somehow skips a generation and your kids have the good fortune, indeed the blessing, to grow into adulthood without it in their lives.

I’m sure you join me in that hope.

-Doug Herman

I am not a very patriot man, but do understand the sacrifices of fellow American's who have fallen on the battlefield protecting my freedom. The problem is (as we know) most of Vietnam and Iraqi American losses haven't been to protect US freedom, it's to liberate another country to provide them with freedom--I guess it's the American way. It's because in a way America is the 'big brother' to the world. I just pity the country that tries to invade the US. Americans are the most armed nation in the world with over 260 million fire arms which comes out to 90 guns per 100 people. Now that's packing some heat! That makes the American society the biggest army in the world.