In Honor of Our Vets

...no, not the ones who take care of our furry little friends, though they're honorable, too. I'm referring to our military veterans on this Veterans Day.

At a time when our nation's military actions have been undermined by torture and other breaches of military codes and international law sanctioned by the highest echelons of our government, we nevertheless owe an incalculable debt of gratitude--offered with a large dose of humility--to the women and men who have put their lives on the line, many making the ultimate sacrifice, to protect our freedoms and way of life.

I know such praise can come across as platitudinous, especially when our servicemen and -women have too often been used as Machiavellian props (agitprops?) to further political ends, but I mean it sincerely. While I like to think I do good deeds, that puts me on par with Clifford the Big Red Dog. I have never had to risk my life for what I hold dear. I truly honor the service and sacrifice our veterans have made for all of us.

This holiday has had extra meaning for me since 1991 because of one veteran in particular. I know that I knew Vietnam vets when I was growing up, but I didn't know then who they were, and they certainly did not speak of the horrors they suffered. It was not until my first week of law school, when I met a vet, that I truly appreciated the significance of this holiday.

We were in the same section first year, which meant we had all the same classes. In our Legal Reasoning and Writing class (was that the name of it?), we all introduced ourselves and had to say one thing about what we had done prior to law school. I talked about performing stand-up comedy. He had just returned from the first Iraq War (the legitimate one), where he was a supplies officer in the Marines, stationed in Saudi Arabia. While I had been working on my impression of the first President Bush (the legitimate one), my friend was serving under him, working to remove a dictator from a sovereign nation he had invaded. (That would be 'he' Saddam, not 'he' my friend, for those of you trolling the Web for misplaced modifiers or confusing relative pronouns or whatever the grammatical term is--it's too late for me to look that one up.)

After the introductions in class, I approached him and asked what it was like to be over there. I had talked before with Holocaust survivors and partisans who fought the Nazis, but they were two generations older than I, so I related with them differently. But here was a peer, just a few years older than I, who fought a war. I found out he was a Naval Academy grad (and a Midshipman hockey player), and I found him to be proud yet humble about his service in Desert Storm.

I was humbled myself, but not particularly proud in this realm. I had been in Dessert Storm, a pastry-eating competition, but nowhere near the military, unless you count a family trip to Gettysburg when I was little. I was fortunate to come of age at a time when there was no conscription, that we lived in a country whose ideas were so powerful they could impel people to volunteer to defend them. I never even seriously entertained--I guess entertained is the wrong word--the idea of enlisting in the military. I could probably have used my poor eyesight as a legitimate excuse not to be on the battlefield. But then what about my then scrawny musculature combined with my jelly belly? Surely, I could've had my ass whipped into shape if I had had the discipline or sense of duty to enlist. But my wise-ass nature wouldn't have gotten me very far in the armed forces. Woody Allen jokes rush to mind when I think about me in the military: "In case of war, I'm a hostage" and "When asked if I was one of those draft card burners, I replied, 'No, I never registered.'" (I actually do remember completing a Selective Service card, re-registering every time I moved, but I also happily remember no longer having to keep my card active when I turned 30.)

We quickly found that, despite this contrast in military experience (him having it and me not), we had so much in common--both from back east, our brains imbued with the same reservoir of pop culture references, sports fans, similar types of parents (though his Catholic and mine Jewish), intellectual curiosity, subscribers to communitarian political philosophy, ribald senses of humor, and an appreciation for menschiness. Never did he make me feel bad--like less of a man or less of an American--for not serving in the military.

I respect and revere him for so many reasons. He answered a call to serve, served with honor and dignity, and then proceeded with the next chapter in his life, one of which I feel blessed to be a part. He has been there for me over our 17-year friendship. We will be lifelong friends. We have shared some of life's most serious moments as well as some of its lightest. I look up to him as a big brother (but not the Orwellian kind) and have learned a lot from him. One of the most important lessons is the halo effect my knowing him has had on how I view veterans in general. Our friendship will forever make me pause, reflect and value the people we honor on this day.