Salute A Veteran, Honor The U.S.
Editorial

This coming Sunday, Nov. 11, is Veterans' Day, the day on which the nation salutes its war dead and pays homage to the living who have served or are still serving in the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force or Coast Guard and were active members of any one of those branches of the service when the United States was engaged in conflict against other nations.

The past century saw several of those conflicts waged on battlefields the world over, and the new millennium began with the armed forces of the United States engaged in conflict at several locations around the globe. Even today we continue to do so, sometimes paying the ultimate price. Last week, another soldier from Queens came home. Jeffrey R. Calero, born in Puerto Rico and raised in Queens Village since the age of one, held the rank of major and served in the United States Army Special Forces. He sustained fatal wounds when a roadside bomb exploded as he was on patrol in Kajaki, Afghanistan.

Calero was the 23rd member of the United States Armed Forces from Queens to die in the two-front war we are fighting simultaneously in Iraq and Afghanistan. Several hundred more of our neighbors, friends and relatives have been wounded in combat. We salute their willingness to uphold the United States in persevering in spreading its message of peace and freedom and the principles of democracy, even though our perseverance often carries a heavy price.

It is not solely by accident that Veterans' Day comes after the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. We won the right to govern ourselves after five years of war that raged from one end of the 13 colonies to the other and outside the territory as well. The American Revolution, or War for Independence, depending on the source consulted, gave the world a new and unprecedented concept of self-government. The citizens of this new nation were free to determine their own laws through representative government as the right and responsibility of free people. The rule of democracy prevailed, born in the sacrifices of those who fought for the new nation. We tend to forget that the lofty principles espoused by the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution were bought with the blood of the colonists, who had pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honor to throw off the yoke of colonial oppression by a government half a world away.

Anyone who enlists in the United States Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines or Coast Guard will be faced with mastering a series of complex, complicated tasks that must be successfully completed in their proper order if a battle or a life is to be won. Anyone who has ever worn the uniform of the United States of America bears proud witness that the best and the brightest are among those most willing to serve.

The veterans who will march this coming Sunday or who will watch whatever parades make local television newscasts from their homes, veterans' hospital dayrooms or beds, and their fallen comrades whose tombstones stand in straight lines in our veterans' cemeteries, gave their best so that we might freely pursue our civilian lives. We trust you honored their sacrifice by voting in yesterday's election, and we hope you will take a moment on this coming Sunday, Nov. 11, 2007, to pay your respects to those, both living and dead, who served and sacrificed for all the rest of us. They deserve no less.