Show our Veterans some respect already!

When I read on Twitter that, once again this year, some idiotic mall administration had denied a table request to Royal Canadian Legion members planning on selling poppies, I quickly scanned the news to see at what point during this decision they also decided to start kicking puppies and throwing old ladies into traffic. Because, as PR moves go, it’s as bad as it gets.

How many times does this same silly occurrence have to take place in Quebec and across Canada, before mall administrations get it through their collective heads that you just don’t deny veterans a measly little table and a couple of chairs to sell their poppies for a few weeks throughout the year without incurring the public’s wrath. Few things are black and white in life, but this should definitely be one of them.

When it comes to the Royal Canadian Legion selling poppies for Remembrance Day, this is all anyone needs to remember: the poppy campaign is their most important program. The money raised from the donations provides direct assistance for veterans in financial distress, as well as funding for medical appliances and research, home services, care facilities and numerous other purposes.

Poppy sales provide financial, social and emotional support to those who have served or who are currently serving. Lest we conveniently forget, in the last few years we have had 158 Canadian soldiers come back in body bags from Afghanistan. You can feel any which way you want to about our military involvement there – and any other part of the world for that matter – but you should support our troops.

And I’m certainly not here to venerate out veterans or preach the virtues of war. I’ve already written editorials warning of this pathological need the Harper government seems to have to glorify our military and how current attempts to legitimatize the waging of war and to militarize foreign policy are downright hair-raising to me. (« There’s Danger in Excessively Glorifying Our Military ») http://bit.ly/oWSHUO

But one has absolutely nothing to do with the other.

I’ve heard some people claim the poppy is a rallying cry to support military solutions to the world’s problems. Jon Snow, a British anchorman, even went so far as refusing to wear a poppy on air, because he dislikes what he terms “poppy fascism,” the insistence to wear it or else be deemed ungrateful.  Some refuse to wear the blood red poppy and opt for the white one, which apparently symbolizes peace and offers no financial support to veterans, but I’m here to tell these people to go make a political statement on their own time and on their own dime.

For a paltry three weeks out of the year, Royal Canadian Legion members sell something that directly goes to fund much-needed programs for veterans who desperately need them. Why would I deny them my few dollars? Because I don’t agree with the policies that sent them overseas in the first place? How is that fair to them?

Let’s clarify this once and for all, and if any mall administrations are reading, this, this is for you, as well: when I wear a poppy on my lapel this November, I’m not justifying or glorifying war. I’m paying respect to men and women who came back from combat missions physically and emotionally maimed and mangled; altered for life. It’s a simple enough distinction to make.