Today is Veteran’s Day. Tomorrow’s Front Porch column is already available online at the Spokesman Review, so I thought I would share it here as well.
I am heartily sick of the so-called “war on Christmas.” Read below to find out why.
Words matter to me.
I make my living crafting them. Whether writing a column, a news story or a book, I spend my days weighing and measuring them – searching for the best turn of phrase to communicate a thought, an idea or a fact.
Sometimes I play with them. Juggling them, nudging them to create content that elicits a reaction, a smile or a tear.
Even when handled lightly, I understand their power on a printed page. And while not all words are meant to be taken literally, I think some should be.
War is one of them.
Yesterday was Veterans Day – a day we as country set aside to honor the men and women who have served or continue to serve in our armed forces.
I’ve lost count of the veterans I’ve interviewed over the years, but their faces and their stories are seared into my soul – especially the stories of combat veterans, those who faced loss of life and limb during their time of service.
I’ve lost count of the veterans I’ve interviewed over the years, but their faces and their stories are seared into my soul – especially the stories of combat veterans, those who faced loss of life and limb during their time of service.
So just to be clear, here’s Webster’s definition of war: A state of usually open and declared armed hostile conflict between states or nations or a period of such armed conflict.
Other definitions may have made their way into our reference books and cultural consciousness, but the original meaning of war is armed conflict.
The kind of conflict Wes Hixon faced in 2008 in Iraq when the Stryker vehicle he was riding in hit an IED. “Four people were killed outright,” he said. “The rest were injured. Me and another soldier were paralyzed. Most of them were pretty good friends of mine.”
I interviewed Hixon, then 24, in 2009 as he sat in a wheelchair. He knows what war is.
Cindy Hval 
It is not, but we don’t need to do it in a way that costs us so much blood and treasure, as our current method now demonstrates, and which I’d been begging for since halfway through my tour in Vietnam.