College football teams who honor the military with uniforms and in-game tributes are making dangerous and empty gestures, ones that need to stop, says one Army veteran.
Approaching Week 11, the college football week that falls closest to Veteran's Day on Nov. 11, dozens of teams have unveiled uniforms and helmets and plans to honor active-duty, retired and fallen members of the United States Armed Forces. The uniforms, flyovers and family reunions are "crowd[ing] out the real conversation, the anonymous veteran wrote on Off Tackle Empire.
The real conversation, he or she says:
"What’s happening in Kabul Province? Why did a father of seven just die there last week? Why are we still doing this 17 years later? Whose kid will be the last to die in Afghanistan? Why are Americans dying in Yemen? Who are we killing? And why??
I wrote a few hundred words — supplemented with quotes from the article — that attempted to summarize this veteran's opinion on honoring the troops. I deleted them.
Just read it: "The Unbearable Weight of Emptiness."
