Today is Veterans Day, a day to reflect “with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service,” to “remember the sacrifices of all those who fought so valiantly… to preserve our heritage of freedom” and to “reconsecrate ourselves to the task of promoting an enduring peace so that their efforts shall not have been in vain.”

So today, of all days, don’t ask veterans if they’ve ever killed anyone. It’s a stupid question.

Some 400 students at the University and a small number of the faculty and staff have served in the armed forces. Judging from what student-veterans say, one of the common questions students ask them concerns whether, or how many people, they’ve killed.

Words like patriotism, valor, service, heroism and sacrifice have been cheapened since they were written by Presidents Wilson in 1919 and Eisenhower in 1954, but how is it that our sincere respect has been replaced with perverse curiosity about killing?

Perhaps the crass, flippant irony that leads people to wear icons of Che Guevara (a mass murderer) and “war is terrorism” buttons — or maybe genuine moral confusion — condones the assumption that our soldiers are so depraved that, if they have taken a life, they would coldly brag about it. I don’t believe there is anything dishonorable in killing when it is necessary in the course of a soldier’s duty — it’s something we train to do, after all — but that doesn’t mean we relish that duty. There is something gruesome and dehumanizing about a stranger’s interest in this particular detail of our service.

At the root of this phenomenon is the fact that we so rarely encounter veterans and have lost some perspective on what it means to serve. Our fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers were surrounded by men returning from World War II and Korea; military service was a civic duty that affected most men prior to the 1970s. Thankfully, today military service has become uncommon and our wars distant and limited in scope.

With the luxury of an all-volunteer military, it becomes easy to take the military for granted or, worse, to assume that anyone who would actually enlist is a bully, a misfit, a misanthrope or at least some kind of jingoistic idiot. It’s a convenience of modern life that most difficulties are resolved without violence, so we assume all difficulties can be resolved without violence and that those who would resort to violence are violent men and women.

But they are not. They are common men and women doing an uncommonly brave thing — courageously and selflessly offering their lives with the hope that others might enjoy peace.

This is the spirit of service we honor today. As a veteran, this is a day when I try to honor my compatriots in the fraternity of arms, including the many Illinois alumni who have served in our nation’s wars, not for the lives they’ve taken, but for the lives they’ve given and continue to give.

Ours is a family built on the strength of its members’ commitment to give everything, up to and including their lives, not only for the abstract ideals upon which our nation is founded, or the flag, or the millions of Americans they serve, or the citizens of foreign nations to whom we render aid, but for each other.

We who have been spared the ultimate price remain living witnesses, committed to honoring and memorializing those who have given the last full measure of devotion.

Aren’t these commitments that still deserve our respect?

One bright side of our current wars, if we can speak of silver linings, is that many more students today have friends and loved ones serving in the military than when I joined in 1997. Perhaps a new shift is taking place, where young Americans will again be acquainted with the humanity, decency and honor that our military men and women embody. If you wish to honor our veterans today, I encourage you to find them, thank them for serving, and speak to them about their experiences. Allow me to recommend a few more appropriate and more interesting questions than, “Have you ever killed someone?”

Not all veterans on campus have served in the current wars. You might meet one who’s served in humanitarian aid operations throughout the globe, sailed above the Arctic Circle on a nuclear submarine, trained in various exercises with foreign military forces, cracked enemy communications as a cryptologist at NSA, or maintained advanced avionics systems on a squadron of fighter jets. The point is, veterans have a lot to share, and most would be willing to discuss their contributions and experiences with humility and respect, if you treat them like humans and not characters from “Call of Duty” or “Rambo.”

Chad Garland,

senior in LAS

President of Illini Veterans