A Plea For Peace

Monday is Veterans Day, a holiday observed by very few civilians whose salaries aren't paid by taxpayers or guaranteed by unions. It bears observing, though.

Americans too often confuse the war with the warrior, as John L. Behan of Montauk, the State Director of Veterans Affairs, put it recently. When they do not support a military conflict, they also close their hearts to the men and women caught in the middle, the very ones whose service serves us all.

"We owe our veterans much more than parades, monuments, and flowery prose," Mr. Behan observed.

We agree. We owe veterans our accountability - in the form of compensation for physical or mental disability, and training and education, housing loans, tax benefits - whatever it takes to make the transition from military to civilian life successful. We are also accountable for telling them the truth about whatever hazards they may have been exposed to, and to what extent - which we failed to do in the Vietnam War and once again, as is now becoming clear, in Operation Desert Storm.

More important, we are accountable to veterans before the decision is made to go to war. Thankfully, with the demise of the Soviet Union, there has been a lot less saber-rattling heard in the land of late. And we are all too aware of the lives we will have to ante up if we try to resolve ethnic conflicts such as that in Bosnia.

It seems, though, that multinational corporations increasingly wield the power that nations once did, and that human rights continue to run a poor second. The consequences remain to be seen. We had better choose our battles - and the policies that move us toward or away from them - very carefully.