Freedom is not free

Last Sunday I was in Washington DC sightseeing with my cousins, Krishnanand Dada and Gayatri. Like most tourists out there, we covered most of the monuments and the National archives of USA before signing off our trip at the Smithsonian National museum of natural history. It was a good experience; this coming from someone like me who is usually indifferent towards sight seeing should imply that Washington DC is a beautiful place to be vacationing in if you are sight seeing material.

As a part of our trip, we visited the Korean war memorial in the West Potomac park, which is in the vicinity of the Lincoln memorial. It is a memorial in honour of the men and women of USA who served during the Korean war. One beautiful quote I saw at the memorial site inscribed on a wall was - 'Freedom is not free'.


Although I beg to differ on the image that Americans have created on most people around the world, I respect them for this - they respect their freedom. I have never seen people back home respecting the armed forces so much as they do here. I was here when they celebrated memorial day this year (the last Monday in May) and was happy to see a nation remembering their army so dearly. Back home we have martyr's day observed on January 30th, but somehow the patriotism I see here in general seems to be lacking in us. It might be because of the fact that this country has suffered much at the hands of terrorists in recent years that people have learnt to respect their freedom again (But hey! what about the 'terrorist-ish' activities that USA is involved in? say iRaq, and the recent US bombings on Pakistan this saturday? Well, that's a hush hush topic here - people are given this image of the nation being that of innocents suffering at the hands of some cruel nations by their media - refer to the entry 'News? Are you kidding me?' on my Cornell travelogue blog). Maybe India can take a leaf out of America's book and learn to value it's freedom more.

So that's it then. Americans respect their freedom and realise that freedom is not free. I can only wonder when this nation will learn to respect the freedom of other nations as well.