If you want to break out definitions: [quote]vet·er·an ˈvedərən,ˈvetrən/ noun noun: veteran; plural noun: veterans a person who has had long experience in a particular field. "a veteran of 16 political campaigns"[/quote] You can still be a veteran and be active in the military. Using the example incomplete sentence above, one could be a veteran of 16 political campaigns and still be an active politician. Bringing it back to the topic, an example is a soldier can be a veteran of the war in Iraq and still continue their military career. You don't suddenly become a veteran of a specific event or organization because you're not actively involved with it. That'd be like saying people who have played Destiny since the alpha are not veterans of the game because they still play the game. It'd be like saying founder of a company years ago isn't a veteran of the company because he hasn't retired yet. It'd be like saying Steve Jobs didn't become a veteran of Apple until he died. I could give hundreds of examples but if you still choose to believe your extremely wrong, borderline insulting definition of veterans after those examples, then I'll just call it quits here because there's no chance of you being convinced of how wrong you are.