If we only followed the advice of two of our nation's greatest military leaders as they prepared to return to civilian life after serving as our president, we might not have to have holidays such as the one we are commemorating this weekend. Yeah, I know that Memorial Day began as a consequence of the American Civil War, but we didn't have to add to that list of Americans who have lost their lives in the many conflicts our leaders have led us into the past 150 years. We no longer have chief executives who seek congressional approval to plunge our nation into wars overseas as our Constitution requires. We have used the United Nations and NATO to circumvent the constitutional process to send our troops into harms way in Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq(twice), Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Libya to name a few. The peace dividend we should have experienced as a result of the end of the Cold War has been squandered away trillions of times by spineless leaders who cannot or will not stand up to the military-industrial complex Eisenhower so wisely warned us about.
Washington's warning to avoid foreign entanglements could have saved tens of thousands of American lives in World War I and the subsequent war that inevitably followed.
It just seems so tragic that those we honor who died defending our freedoms might have actually died needlessly as a result of decisions that sent them to their deaths that were motivated by other nefarious factors. I do not deny those who died their rightful place in our memory and gratitude for their sacrifice, but we should also focus our thoughts on what the motivations of our leaders, whose decisions sent them and continue to send them to their early graves, were and are based upon...
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