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There is only one US Veteran of WWI left alive.

So many lives thrown away. So many minds and bodies ruined. I think about WWI a lot, probably because the current war is a cruel and useless waste, much like that one: old men sending young men to die for money and personal power instead of because it needs to be done or for the common good. It seems to me that if we ask people to die, it should be something worth dieing for, that it dishonors that ultimate sacrifice to ask it for venal reasons. It seems to me that it is a national disgrace that we still send poor bastards out their with inadequate equipment and give them crap all for medical care when they come home with bodies or minds broken. We ask so much of them and give back so little. We give them doctors with shaky hands and rats and leaky roofs. We tell the urban ones that they are not part of "Real America." We warehouse and marginalize them.

I have loved a lot of soldiers over the years and been friends with more. They were people, not symbols, not playing pieces to be sacrificed to make a handful of people rich.

I am tired of writing this editorial every year. Tired of being told by my government that i don't value our troops because I hold their lives and wellbeing over how much money and power they can bring men already rich. I am tired of thinking endlessly of the poor bastards who get stop lossed into never ending war. I am tired of watching good men and women lose careers over who they love. I am tired of worrying about how my country kills and maims them to no purpose in my name.

It's nearly a hundred years later and it seems to me all we learned from WWI was how to kill better.