Today is Veteran's Day and I wish we weren't celebrating it. We humans are still so barbaric, because we still haven't figured out how not to end our conflicts in war. Nor have we learned the lesson that violence creates more violence. I wish we didn't have to celebrate this day because we no longer had wars. That it was a faint memory of history, like we remember the Trojan War or the Peloppenesian Greek civil war. I only see that every war we are in only causes another war. That the lives of young men and women are not protecting this country, which is the myth, but uses as the foundations for another war. It is so frustrating to hear people use their deaths as an excuse to justify wars. I don't believe they are dying for me, I see it as propaganda to justify an unjustifiable war. But many people in this country don't see it this way. It so sad. I fee that these deaths are in vain, because their violent deaths will not solve the problem of my security. The money we are spending this war could have been used to feed, cloth, and cure the sick of the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. If we did that we could counter the AlQueda and the Taliban's lies. Killing the people in these countries is only alienating people and creating more terrorist.

I am listening to a book on tape "A Long Way Gone Memoirs of a Boy Soldier" by Ishmail Beah. It only reaffirms my educated view that war creates only killing machines and more violence. Ishmail was recruited into the Sierra Leona army at 13 years old after his entire family is killed and his village burned and pillaged by rebels. He becomes like those who killed his family a cold, heartless murder. He is one of the lucky ones who is rehabilitate, but it takes a long time to do this. It is difficult for him to be anything other than a killer. His armor of hate and anger are eventually penetrated, and he is rehabilitate. However a lot of soldiers in every war are not and we create tormented souls. No I don't like Veterans Day, Memorial Day, and all those other days we remember wars, because we haven't learned anything by remembering them.