Memorial Day, again...

OK, once again it's Memorial Day, the day when we "honor" and "thank" those who have lost their lives in our many military adventures over the years.  And, as usual, I post a photo of my Mom and Dad, getting married during World War II.

WWII may or may not have been a war that we entered for good reasons.  After all, the event that put us in the game, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, was an attack on an American colonial outpost in the Pacific, not on America itself.  But I'll leave that discussion, if I may, for another time.

If we grant ourselves WWII, that still leaves numerous activities that are far more easily labeled "wars of choice": Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, the first Gulf War, Afghanistan, Iraq...  In every case, many many lives and much resources could have been saved if our involvements in these places had been carried out differently. In some cases, if not all or at least most, we are looking at war crimes and crimes against humanity.  Do we really want to keep sending people to be maimed or die while committing such crimes, crimes ordered by people who who are taking no risk themselves since they don't recognize the jurisdiction of the relevant international judicial bodies?

It just seems to me that rather than "honoring" and "thanking" our fallen, we should be apologizing to them and their families and friends, telling them we are sorry that we have done this to them.  And then we should stop doing it.