As a Vietnam combat veteran who has lost good friends in action, I feel it my duty every Memorial Day to speak out against needless war that has caused the needless deaths of so many of our brave soldiers.

We owe it to all those who have been killed and maimed, and those that will be killed and maimed through our needless wars, to stop making needless war.

World War II was our last needful war. It was needful because Hitler and Japan had joined hands to take over the world, and if we had not finally decided to go to war against them (after we were attacked at Pearl Harbor), the United States of America would not be in existence today.

Those soldiers who were killed and maimed in World War II were actually killed and maimed in order to protect our country.

Those soldiers who have been killed and maimed during all our wars and military actions since were not given such a cause to die for.

Both those that suffered and died for a needful cause and those that have suffered and died in all our needless conflicts since WWII deserve to be honored and remembered and thanked. They were soldiers doing their duty, regardless of whether the cause that sent them to war was just or not.

We will never get away from the need of brave young men and women serving in our military and doing their duty, even at the cost of their lives or suffering terrible damage to their bodies and minds.

But we owe it to them to end this 58-year run of almost continuous needless war and never allow our country to make needless war again. Needless war is a national security threat to any country that conducts it, because it leads to more needless war and makes other nations afraid of it and upsets the world; especially if the nation conducting it is the sole Super Power.

Our war in Iraq is the latest example of the United States of America conducting a needless war. It didn’t and still doesn’t have a thing to do with defending our liberties and freedoms. It wasn’t in defense of our country or way of life. It was a needless, immoral, illegal and criminal preemptive attack on a nation that was not a threat to us and had not harmed us in any way.

Think of that. That was the cause that we gave them to die for. If we expect our soldiers to do their duty at the cost of their lives, we’ve got to give them an absolutely necessary cause, such as the actual and real protection of our country, our freedoms and way of life.

For the past 58 years, beginning with the Korean War, all of our wars, when you get right down to it, are the results of a president’s decision to go to war or continue a war. Just because Bush claims that his wars are in defense of our freedoms and liberties, our way of life and our very existence, doesn’t make it so.

Even when he managed to get the U.S. Congress, the media and the people to go along with him, that still didn’t make it so. Facts are facts and the Bush/Cheney regime made up their facts from scratch, from weapons of mass destruction to a smoking gun in the form of a mushroom cloud, to claiming that Iraq had something to do with 9/11 and was an immediate and dangerous threat to its neighbors and others, including the United States of America.

The Bush administration did not ask or receive permission from the United Nations before making the attack, but they did receive a rebuke and were condemned by the head of the United Nations after the attack. War for the purpose of regime change is illegal under the U.N. Charter and International Law.

Who can doubt, after five years and as many as a half-million innocent civilian deaths as a result of our Iraq War, that Bush didn’t attack Iraq for the purpose of regime change, to remove Saddam Hussein and his regime from power and set up a Democratic government that would be beholding to the United States and be our partner?

Although not so obvious, because we could claim that we were after Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, that’s basically the same reason we are still fighting the war in Afghanistan, to bring about a regime change and set up a Democratic government that would be beholding to us and be one of our best partners in the Middle East.

It should be obvious from the speeches of Bush and the Republican candidate for president, Sen. John McCain, that they are planning on a regime change for Iran. When Bush or McCain can say flatly and with absolute assurance that they will not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon, it can only mean that they are laying groundwork the same way that Bush did in the buildup to the preemptive attack on Iraq.

Even our own intelligence reports that Iraq has no such plans or capabilities, but that won’t interfere with the plan of Bush and McCain to continue the war policy of pulling a preemptive regime change on every Middle Eastern nation that is weak enough for us to pull it on, turning them into Democracies that are beholding to us and willing to be our partners in our great, world-wide War on Terror aimed at spreading peace by killing out all the bad guys and democratizing the earth, with us sitting on top of it like a cherry.

Even if the Democrats win, the decision to continue war or make more war will still be in the president’s hands. With all their prayers and daily pledge of allegiance the Congress has failed to focus on its duty of serving as the eyes of the people and keeping the powers of the executive branch in check as required by the Constitution and not allow the president to take us into needless wars or take away any of our individual rights under the Constitution.

What makes this tradition of needless war by decision of the president such a powerful thing is that the people have gone along with it for so long that they find no fault with it. They’ve become accustomed to it. They don’t question it. Once we’re at war, it’s America right or wrong. Even when we decide that we shouldn’t have gone to war, we then decide that since we’re already in it we should stay as long as it takes for victory to be achieved and there is a strong Democracy standing in place of the old regime.

When you’ve got a president, a Congress and the majority of the people agreeing and going along with this scenario, you’ve got an America up to its neck in continuous needless war. America is not wise enough to realize that the very same reasons it was wrong to attack Iraq are the reasons it’s been wrong to stay in Iraq. Iraq is its own nation, its people are its own people. But it is not a free nation because it is being occupied and democratized.

The American people are not wise enough to realize that every nation must be free to determine its own destiny and its own way of governing itself according to the will of its people. If we were in Iraq’s situation, you can bet there would be some insurgency between us and the invading force and those that decide to work with the invading force to draw up a type of government that will serve as its partner for its purposes.

The argument that there would be a general slaughter and chaos and a destabilization of the Middle East, and a victory for Al Qaeda and World-Wide Terrorism, if we left, doesn’t hold up well against the fact that we brought all those things about during our six years in Afghanistan and five years in Iraq.

When the death estimates of innocent civilians reach such numbers as a half-million, you’ve got slaughter. When you turn millions into refugees, create five million orphans and bring hell to the lives of millions more, you are delivering chaos. America’s wars in the Middle East have destabilized the Middle East, given a victory to Al Qaeda and World-Wide Terrorism, weakened our military and the respect we used to have among the world of nations, has cost us hundreds of billions of dollars, harmed our economy and is the main reason that the cost of gas is $4 a gallon and rising.

To continue on our path of making over the world, one nation at a time, in our own image, through the process of needless war, has no possible outcome but total disaster eventually, but America at the present time does not have the wisdom to realize that or the fact that it goes against the very principles of freedom that gave it birth, resulting in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and Bill of Rights and the will to actually fight for those freedoms and liberties against all forces.

The American people are guilty of giving up those freedoms and liberties without a fight. By accepting needless war and allowing our young people to die for the whims, ambitions and bad judgments of whatever president is in office, they have shown a disregard for their duty and responsibility as American citizens to stand up for the Republic and that for which it stands.

To say that any soldier since World War II died for our freedom and our liberties may make us feel better, but the sad and terrible truth is that they died because the American people failed them and allowed them to die and suffer for needless reasons that never had anything to do with the defense of our country and our freedoms.

There will never be a fitting memorial to our war dead until the American people reclaim their responsibilities as citizens and demand an end to needless war and sending our young people to fight and die without just cause.

That day may not be around the corner, but that day will have to come (if we are to survive as a nation) when we can celebrate Memorial Day, not only in honor of our war dead, but in celebration of having ended our participation in needless wars altogether.

Only then will we truly be able to honor those who lost their lives in service to their country. We must give them a just cause. We must earn their sacrifice and pay them for the lives they lost by stopping our needless wars and preventing the death of millions to come by bringing an end to this 58-year tradition of needless war and needless killing.

Naman Crowe, a Vietnam veteran, began his award-winning journalism career in 1971. He has written for numerous publications. He can be reached at namancrowe@yahoo.com.