Heroes

Let me see if I have this straight.
Men and women join the U.S. military.  They are not drafted, nor do they volunteer. It is in fact a career choice.  They are paid for their service. They receive benefits for their service. They swear to defend the country from enemies foreign and domestic.
They then get on planes and travel to the other side of the world, invade a country that has done absolutely nothing to the United States, and was in fact incapable of doing any harm to us, and occupy it for nine years. They hang its leader, and kill, by the Pentagon's own estimates, over one hundred thousand innocent men, women and children.
Now after all that time they come home, and I am to cheer them as heroes?  I have to be subjected every night to scenes on television of their triumphant return, with tears flowing as they reunite with their families?  I am expected to thank them for what they have done?
They were mercenaries. They knew from the beginning they would be playing offense, not defense, as no country in the world is a threat to the United States.  Instead they knew they would be fighting an imperialist war, inflicting mass casualties on a populace that had already known, after decades of being our proxy against Iran, the horrors of war.
I was so naive when I was young. I actually believed that after Vietnam, and the staggering cost to both this country, and the near genocidal cost to the Vietnamese, that we would have learned a lesson.  That individuals would finally say no more. No more will I allow myself to be a part of this madness the feeds the machine. Never again would I as an American allow myself to fight proxy wars on behalf of war criminals in Washington, for the benefit of corporations such as Halliburton. Never again I thought.
My spiritual beliefs require compassion, and I do feel that for those who's misguided intentions resulted in such awful damage to their bodies, souls, and families. But at some point individuals have to stand up and say not me, not this time, not ever again.  If this country should ever be attacked I will be the first to support anyone who chooses to defend me.  In the meantime I will save my sympathy for the countless dead spread over the decades of my life. The dead slain in my name.