Nov 11 - remember the dead

15,000,000 in WWI
60,000,000 in WW2

10,000,000 in Korea
5,400,000 in Vietnam
100,000 in Gulf War
12,000 in Afghanistan
150,000 in Iraq

These are only wars America was involved in, and only since WWI.
Would these 90 million men, women, and children thank any veteran for being a part of their annihilation?

Let's think of scale. Take the nine last people you talked to.  

For me, this is my fiancee, my two roomates (my friends for the past year), two of my fiancee's coworkers, my younger brother, my father, and two neighbors. 

Now imagine you killed them. Some of them you shot, some of them you bombed, others you gassed. 

Now, multiply that experience by a million. That's only a tenth of the anguish caused by a handful of world leaders who thought war was the best solution. That's a tenth of the destruction caused by the veterans who did their part helping the cause. 

I'm not saying killing is never a good thing. I'm just saying that we see the tip of the iceberg on Veteran's Day. We see nice uniforms and manly faces, but no pile of corpses, each of which had a story and once meant the world to somebody. 

If we could only regret death more than we celebrated killing.