Despite all the posturing, the US is a war-like nation.

(Illustration found here).

War has always been in the vital interests of the US — starting from day one, but officially most-likely from the Pequot War in 1637 with 11 wars fought before the so-called Revolutionary War and 30 even prior to the Civil War, a shitload of dying in such a small space.
The US has wasted 653,708 lives in wars prior to the modern era and the Global War on Terror, which has been rebranded as the Overseas Contingency Operation (to soften up the phrase, I guess) has currently produced two quagmired conflicts without an end in sight, both immoral and illegal.
Although Iraq supposedly has an end, it’s going to be bloody until then.

So here we are on Memorial Day 2009 to honor all those war dead.
Originally called Decoration Day in 1868 for the mass of US peoples slaughted in the Civil War and was “designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet churchyard in the land.”

And what better time than to recite a few words of Mark Twain’s sarcastic, horrifing-but-true anti-war ode/poem, The War Prayer:

O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it — for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet!
We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts.
Amen.

War, yes, war!