It seems that America will celebrate Veteran’s Day this year by sending more troops to Iraq, thus continuing the endless cycle of war and regret. Every year we celebrate the service given by our veterans but we have never reached the point where we stop creating veterans who have to serve yet again.  Back in the long-ago twentieth century, it seemed that every man was a veteran—fathers, uncles, cousins—there was a brotherhood of veterans (some women too, but very few in those faraway days). Each of them celebrated their own war, which at last was going to end all wars. But they never did.

Now there is a small band of men and women who are sent back again and again to fight the same war—two, three or even more tours of service on the bleak sands of Iraq. Only a small percentage of the population suffer the losses of war; only a few families welcome back veterans who are suffering in body and mind. Have we forgotten how terrible it is to live with the scars of war for years and decades?

The quotation “Scars on my heart” is from a poem written by Vera Brittain for her brother in 1916. Ironically the poem was written four days before her brother was killed in action on June 15, 1918, almost a century ago

Your battle-wounds are scars upon my heart,

Received when in that grand and tragic ‘show’

You played your part

Two years ago.

Women’s role in wars has often been to suffer as war widows or bereaved mothers. After the American Civil War, women lined up to receive the pensions their husbands had won for them by being killed in battle. After every war the scars are left not only on the bodies of the men who fought, but on the minds and hearts of the women who live with their suffering or with their deaths. And yet it seems we cannot stop.

Every year we create more veterans, not only Americans, but the people around the world who fight against us. Thousands of women in Iraq and Afghanistan have been widowed and bereaved by the loss of sons and brothers. Their scars will never heal.

War solves nothing, as Eleanor Roosevelt once wrote. And yet on Election Day we heedlessly vote for people who have told us they want to send more troops overseas. They want America to be strong, which often means being ready to fight at any time. Creating more veterans, more hatred, and more suffering will never build a better world. It’s about time we demanded that our leaders think more and fight less. They can make peace work if they stop listening to bullies and start paying attention to what most Americans really want for themselves and their families.