The Old Lie

In the wake of the gruesome revelation - and grievous metaphor - that veterans' remains were for years dumped in a Virginia landfill, a reminder that Veterans' Day began as a celebration to end, not glorify, war and its lies. After World War One, writes Sherwood Eddy, "We told the soldiers that if they would win we would give them a new world." It has yet to happen, not that way, and it never will. More from David Swanson and poet Wilfred Owen, who died proving it. "If in some smothering dreams you too could pace/ Behind the wagon that we flung him in...My friend, you would not tell with such high zest/ To children ardent for some desperate glory/ The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est/ Pro patria mori."

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