Dear Editor:

As I write this, another Memorial Day has come and gone and the politicians and their media allies have mouthed the usual high-sounding platitudes about the "service" and "sacrifice" of our armed forces. Nice, lofty sounding stuff but sadly it is a blatant lie! There is an old saying that "Truth is the first casualty in war."

For nearly a century now, the globalists and other assorted international interventionists have lied, tricked, and maneuvered us into two world wars plus a seemingly never-ending string of unconstitutional, undeclared "no-win" police-action "interventions" around the world.

Our so-called leaders don’t’ give a damn about our armed forces; they view them as expendable, cheap "cannon-fodder" to be used to prop up foreign regimes around the world that we happen to be allied with at any given moment. Our veterans have been lied to; they have fought, bled, and died for nothing and no one seems to want to "rock the boat" and point this out to the American people.

The U.S. government "creates" its own "enemies." During Korea and Vietnam, for example, the Feds are extending trade credits guaranteed by the federal Export-Import Bank to Communist nations in Eastern Europe that supplied munitions to help kill American soldiers. During the 1980s, the so-called "Conservative Republican" Ronald Reagan Administration was arming Saddam-Hussein so he could fight neighboring Iran. Once Iraq won, Saddam suddenly was the new "enemy" in the region. Both George Bushes lied to the American people about Saddam’s "weapons of mass destruction" – which have yet to be produced!

It is an insult to our armed forces to say they fight to protect "freedom." Our government is the one curtailing our liberties, not foreign dictators!

We used to be known as the "Land of the free and the home of the brave," a more accurate description of contemporary America would be "Land of servile, regulated, controlled citizens, and home of the intimidated."

Instead of blindly "waving the flag" like the rest of our lemming-like population, one might wish to study and review the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and see what we’ve lost already.

A real "patriot" will think for themselves and stop swallowing all the government and media distortions of news and history. When 2016 rolls around in two years, you might also want to consider supporting the Libertarian Party candidates for president, U.S. Senate, and Congress.

Mark Richards,

West Milford