Ned's Memorial Day Thoughts

Ned will be brief: he can only marvel at, and acknowledge with humility, the courage shown by the men (mainly) who volunteered, or were sent, to fight, suffer, kill and die in the Civil War, World War One and, most of all, World War Two. The draftees in the Vietnam War Ned also thinks of with profound respect and admiration for what they went through, what they had to do in our name, and what they are still going through.
But now Ned's thoughts turn darker. He thinks of the men (mainly) who sent our youth to Vietnam, and to Iraq, and to Afghanistan, and to Pakistan, killing and maiming, women and children, without so much as a declaration of war or a by-your-leave. He ascribes to the lowest circle of hell those war criminals Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey (otherwise a great American, although Ned points out that Adolf Hitler won the Iron Cross in WWI), and Richard Nixon, who were responsible for millions of needless deaths and maimings, and for the defoliation of millions of acres of Indochinese rain forest resulting in environmental damage too great to fathom, and the deaths of simply countless animals. But he realizes they were poisoned with a Cold War mentality and so is inclined to lower the fire's temperature for them occasionally.
But what is he to say about George Bush? Fully aware of all the infamous and calamitous mistakes of the previous imperialist aggressions, he sent hundreds of thousands of American volunteers, or mercenaries as one's point of view dictates (Ned's thoughts tend towards the latter) on a killing spree that is still going on in Afghanistan. Moreover, the terror unleashed by Bush in Iraq, where after all Saddam had kept the lid on decades of sectarian hatred, is continuing today. Ned ascribes George Bush to the absolute lowest circle of hell, and hopes he pays for his crimes somehow, someday.
And so we come to Barack Obama. Ned notes with the profoundest sadness that Obama seems to have learned little from history, and has to share the responsibility for the continuing death and destruction in Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan. Every child dead by "NATO" cowardly night air strikes, every dead civilian murdered by 'suicide bombers' is another curse upon his head.
So ends Ned's Memorial Day musing.