On Jan. 17 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, in his farewell address to the nation left us with one final admonishment: "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes ..."

Alas, we failed to heed the warning. Today, the highest seats of power are held by men and women who have never served in war yet who have nonetheless dedicated 51 percent of the 2008 national budget to "military" spending. In Iraq, 180,000 defense contractors, true and loyal servants of the military-industrial complex, are granted immunity from prosecution for unwarranted atrocities and acts of violence against the Iraqi people. Acting with impunity in our name, their tyranny and inhumanity have re-defined the character of America in the Middle East and throughout the world.

With budgets and salaries funded by their access to billions of our tax dollars, the unholy alliance against which Eisenhower warned us has come to pass. Conversely, increasing numbers of U.S. soldiers are being charged and tried for capital crimes, even as they are denied access to the immunities granted to the mercenaries of the "private sector."

Not to be outdone, our leaders, Republican and Democrat alike, now openly discuss the third "great," pre-emptive nuclear war with Iran — the latest national "threat" to loom upon our horizon. We have entered a golden age of "war-profiteering," where the rich have tapped the military-industrial mother lode and seek to continue to become immensely richer. As a nation, we reveal ourselves to the world as the tyrant we have long professed to oppose. All the while our own rights and freedoms, long held sovereign by our Constitution are under attack, subjected to continuous attempts at revision in the name of "protecting" us from Terror.

The latest legislation of this ilk is House Resolution 1955: the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act, a bipartisan bill allowing the government to define for each of us what might be considered "dangerous thinking." To date in Iraq, it is the Iraqi people who will pay the highest price to subsidize our profiteering. It's their homeland we continue to destroy and its people we brutalize. Those who will suffer to the next greatest degree will be our own sons and daughters in the military, enmeshed within a jingoistic delusion of "mission."

Many of us, who have served in parallel "interventions" such as Vietnam, have seen and heard all this before. Decades later, in dream and memory we continue to be visited by those who were once our own victims.

Like ourselves, many of our brothers and sisters have or will return to a vocal but uncaring populace. The people of this nation will proclaim to "support the troops," yet their actions will fund another pointless war, churning out tens of thousands of their own children as its victims.

When the dust has settled and the profits have been disbursed, little will remain to care for those suffering the war's consequences. Transformed by the horror of their experience, today's soldier will vanish from the culture that created them as they come to understand both the promises and the mission were no more than a grandiose lie.

Just as there were no falling dominoes of communism, the terror of today is nothing more than the trembling of the elite few at the thought of falling corporate profits. Like ourselves, our own children will be forced to learn hard lessons for their complicity in the actions of those who govern. Among these will be the knowledge that there is no honor in the violence they have wrought upon the innocent. Brute force does not equate with freedom, and no peace but death is delivered from the barrel of a gun.

If you truly wish to support your troops this Veterans Day, forget the yellow ribbons, put away the cute little American flags, take to the streets, demand the war end immediately, return sovereignty to the people of Iraq; work for peace; bring the troops home now.

Vietnam veteran and dissident T.E. Origer will help install the Iraq-Afghanistan Memorial on the Santa Fe Plaza today and invites all to attend. He lives in Santa Fe.