Compared to the 58,200 military personnel who were killed in the Vietnam War, that's not a large number … well, unless one happens to be among those 17 or among their friends or family members. In that case, 17 becomes an extremely large number.

But there is one thing in common between those 58,200 military personnel who died in the Vietnam War and those 17 military personnel who have died in Trump's war on Iran: They all died for nothing.

No, they didn't died for their country. No, they didn't die defending our freedom. No, they didn't die to make the world safe for democracy. They died for nothing.

If we are ever to get America back on the right track — toward the restoration of a limited-government republic (and the dismantling of the national-security state) and the restoration of a non-interventionist foreign policy (i.e., no more foreign wars, coups, sanctions, embargoes, assassinations, torture, indefinite detention, etc.), it is imperative that the American people accept that reality: The soldiers in the Vietnam War died for nothing, and the soldiers dying in Trump's war on Iran are dying for nothing. For that matter, those U.S. troops who died in the U.S. government's wars on Afghanistan and Iraq also died for nothing.

The most recent ones who died were killed at U.S. imperial bases in Jordan and Iraq. So, I suppose U.S. officials would argue that they died for empire. But dying for empire is the same thing as dying for nothing.

In the Vietnam War, many of those 58,200 dead men and women were forced to serve in the military, where they were then ordered to go to Vietnam. That's what the draft (i.e., conscription) was all about. According to U.S. officials, U.S. troops were being forced to serve so that they could be sent to Vietnam, where they could kill or die in the defense of our freedom here at home.