Turn Veterans Day into Peace Day
Walt Zlotow / West Suburban Peace Coalition
GLEN ELLYN, IL (November 11, 2024) — Started 105 years ago November 11, Armistice Day was established in the UK to commemorate the armistice that ended WWI a year earlier. In 1926 Congress added it to the US to “perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations…a day dedicated to the cause of world peace.”
The US war party, working through Congress, changed it to Veterans Day in 1954, the same year they struck a blow against separation of church and state by putting ‘under god’ in the Pledge. I preface those 2 offensive words with ‘NO’ when I recite it.
Since then, Vets Day has largely become a commercial for promoting American militarism and perpetual war round the world which today sees over 160,000 soldiers deployed in 150 countries. To a country bent on perpetual war worldwide, ‘Armistice’ is a word that dares not speak its name in America.
The consequences of that are horrific. America provoked, enabled and prolonged the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine killing hundreds of thousands, turning Ukraine into a failed state with no chance of victory. Not satisfied with that bloodbath, the US is funneling tens of billions in weapons to complete Israel’s genocidal ethnic cleansing of Gaza, which has killed untold thousands, leaving 2.3 million Palestinians with little food, water, medicine, electricity, sanitation or hope.
We regularly bomb innocents in a number of countries. While every decent function of government loses funding, the annual increase in our $850 billion plus military budget alone is larger than most countries spend on their entire military. Intelligence and ancillary items swell our national security budget to $1.2 trillion. Whew.
All vets but the dwindling, near centenarians of WWII, fought in undeclared wars which slaughtered millions while doing nothing to promote peace…and they know it. After 70 years it’s time for another name change. How about Peace Day, to honor the peacemakers like Dr. Martin Luther King and a true American war hero, Pvt. Chelsea Manning, who spent seven years in prison for outing American war crimes in Iraq?
As John Lennon famously sang, ‘Give peace a chance.’
