Rename Veterans Day to Promote Peace, Not War
Walt Zlotow / West Suburban Peace Coalition

GLEN ELLYN, Illinois (November 11, 2023) — Started 104 years ago today, 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 put ‘under god’ in the Pledge.

Since then, it has largely become a commercial for promoting American miltarism and perpetual war ’round the world which today sees over 171,000 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.

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 billions in weapons and other aid to complete Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Gaza, which has killed many thousands, leaving 2.3 million Palestinians with little food, water, medicine, electricity or hope.

We regularly bomb innocents in a number of countries. While every decent function of government loses funding, the annual increase in our $858 billion plus military budget alone is larger than most countries spend on their entire military.

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 69 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 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.’