These days, on what since President Eisenhower's day has been called Veterans Day, Americans don't even talk about peace, or about the evils of war. Instead we crudely commercialize the sacrifice of our people in uniform with secretly funded and tawdry Pentagon propaganda displays of patriotism at our professional sports events, mindlessly thank anyone in uniform for "defending our freedom," (never mind that nobody in Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen or Pakistan ever threatened it in the first place), and cheer like idiots whenever a candidate for office calls for more money for the ironically named "Defense" Department, which already accounts for 54 cents out of every tax dollar.
It's high time we restored the original name to the Nov. 11 holiday and started calling it Armistice Day again. No more military parades. No more air shows, with fighters and bombers roaring in formation over modern-day gladiator exhibitions, no more glorification of war, no more calling our imperial centurions "warriors" and the victims of our imperial wars "wounded warriors."
Armistice Day should be a day to contemplate the urgent need for peace, both here at home and in the world at large, a day to contemplate an America where maybe 10 cents of the tax dollar goes to military (with most of that going to care for the already existing victims of our years of belligerence).
Instead of hailing our veterans, we should be caring for them properly, and vowing not to create any more of them, so that someday, it won't be possible to have a Veterans Day, because there will no longer be any of them.
DAVE LINDORFF, a war resister during the Indochina War, is a member of ThisCantBeHappening!, the new independent, uncompromised, five-time Project Censored Award-winning online alternative news site. His work, and that of colleagues JOHN GRANT, GARY LINDORFF, ALFREDO LOPEZ, LORI SPENCER, LINN WASHINGTON, JR. and the late CHARLES M. YOUNG, can be found at www.thiscantbehappening.net
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