Armistice Day

In 1954, upon the urging of American veteran groups, Armistice Day was renamed Veterans Day.

While it's right and good to remember our veterans, it's also right and good that we remember the larger event, Armistice Day, when "the war to end all wars" came to an end, at the 11th hour, on the 11th day of the 11th month.

It was a war of fools, as most wars are - blunders into violence, the love of tactics, and the mindless belief that nations can really conquer nations, that might prevails, and "god is on our side." Everyone fought everyone else with chaplains chanting prayers and the leaders of the nations fiercely weaving a bloody tapestry of faith and nation.

When the war ended, with untold millions dead, nothing was resolved - but only from sheer weariness of killing and dying did the combatants lay down their arms, and while the allies were "victorious," they took it upon themselves to punish Germany (and sow the seeds of WW2) and to redraw the boundaries of the Ottoman Empire (sowing the seeds of today's Middle East chaos).

Armistice Day deserves to be remembered with tears and reverence for the millions of soldiers who were ordered to advance by generals far removed from the front. The solider, with friends and family back home, his face covered in mud and his body crawling with vermin, didn't fight for "god and country." They fought to stay alive, and to protect one another. And millions didn't make it, because of the foolhardiness of the nations.

Let's remember our veterans, but let's not make light of their suffering and death by draping their broken bodies with bunting, but covering them with our tears, and a fresh resolve to see the insanity of war, to work mightily to unmask the craven purposes of the arms industry, and give no heed to the mindless babbling of nations who speak of their own greatness.

Let 11.11.11 be our prayer, our purpose, our work every day of our life, until war be no more.

Russia, 1919 - America's Undeclared War

"Bring the American boys home from Russia."

Following the armistice of 1918, American soldiers landed at Archangel, along with British, to defeat the Bolsheviks, restore the White Russians to power, hoping that Russian would again open the Eastern front against the Central Powers. When Lenin finally consolidated the powers of a new Russian government, America withdrew its forces, but not until 174 Americans had died there.

Senator Hiram Johnson

Hiram Johnson, a progressive Republican from California, spoke on the Senate floor, January 29, 1919:

"Why did we enter Russian? I answer, for no very good reason; and we have remained for no reason at all. And what is our policy toward Russian? I answer we have no policy. We have engaged in a miserable misadventure, stultifying our professions, and setting at naught our promises. We have punished no guilty; we have but brought misery and starvation and death to the innocent. We have garnered none of the fruits of the victory of war, but suffer the odium and infamy of undeclared warfare. We have sacrificed our own blood to no purpose, and into American homes have brought sorrow and anguish and suffering."

"Bring the American boys home from Russia."

Savage Peace, Ann Hagedorn p.79

----------------------------

Substitute Iraq for Russia, and we have another tragic misadventure for which America and the world continue to pay the price.

America then, and now again, is faced with the gravest temptation of Empire - that might makes right, and that we have the right to police the world according to our interests.

It never works; it never will.