Veterans Day Dilemma
Dave Weissbard
First Universalist Society
Central Square NY
November 11, 2018
One of the downsides of having retired from full time ministry is that I have become somewhat less calendar conscious. Some holidays have crept up on me unawares. I am thankful this year to have tuned in to Veterans Day in advance.
I find myself in somewhat of a dilemma. There is no question that it is appropriate for a grateful nation to express its appreciation for the willingness of some of its citizens [and not-yet-citizens] to be willing to be in its armed forces. It is, however, also appropriate in a democracy to respectfully debate the impact of the military in that nation’s governance and relationship with the people of the world. That is particularly appropriate in a religious community that affirms its commitment to “The goal of a world community with peace, liberty and justice for all.” A case can be made that a strong military advances the cause of peace; a case can also be made that a strong military can be an obstacle to peace.
Here is a reference to the Veterans for Peace website which declares:
One hundred years ago the world celebrated peace as a universal principle. The First World War had just ended and nations mourning their dead collectively called for an end to all wars. Armistice Day was born and was designated as “a day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be thereafter celebrated."
After World War II, the U.S. Congress decided to rebrand November 11 as Veterans Day. Honoring the warrior quickly morphed into honoring the military and glorifying war. Armistice Day was flipped from a day for peace into a day for displays of militarism.
Veterans For Peace has taken the lead in lifting up the original intention of November 11th – as a day for peace:
As veterans we know that a day that celebrates peace, not war, is the best way to honor the sacrifices of veterans. We want generations after us to never know the destruction war has wrought on people and the earth.
Veterans For Peace is calling on everyone to stand up for peace this Armistice Day. More than ever, the world faces a critical moment. Tensions are heightened around the world and the U.S. is engaged militarily in multiple countries, without an end in sight. Here at home we have seen the increasing militarization of our police forces and brutal crackdowns on dissent and people’s uprisings against state power. We must press our government to end reckless military interventions that endanger the entire world. We must build a culture of peace.
It was in 1954, during General Eisenhower’s presidency, that the name of the holiday was changed to Veterans’ Day and a change in the emphasis of the holiday emerged. It was that same President Eisenhower who so wisely cautioned us to be wary of the impact of the military-industrial complex.
His farewell address was a tad naive. He idealistically suggested:
Throughout America's adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among people and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people.
That is not a very accurate reading of America’s history, although it is a faithful recitation of the American myth. In order to affirm that basic purpose, one has to engage in a lot of ignoring. Some writers have asserted that our nation has been at war 93% of the time since 1776 - that there have been only 21 years in which we were not fighting someone. Now that number is clearly open to challenge, it includes many years when there was sporadic fighting with Native American tribes, or very brief incursions into other countries. But the basic point has validity: America has not exactly been peace-loving if you look at our behavior.
The American Revolution itself was supported by only 1/3 of the colonial population - 1/3 opposed it, and 1/3 didn’t give a damn. Think of the Barbary War, War of 1812, the decades-long wars against the various native tribes who were not willing to give up their lands without a fight, the Mexican War, the Opium Wars, the Civil War, the Spanish American War, the Boxer Rebellion [I did the funeral at Arlington Cemetery of a Congressional Medal of Honor winner from the Boxer Rebellion], the various Banana Wars of the 20thCentury against Central American nations [Nicaragua, Haiti, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic], World War I, the war which was supposed to end all wars, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf Wars, our invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, and a myriad of other military interventions of which you can find a list in Wikipedia.
In virtually none of these cases did it work out to the benefit of the peoples on whose territory we were fighting. We have historically been opponents of popular movements and supportive of dictators whom we could count on to be supportive of American economic interests.
I have spoken before of the fascinating Marine Major General Smedley Butler who, at the time of his death in 1940 was the most decorated Marine ever - he had 2 Congressional Medals of Honor. In his book, War is a Racket, which he wrote after his retirement, General Butler testified:
I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street, and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it. I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was operate his rackets in three districts. I operated in three continents.
General Butler was approached during the Roosevelt administration by a group of prominent Wall Street bankers who wanted him to lead a military coup to overthrow the government. A Congressional Committee investigated. While Butler’s claim was mocked by the major media, according to the New York Times, the final report of the House committee said:
a two-month investigation had convinced it that General Butler's story of a Fascist march on Washington was alarmingly true and ... also alleged that definite proof had been found that the much publicized Fascist march on Washington. . . was actually contemplated"
Some believe that prosecution of the plotters was not pursued because of their prominence.
In his book, General Butler reported on the obscene profits made by American corporations as a result of World War I.
In 1946, we created the School of the Americas at Fort Benning at which the US Army trained the militaries and secret police of Latin American dictators in the use of torture and death squads to prevent the growth of democratic movements. In 1999, the school’s website bragged that the US Army had helped to defeat “Liberation Theology” in Latin America. When funding for the school of the Americas was terminated by the Congress in 2001 because of its increasingly bad reputation, the program was renamed “The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Co-Operation” but the classes and textbooks remained the same. In many cases it is people trained at that school who are responsible for the conditions that have resulted in the oppression and domestic chaos that has caused so many residents of those Latin American countries to flee for their lives. They have not been bribed by George Soros.
We know from world history that the great empires of humanity have consistently disintegrated because of failures from within, more often than from external threats. The Greek word “hubris,” excessive pride, the conviction that they are destined to rule the planet, has humbled most of the empires, from that of Athens, and Rome, and Charlemagne, and Spain, and Britain, to, many would suggest, the modern American Empire.
There is no more explicit statement of American hubris than ”Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” the document published in September 2000 by the Project for a New American Century, which included among its members many of the people who have shaped our foreign policy in this century: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Bolton, and Scooter Libby. While its title refers to “Defenses,” the published plan is explicit that America, in order to maintain its standard of living, must create a military that is capable of dominating the whole planet, and in fact the space surrounding it. Only by total control could we, in their eyes, be safe. They insisted America must be prepared for preemptive action anywhere, anytime, in order to keep the rest of the world subservient to our interests.
The creators of that report, which is available for your reading on the internet,[http://www.newamericancentury.org/ defensenationalsecurity.htm] recognized that getting the American people to spend the kind of money necessary for such a military would not be easy. They said:
The process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.
Is it not strange that twelve months after that blueprint was issued, with its proponents in positions of great power, America experienced “a new Pearl Harbor.” on 9/11? At the ready, within days after that tragic event, were military plans and a comprehensive bill that radically changed the way the government related to the citizens of our nation. And the people’s representatives rolled over, and acceded to the extremist demands. Since then, 9/11 has been used to justify: torture, spying on the American people, imprisonment of citizens without due process, and bloody wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The authorization for the administrations to engage in military action without specific congressional authorization continues to be used to this day for our military engagement in nations we are not even aware of.
Not only has this militarism made America less safe in the world, but also it continues to wreak havoc on our own nation. Funds that might be used to improve our roads and bridges and water and sewer systems, and railroads and airports, and schools and our medical system, is used instead to build weapons systems and to launch drones that cause what our leaders call “collateral damage,” which means the killing of men and women and children who are not engaged in any behaviour that actually threatens our security.
Retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel William Astore, an historian, has written in his internet blog:
Paradoxically, Americans have become both too detached from their military and too deferential to it. We now love to applaud that military which, the pollsters tell us, enjoys a significantly higher degree of trust and approval from the public than the presidency, Congress, the media, the Catholic Church, or the Supreme Court. What the military needs, however, in this era of endless war is not loud cheers, but tough love.
He goes on to say:
As a retired military man, I do think our troops deserve a measure of esteem. There’s a selfless ethic to the military that should seem admirable in this age of selfies and selfishness. That said, the military does not deserve the deference of the present moment, nor the constant adulation it gets in endless ceremonies at any ballpark or sporting arena. Indeed, deference and adulation, the balm of military dictatorships, should be poison to the military of a democracy.
What I found really troubling was the response that Colonel Astore received from one of his senators when he wrote expressing his concern about the role of the military. He said that the form letter he received in return praised American troops as “tough, smart, courageous and they make huge sacrifices to keep our families safe. We owe them all a true debt of gratitude for their service.” His senator then expressed support for counter-terrorism operations, although cautioning that the military should obey the law of armed conflict. The conclusion was that “robust diplomacy must be combined with a strong military.”
That Senator was Elizabeth Warren.
Back in June, the US Senate voted 85 to 10 to give the military $716 Billion budget for 2019 - that’s more than the military budgets of the next eleven nations combined. Many of the world’s nations believe this is evidence that the United States is preparing for war. According to the Washington Post:
William Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy,[asserts] “All of this money is being spent in service of the idea we can go anywhere and fight any battle, and the recent history shows that doesn’t make a lot of sense or make us safer.”
Returning to Colonel Astore:
Washington’s own deeply embedded illusions and deceptions also serve to generate and perpetuate its wars. Lauding our troops as “freedom fighters” for peace and prosperity, presidents like George W. Bush have waged a set of brutal wars in the name of spreading democracy and a better way of life. The trouble is: incessant war doesn’t spread democracy – though in the twenty-first century we’ve learned that it does spread terror groups – it kills [democracy.]
Astore suggests that our policies lead to the American version of George Orwell’s famed formulation in his novel 1984: “War is Peace.” . . .He concludes:
In their hearts, America’s self-professed warriors know they’re right. But the wrongs they’ve committed and continue to commit, in our name, will not be truly righted until Americans begin to reject the madness of rampant militarism, bloated militaries, and endless wars.
Do we learn from history? The problem with empires is that their maintenance requires an unsustainable level of material and spiritual sacrifice. The creation of this nation was based on an unprecedented level of idealism.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
In his sermon at Riverside Church in New York City, a year to the day before he was assassinated, Martin Luther King quoted John Fitzgerald Kennedy:
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” Dr. King asserted: Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. . . .[He went on to say]When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.. .
Dr. King called for a Poor People’s March on Washington to demand a shift in our nation’s values. Glenn Greenwald points out that Dr. King was clear that “ending American militarism and imperialism was not merely a moral imperative in its own right, but a prerequisite to achieving any meaningful reforms in American domestic life.” King’s assassination undercut that march.
Last June I went to Washington to participate in a new Poor People’s Campaign which is aiming, fifty years later, to pick up and carry on his “National Call for Moral Revival.” Two weeks ago, I participated in a three-day gathering for people from New York State, who are joining with similarly committed people in 40 other states, to organize to advance that call. It is clear that opposing militarism is still “a prerequisite to achieving any meaningful reforms in America’s domestic life.” That was not an easy challenge when Dr. King issued the call, saying, “We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for victims of our nation...”. It is no easier today. But it is not a challenge we can ignore.
While I am not a veteran of military service, I have devoted my life to struggling on behalf of values congruent with Dr. King’s dream. I join in the call by the Veterans for Peace that: We must press our government to end reckless military interventions that endanger the entire world. We must build a culture of peace.
As Ehud Manor, the writer of the words of the hymn we are about to sing asserts:
Some have dreamed,
some have died,
to make a bright tomorrow
and our vision remains in our hearts.
Now the torch must be passed
with new hope, not in sorrow,
and a promise to make a new start.
Wait and see, Wait and see,
what world there can be if we share,
if we care, you and me.
