Armistice Day, A Day to Recommit to Peace

by members of VFP 161 November 11th, 2018

One hundred years ago, bells worldwide were rung on the 11th month, the 11th day, at 11 AM, 1918, to celebrate the ending of World War I, "the war to end all wars." To commemorate that peaceful pledge, bells were rung around the world on November 11 for more than 35 years. Congress declared November 11th "a day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be hereafter celebrated and known as Armistice Day." Then in 1954, Congress changed the name of the day to Veterans' Day. This year, Veterans' Day is being observed on November 12.

World War I was horrendous. Over 18 million people were killed, with about sixty percent of those being soldiers. As the Armistice was signed on November 11, 1918, there truly was exuberant joy in the streets of the USA and on every continent in the world. The vileness of the war was abhorrent to the peoples of the world, and they took hope in the promise that it had been "the war to end all wars." However, revulsion at the brutality of war is not a sufficient foundation for peace. The outbreak of World War II, just twenty-one years later, is evidence of that. 80 million died in World War II, with about thirty percent of those being soldiers.

Veterans For Peace is made up of veterans of the U.S. armed services, with experiences ranging from World War II to Afghanistan. To recognize the day as Armistice Day rather than Veterans' Day is not at all intended as a slight to veterans. In fact, the best way to honor military veterans, both dead and alive, is to make a commitment to work for peace and to never again send citizen soldiers to an unjustifiable war. Veterans For Peace, having experienced the military culture and ethic, have a unique responsibility to work for nonviolent paths to conflict resolution.

Now, in 2018, one hundred years after the end of World War I, the U.S. is engaged in the longest war in its history, in Afghanistan. The administration has unilaterally withdrawn from the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement, which was negotiated with Iran and five other countries, and which has been adhered to by those countries. The U.S. has imposed sanctions on Iran, which will bring more affliction to Iranian civilians than to their government. The U.S. has withdrawn from a decades-old nuclear arms treaty, opening the door to a resumption of the nuclear arms race. The U.S. continues to be complicit in the Saudi coalition's barbaric assault on Yemen. The 2019 U.S. military budget is $82 billion higher than 2017s and will constitute over 55% of the U.S. discretionary spending budget.

We in the U.S. must press our government to end reckless rhetoric and military interventions that threaten rather than enhance our security. If we want peace, we have to work for peace, and this historic Armistice Day is the ideal time to recommit to peace. Veterans For Peace Chapter #161 is sponsoring an Armistice Day Observance in Iowa City at 10:45 AM on Sunday, November 11th, to be held at the Clinton St. entrance to Old Capitol. Attendees are urged to arrive ahead of time, as Assembly will be played promptly at 10:45 AM. Bells will again ring at 11:00 AM. The Observance will feature Veterans For Peace members from around the state. This event is more than just a historical remembrance. It is about today, about our pressing need to quash the continuing rush to war, and instead to take up the sweet burden of building a lasting peace. The observance is free and open to the public. An open mic discussion on how to build peace will take place after the Observance and after lunch at Old Brick.

A shorter version was published in The Gazette on 11-11-2018.
 

Local VFP Members Speak Out Against New Obscene Military Spending
 
Veterans For Peace Stands with Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange
 
Armistice Day 2018, Time to Recommit to Peace
 
September 14 2018, Congress passes AUMF
 
March 2018, a muddle of murky anniversaries
 
John Ivens on US policy on Yemen
 
Ed Flaherty on US policy on Gaza
 
Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA employee, released from prison
 
VFP 161 leader, Jeff Strottmann passes Feb 6, 2017
 
Retired Air Force Major General Charles Dunlap discusses AUMF in Syria
 
Taking Yemen to Congress
 
Ed Flaherty on Yemen & US military budget
 
Ed Flaherty on 9-11
 
VFP on Memorial Day
 
Muhammad Ali's service
 
Ann Wright & Women's Boat to Gaza
 
View Dan Berrigan commemoration
 
Private Manning's service to country
 
David Hempel: It's time to organize
 

 
Brief recap of Veterans For Peace Chapter #161 activities

 

 

 
Welcome to Veterans For Peace

Veterans For Peace is a global organization of Military Veterans and allies whose collective efforts are to build a culture of peace by using our experiences and lifting our voices. We inform the public of the true causes of war and the enormous costs of wars, with an obligation to heal the wounds of wars. Our network is comprised of over 140 chapters worldwide whose work includes: educating the public, advocating for a dismantling of the war economy, providing services that assist veterans and victims of war, and most significantly, working to end all wars.

Statement of Purpose

We, having dutifully served our nation, do hereby affirm our greater responsibility to serve the cause of world peace. To this end we will work, with others

• To increase public awareness of the costs of war
  
  
• To restrain our government from intervening, overtly and covertly, in the internal affairs of other nations
  
  
• To end the arms race and to reduce and eventually eliminate nuclear weapons
  
  
• To seek justice for veterans and victims of war
  
  
• To abolish war as an instrument of national policy.
  

To achieve these goals, members of Veterans For Peace pledge to use non-violent means and to maintain an organization that is both democratic and open with the understanding that all members are trusted to act in the best interests of the group for the larger purpose of world peace.
 

 

Rendered for inclusion on website

 

101 Years Later, America Needs an Armistice
By Danny Sjursen and Coleen Rowley

Once upon a time, a U.S. president told his people they were fighting "a war to end all wars?!" Only a handful of centenarians could possibly remember the false pretexts used to sell the "Great War" to the populace and how that same president imposed draconian "peace" conditions that made the even bloodier Second World War all but inevitable. He, of course, was Woodrow Wilson, a self-proclaimed "progressive," who not only ditched his antiwar credentials but suppressed free speech, the free press (under the Espionage Act - still statute law today), and general civil liberties. Peaceful war opposition became a crime, and many activists were jailed.

Sound familiar? Take Lyndon Johnson's cynical decision to sell the citizenry the Vietnam War under false pretenses. Then, if Karl Marx was right, and history repeats itself first as tragedy, next as farce, George W. Bush's lies and obfuscations to justify the Iraq War must count as the latter. Next, Barack Obama swiftly disappointed progressives' expectations when Mr. "hope and change" escalated the Afghan War, helped orchestrate the bombing of Libya back into the Stone Age (via the "No Fly Zone" ruse), multiplied drone assassinations, and - in a macabre nod to Wilson - prosecuted more whistleblowers under the Espionage Act than all previous presidents combined. Seen in this sequential context, Donald Trump manifests as only the latest, most absurd, imperial president.

Thus, the legacy of World War I remains, resonating across passing generations. For all its carnage, all its domestic oppression, at least that conflict's veterans stepped out of the trenches with hope for a better world. Much of the best antiwar poetry and prose of the past century, flowed from the pens of a "Lost Generation" of fed up vets - think Ernest Hemingway or Robert Graves - committed to ensuring theirs would be the world's last war. All combatants celebrated the moment the guns had fallen silent, November 11, 1918, as Armistice Day, meant to signify a final cessation of state violence. Only decades later, when venal governments of the wealthy and powerful dashed their hopes, did the holiday transform into Veterans' Day. The date's dreamy, beautiful meaning, and hopes, died with that renaming.

A century and a year later, we find the euphemistic confabulations used to launch, sustain and normalize current "forever wars" have only multiplied and overtaken the nation's political cadre, think tanks and corporate media. Sometime in the past 18 years, the post-9/11 "War on Terrorism" garnered "humanitarian" justifications quite similar to Wilson's old rhetoric. Washington now justifies perpetual war as a violent means to protect women's rights, build democracy, and, in Bush's Manichean words, defeat "evil."

Few pundits or faux intellectuals ask whether Bush's (or his successors') millenarian mission is possible. Fewer still discern that each president's rhetoric served only as cover for the true motive of regional hegemony. Of course, "nation-building's" dirty little secret is this: as in Vietnam, so in the Mid-East, the U.S. military ultimately feels compelled to "bomb villages to save them." Enabled by a mostly apathetic public - yet in our name - hundreds of thousands of foreigners (mostly civilians) have been killed, along with nearly 7,000 of America's ever-so-adulated soldiers. Furthermore, the at least $5.9 trillion tax dollars wasted hasn't much profited the combat troops paid $30,000 a year to kill and die, but certainly enriched corporate war profiteers.

America's wars take on an inertia all their own. The political-media power structure hardly questions the why and wherefore, but undoubtedly, this Veterans' Day, these elites will loudly - if vapidly - praise the "service" and "sacrifice" of the troops. They'll use the veterans, as props and pawns, as a cudgel to suppress dissent and equate antiwar activism with un-Americanism. It's an old game - don't fall for it! Reclaim the true dream of Armistice Day: a more peaceful world.
=====
 

Danny Sjursen is a retired U.S. Army Major and author. His work has appeared in Harper's, the LA Times, The Nation, Tom Dispatch, The Huffington Post, and The Hill. He served combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and later taught history at his alma mater, West Point. He is the author of a memoir and critical analysis of the Iraq War, Ghostriders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge.

Coleen Rowley is a retired FBI Special Agent and former Minneapolis Division Legal Counsel who testified to the 9-11 Joint Intelligence Committee Inquiry and Senate Judiciary Inquiry as a whistleblower, for which she was named one of Time Magazine's 2002 Persons of the Year.

Both authors spoke on as part of the University of Iowa Lecture Series beginning at 7:30 pm at the Old Capitol on November 11.
 

Stand up for Peace! Fridays, New hours: 4 to 5:30 pm at the intersection of Iowa Avenue and Clinton Street on the University of Iowa Pentacrest Iowa City

Are you ready to show up for peace? Join us for an hour, or even just a few minutes, to voice your support for peace. We citizens must stand as a reminder that the military option is an unacceptable option. Maybe if we're serious about peace with North Korea, we could start the new year by declaring an end to the Korean War. Come with your friends, your family, your neighbors, or just yourself — all are welcome.
 

Jo Conroy died on August 4th. Her family and friends are left with rich memories. She was a "No Justice, No Peace—Know Justice, Know Peace" kind of person. She frequented the Friday peace rallies on the Pentacrest in Iowa City, and was a friend of Veterans For Peace. She was a woman of many talents, with a sense of humor and a smile that stuck with you. Her obituary ( gayandciha.com ) relates: "She became one of the earliest members of the Cedar Rapids chapter of NOW (National Organization For Women). She sued the Cedar Rapids school district for sexual discrimination, not for money but for equal rights. The decision was on her side. She used to say, 'Civil rights, women's rights, we are talking about human rights.' She continued her fight for justice until she could no longer walk or speak."

Local VFP Members Speak Out Against New Obscene Military Spending
 
Veterans For Peace Stands with Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange
 
Armistice Day 2018, Time to Recommit to Peace
 
September 14 2018, Congress passes AUMF
 
March 2018, a muddle of murky anniversaries
 
John Ivens on US policy on Yemen
 
Ed Flaherty on US policy on Gaza
 
Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA employee, released from prison
 
VFP 161 leader, Jeff Strottmann passes Feb 6, 2017
 
Retired Air Force Major General Charles Dunlap discusses AUMF in Syria
 
Taking Yemen to Congress
 
Ed Flaherty on Yemen & US military budget
 
Ed Flaherty on 9-11
 
VFP on Memorial Day
 
Muhammad Ali's service
 
Ann Wright & Women's Boat to Gaza
 
View Dan Berrigan commemoration
 
Private Manning's service to country
 
David Hempel: It's time to organize
 

Veterans For Peace, Chapter 161

P0 Box 947
Iowa City, IA 52244·O947

Please contact:

E-mail John Jadryev <jadryevj[at]gmail.com>
  or call ( 3l9 ) 43O·2Ol9

E-mail Ed Flaherty <flahertyem[at]q.com>
  or call ( 3l9 ) 354·O54O

Webmaster:

Franklin Seibering
P0 Box l3O2
Iowa City, Iowa 52244·l3O2

E-mail: <webmaster[at]justword.net>
page: ( 3l9 ) 34l·llO7

 

 

VETERANS FOR PEACE
CHAPTER 161
The April 12th—Coralville Public Library
STATEMENT OF PURPOSE

INTRODUCTIONS

MINUTES

TREASURERS REPORT
ANNOUNCEMENTS NEW BUSINESS OLD BUSINESS WORKING GROUPS