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Walt Zlotow – Turn Veterans Day into Peace Day

Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL 8 Nov26

Started 107 years ago November 11, Armistice Day was established in the UK to commemorate the armistice that ended WWI a year earlier. In 1926 Congress signed on for the US to “perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations…a day dedicated to the cause of world peace.”

The US national security state, working through Congress, changed it to Veterans Day in 1954, the same year they put ‘under god’ in the Pledge. ’For a country dedicated to peace and secularism, 1954 was a bad year indeed.

Since then it has largely become a commercial for promoting American militarism and perpetual war round the world which today sees 200,000 soldiers deployed in 80 nations. To a country engaged in perpetual war worldwide, peace is a word that dares not speak its name.

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 funneled tens of billions in weapons for Israel to largely obliterate Gaza, killing over 100,000 while leaving the remaining 2.2 million Palestinians with little food, water, medicine, electricity or hope. Just this year America attacked Iran killing over 3,400 in a failed war to collapse the hated Iranian Islamic regime. Instead, the war is collapsing the world economy and current administration.

We regularly bomb innocents in a number of countries; Somalia alone over 100 times killing thousands under the Biden and Trump administrations. Senseless US warfare is about the only issue both parties agree upon.

While every decent function of government uplifting the commons loses funding, our defense budget has soured to over $1 trillion with $1.5 trillion proposed for next year. The annual increase alone is larger than most countries spend yearly on their entire military.

All vets but the dwindling centenarians of WWII fought in undeclared wars which slaughtered millions while doing nothing to promote peace…and they know it. After 72 years it’s time for another name change. How about Peace Day, to honor people of peace like Dr. Martin Luther King and a true American war hero , Pvt. Chelsea Manning, who spent seven years in prison for outing American war crimes in Iraq? Peace Day would return the focus to peace November 11, not endless war. No better way to honor veterans.

It’s time once again, as we did in 1926 to “perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations…a day dedicated to the cause of world peace.”

As John Lennon famously sang, ‘Give peace a chance.’

November 11, 2026 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | weapons and war