To the Editor:
Armistice Day? What is that? Isn’t Nov. 11 Veterans Day? The confusion arises primarily from the fact that powerful institutions in our country engineered a cultural shift that led to the celebration of Veterans Day rather than Armistice Day beginning during the Cold War in the 1950s.
Over one hundred years ago, following the carnage of World War I, the world celebrated peace as a universal principle. Armistice Day was born and was designated as “a day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be thereafter celebrated.” However, in 1954 the U.S. Congress renamed Nov. 11 as Veterans Day and the annual dedication to world peace mutated into the glorification of war and hero worship of the military. Armistice Day changed from a day for peace into a day for displays of militarism. Unfortunately, this mutation has been endorsed and applauded by the media and even our educational system. In our continual effort to reverse this hazardous cultural shift, Veterans for Peace seeks to reclaim Armistice Day.
Historically there have been many voices that warned of the combination of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry. In his farewell address in 1961, President Eisenhower warned us of the corrupting influence of the “military-industrial-complex,” i.e., the network of contracts and flows of money and resources between defense contractors, the Pentagon and politicians. Eisenhower warned that the federal government’s collaboration with an alliance of military and industrial leaders created a disastrous rise of misplaced power. We have allowed this corrupting influence to poison our imagination to such an extent that it is generally considered naïve and unpatriotic to dispute that war and militarism are necessary and glorious.
This Armistice Day, Saturday, Nov. 11, 2023, the Syracuse Chapter of Veterans for Peace (VFP) and the Beyond War and Militarism Committee (BW&M), a joint committee of the Syracuse Peace Council and the CNY Solidarity Coalition, call upon all to gather with us at the Onondaga County Public Library, 447 S. Salina St., from 10:00 to 11:30 am. We will remember the millions killed, wounded, widowed, imprisoned, orphaned and displaced by war. In our continual effort to reclaim Armistice Day, we will “Imagine Armistice in Syracuse.” By Imagining Armistice in Syracuse, we will present several alternative life-affirming uses of the trillions of our tax dollars being spent on war and militarism. Once again, Mayor Ben Walsh, as he has done for the past five years, has issued a Proclamation, declaring the 11th day of November 2023 to be Armistice Day for Peace in the city of Syracuse.
We will gather in this solemn manner not to pay homage to the weapons of destruction but to renew our commitment to work for an end to all wars and to foster justice and peace, at home and abroad. As Martin Luther King Jr. warned: “The choice today is no longer between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence.”
Ronald L. VanNorstrand
USAF 1965-1969
Syracuse