Abolish Veterans Day
A day dedicated to ensuring peace has been weaponized to promote war and lionize capitalism
Each and every November 11, untold numbers of civilians quietly convince themselves that their day off work will be more than that. Veterans Day, they reason, should be punctuated by deep reflection on war and peace as well as action that demonstrates an appreciation for whose those who’ve served.
The dirty truth is that this almost never happens. Oftentimes, the most we can muster are five simple words: “Thank you for your service.”
Some veterans appreciate this offering. According to former Army infantryman Alejandro Esteban, these are “the worst types.” “It's a day for spotlight rangers looking to be patted on the back, or almost dislocate their shoulders trying to pat their own back,” he recently joked to ConnnectingVets.com.
Many veterans find such thanks unnecessary, self-serving, or misinformed. The legendary Vietnam War veteran and novelist Tim O’Brien once said that each time he hears gratitude for his time in the ranks “something in the stomach tumbles.” What’s made clear to O’Brien in these moments is the overwhelming naiveté of the “evil, nasty stuff you do in war.”
While many civillians feel shameful or unsympathetic on Veterans Days, others don’t. Many, I’m sure, school themselves on veterans’ issues, donates $25 bucks to The National Coalition for Homeless Veterans or some other fine vet charity, check in with a friend who served, or bake a pie for a potluck at their local American Legion post.
Many veterans similarly find meaning and community in this day. They meet up and go shooting with battle buddies, drink some beers, or volunteer in the community. “It's a great day behind the scenes to see so many people with generations of shared experiences making new friends and basically just being kind to each other and proud of what they've each done," Army veteran Elana Duffy, who was severely injured by an IED blast in Iraq, recently observed.
While some veterans find therapeutic benefits in a day commemorating them, many others are transported back to traumatic times of homesickness, survivors guilt, moral injury, and death. These memories clash violently with the purified imagery of Veterans Day: well-pressed parade dress uniforms, guns that haven’t seen a shot in their lives, and American flags that are bleach white, balloon red, and ocean blue.
Herein lies the biggest problem with Veterans Day: it sanitizes and glorifies war. This work is most often carried out by corporations and the military industrial complex, who’ve possessed this day for their own greedy ends. The bizarre pageantry we’ll all witness today is one blatant side effect of late stage Patriotism, an era of political consumerism, shallow civic performance, and a strict definition of nationalism that welcomes loyalty and frowns on dissent.
Were Veterans Day salvageable, I’d recommend we save it. But it’s too far gone. I hereby suggest that the day be abolished and reimagined in a form that gives honor to its peaceful progenitor: Armistice Day. The roadmap for this work has already been drawn up by the Veterans for Peace, an international group that, for more than a decade, has been holding alternative gatherings on November 11.
Last year, one of the organization’s English chapters gathered at central London’s towering war memorial. There they placed on the ground a handmade wreath of white and red poppies with two words written at the center: “Never Again.” Members then recited the powerful post-World War I poem “Suicide in the Trenches,” which follows a young boy driven mad in the military. The poem ends:
You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.
Much of the world emerged from the chaos and bloodshed of World War I with a call to end conflict entirely. In America, this goal was set forth by then-President Woodrow Wilson, who deemed November 11, 1919 as the first commemoration of Armistice Day, a period “to be dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be thereafter celebrated.”
The date of November 11 was an important one — as fighting between the Allied nations and Germany had ceased on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918. As originally conceived in Congressional language, Armistice Day demanded “exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations.”
These heady aspirations of tranquility were quickly crushed. Over the next decades came World War II, then Korea. In 1954, Congress rebranded November 11 as Veterans Day, realizing, perhaps, that war was a reality and veterans would never stop being made.
This name change stirred subtle shifts over time. On Veterans Day 1986, President Ronald Reagan spoke not of ensuring peace but of preserving freedom. “[Veterans’] willingness to give freely and unselfishly of themselves, even their lives, in defense of our democratic principles has given our great country the security we enjoy today,” he declared. On Veterans Day 2011, President Barack Obama echoed this rhetoric, thanking veterans for their “profound service and sacrifice in pursuit of a more perfect Union.”
This language glorifies war and presumes a need for constant vigilance, a requirement that America stay armed up and ready to kill. The Defense Department has greatly benefitted from this new conception of Veterans Day, and used it as an enlistment tool.
On Veterans Day 2019, the Army launched an ad blitz — “What’s your Warrior?” — which conveyed that all Americans could become heroes inside the military industrial complex. This slick campaign, part of the military’s multi-billion-dollar marketing budget, sought to transform everyone into a fighter, whether they were scientists examining beakers or nerds coding on a computer.
Rory Fanning, a legendary counter-recruiter and one of the first U.S. Army Rangers to resist the Iraq War, last year wrote about the benefits of Veterans Day to the Pentagon:
The underlying message of the Veterans Day pageantry is: If you too serve the cause of the empire and make it out alive and reasonably “sane,” you will be patted on the back on Veterans Day. You may even make it onto the field or stage at professional athletic events or concerts. You may see your name on the Jumbotron!
Veterans Days has also enabled the military to offload any blame or guilt around war and its many negative impacts to American civilians, many of whom today feel some vague sense of blame for the ills of veterans. These folks are unsure were to place the blame, as they’ve been subtly trained to believe that the Pentagon’s plans are always patriotic. This clever slight of hand was well articulated last Veterans Day by Retired Army Major Danny Sjursen:
After ditching the draft, thereby disconnecting service from citizenship, next sucking all the hope, idealism, and meaning out of the original Armistice Day, and then repackaging the holiday as a simple, reflexive exercise in vapid "thanks," the national security state cleverly narrows the space for dissent. It amounts to a tactical employment of language as power – in a rather Orwellian vein – to covertly undermine opposition.
The other big beneficiary on Veterans Day is corporate America, which blows up prices and make a killing all while earning a plethora of Patriotism Points along the way. These are the phoniest Thank Yous For Service, crass and opportunistic and all about the bottom line. Scrub some of the shine off these messages and they boil down to this:
Have you served in Desert Storm? Here’s a discount code for office supplies! Make it out of Vietnam alive? You deserve cheap spandex! I appreciate you piloting a drone inside Holloman Air Force Base. May I thank you with some cutting tools at a reduced price?
With military service now considered a potent advertising hook, veteran-owned businesses, many of which are facing economic precarity like the rest of us, are incentivized to hock their military records in hopes of gaining customers. Steve Beynon at Stars & Stripes recently Tweeted out a PR pitch indicative of this trend. It reads: "With Veterans Day fast approaching do you want to talk to the CEO of our 5 person carpet company? He went to Iraq and served for 4 years."
These deals and discounts are meant to convince Americans that the corporate world respect those who wear the uniform. But that’s often not the case.
In fact, some of the companies most closely associated with loving veterans have a terrible track record with them. Take, for instance, Amazon, which employs a massive numbers of veterans and offers highly generous military discounts on Veterans Day. Yet Jeff Bezos runs a highly exploitative businesses that treats employees, including veterans, poorly.
One of them was Seth King, a Navy veteran who became suicidal while working grueling shifts in one of the company’s warehouses. “Towards the end of the time I was there, I was so depressed and kept telling myself, ‘If this is the best my life is going to get, why am I even still here?’” King told U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) during a town hall.
Another egregious case is USAA, the bank that puts smiling service members and veterans in virtually every one of their television ads. Yet as David Dayen reported in the American Prospect, USAA grabbed coronavirus relief checks from customers with outstanding debts, including military families.
A final example comes in the case of Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus. Through his personal wealth, as well as his Home Depot Foundation, Marcus has generously backed a flurry of solid veterans organizations over the years. His company hires vets, and also offers a solid, all-year-round discount to those who’ve served. Yet according to reporter Eli Clifton, Marcus is quite hawkish, and appears to have played an instrumental role in pushing President Donald Trump to rip up the nuclear deal with Iran, a country he has compared to “the devil.” Marcus may love veterans, but he’s also spoiling for war.
Perhaps the best reflection on the excesses of Veterans Day, as well as the beautiful moments that can come from it, is from Matt Farwell, a former Army infantryman and author of the definitive book on Bowe Bergdahl.
November 11 often conjures up grim memories and ghosts for Farwell. In 2009, he lost a number of close friends from the war. A year later, his brother died in a training accident in Germany when his Black Hawk helicopter went down.
In the run-up to previous Veterans Days, Farwell had fallen into benders or breakdowns. But he’s now in a pretty solid spot. Last year for The New Republic, he ventured around town searching for Veterans Day deals. He began with a plate of red, white and blue pancakes at IHOP. “The waitress said they’d been slammed all morning,” Farwell writes. “I paid the tab, left a tip, and thanked her for her excellent service.”
He then went to Sports Clips for a free “Help a Hero” haircut from a woman named Delilah, who came in on her day off to snip for those who served. Delilah’s older brother, it turned out, had been in the military, and it wrecked him. She, too, suffered from post-traumatic stress courtesy of an abusive ex from Wichita, Kansas. The two had an enlightening conversation that beautifully bridged the civ-mil gap. After the cut was over, Farwell said thanks, and moved along.
He then ventured to Buffalo Wild Wing for some free “Nashville hot” chicken, then drove to Logan’s Roadhouse, but saw, much to his stomach’s relief, that complimentary vet meals weren’t being served for another hour.
“By that time I knew just where I needed to be,” he concludes. “At home and present with the woman I love, who loves me. The best kindnesses, I’m slowly learning, are the ones that are free every day, and don’t require a veteran ID.”