Veterans' Day, established originally as Armistice Day, to commemorate "the War to End All Wars,"

[No Elephants]

namely WWI. (That fighting World War I to end all wars stuff didn't work out very well. The fighting WWI bit worked out very well. Quite a few nations participated, with many casualties, even without the Flu Pandemic. The "to end all wars" bit is the part that didn't work out very well (but you knew that).

In fact, the wiki about Veteran's Day includes a photo, taken in the 1980's, of a veteran, then age 86, who had survived World War I, the war he had fought to end all wars, holding the flag that covered the coffin of his own son, who had died in the Korean War.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veterans_Day

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorial_Day


Whoever chose the photo to accompany that article should get a Nobel Peace Prize, but, apparently, only those who support wars get the Nobel Peace Prize anymore.

Criticism of individual conferments

The awards given to Le Duc Tho and Henry Kissinger prompted two dissenting Committee members to resign.<19> Tho refused to accept the prize, on the grounds that peace had not actually been achieved in Vietnam.*

The awards given to Mikhail Gorbachev,<20> Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Menachem Begin and Yasser Arafat,<21><22> Lê Ðức Thọ, Henry Kissinger,<23> Jimmy Carter,<24> Al Gore,<25> Liu Xiaobo,<26><27><28> Barack Obama,<29><30><31> and the European Union<32> have all been the subject of controversy.


Notable omissions

Foreign Policy has listed Mahatma Gandhi, Eleanor Roosevelt, U Thant, Václav Havel, Ken Saro-Wiwa, Sir Fazle Hasan Abed, Sari Nusseibeh, and Corazon Aquino as people who "never won the prize, but should have".<33><34> Other notable omissions that have drawn criticism include Pope John Paul II,<35> Hélder Câmara<36> and Dorothy Day.<37> (Both Eleanor Roosevelt and Dorothy Day were recipients of the Gandhi Peace Award.) It was widely reported that Irena Sendler had been nominated for the 2007 prize, which was jointly awarded to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Al Gore.<38><39>

The omission of Mahatma Gandhi has been particularly widely discussed, including in public statements by various members of the Nobel Committee.<40><41> The Committee has confirmed that Gandhi was nominated in 1937, 1938, 1939, 1947 and, finally, a few days before his death in January 1948.<42> The omission has been publicly regretted by later members of the Nobel Committee.<40> Geir Lundestad, Secretary of Norwegian Nobel Committee in 2006 said, "The greatest omission in our 106-year history is undoubtedly that Mahatma Gandhi never received the Nobel Peace prize. Gandhi could do without the Nobel Peace prize, whether Nobel committee can do without Gandhi is the question".<43> In 1948, following Gandhi's death, the Nobel Committee declined to award a prize on the ground that "there was no suitable living candidate" that year. Later, when the Dalai Lama was awarded the Peace Prize in 1989, the chairman of the committee said that this was "in part a tribute to the memory of Mahatma Gandhi."<44>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Peace_Prize


*but Kissinger accepted it anyway.


No peace prize for Mahatma Ghandi? Of course, MLK, Jr. cited Ghandi as his inspiration for civil disobedience, but the originator of civil disobedience was a lot closer to home, namely Henry David Thoreau, a Massachusetts guy who was jailed (albeit briefly) for refusing to pay taxes to support war.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_David_Thoreau


I can remember that, as a young kid, I was so awed whenever the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize was announced. It seemed like almost a holy thing to me. Kids, huh?

Peace is holy (the Son of God, after all, is not called the Prince of War). The Nobel Peace Prize, not so much. As a kid, I guess I conflated the two, accepting without reflecting that the peace prize actually had something to do with peace.

That is why I have to smile at the Green Party's Shadow Cabinet's having a Secretary of Peace (David Swanson).

What a concept! Like trying to increase Social Security when everyone else is saying cuts are inevitable and necessary to reform and save Social Security.

http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/budget/189241-brown-joins-liberal-senators-seeking-to-boost-social-security


The wiki about Veterans' Day also includes a reminder that we not confuse Veterans' Day with Memorial Day, which originated after the Civil War as Decoration Day. (I believe it was called Decoration Day because of decorating the graves of those who had died in the Civil War, but I am not sure.


Anyway, we have two national holidays to remember war dead and zero to remember those who averted war and all the death, mental and physical disablility, displacement and destruction that wars cause, including to innocents.

And, in n under a century, we went from the War to End All Wars to the Never-Ending Global War on Terror. Progress, huh?

But I digress. (My posts are almost literally post-er children for adult ADD.)

Anyhoo.......I don't know how you plan to observe Veterans' Day. I am non-violent. I plan to thank everyone I know who never enlisted, even if they served after having been drafted. Yeah, I know, heresy, especially after the Obama-Biden adminstration. What can I say, though? Heresy is one of my very best and very worst traits.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRhq-yO1KN8

[Enthusiast]

1. What a thoughtful and stimulating post!

To me it is very clear that long term peace is not only be achievable it would actually be easy to achieve. I think the people of the world have determined that the planet and its inhabitants have quite enough challenges without adding to them with more war.

These war loving Neo-Con chickenhawks really should be shamed into backing the fuck off on all this Iran war talk. Of course without war they couldn't profit as they have nor exploit the masses as they have throughout the centuries.

[No Elephants]

2. Thanks, Enthusiast. You are kind about my adult ADD and my bad typing..

I don't think the people of the world have ever called for war, unless and until someone sold them on the idea of going to war.