ON NOV. 11, the world observes Armistice Day, Remembrance Day, or what we in the U.S. call Veterans Day. In the U.S. it is meant to honor anyone who served in the armed forces.
If you know Sojourners — which has a long history of anti-war activism, sharing the gospel call to nonviolence, and naming and critiquing the destruction wrought by the U.S. military-industrial complex — you may wonder where I’m going with this.
This election year I’ve been in grim awe of the many ways military service is used and twisted in political campaigns. Historically, a candidate’s military service is treated as a badge of strength and patriotism. It’s why real and false accusations of “stolen valor” (mispresenting one’s service record) are a common tactic in political campaigns, as opponents try to defuse a veteran’s “advantage.”
Neither of the leading presidential candidates served in the military. One proudly touted the “lethality” of the U.S. military and has distanced herself from those urging the current administration to stop supplying weapons to Israel. This summer the other candidate insulted Medal of Honor recipients, drawing rebuke from the national commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. In August, a member of this candidate’s entourage reportedly shoved an Arlington National Cemetery official who tried to enforce federal law forbidding video or photographs for “partisan, political or fundraising purposes” among the gravestones of military veterans.
I am not pro-military. I wasn’t raised to believe “my country right or wrong” or that military service automatically makes one a “hero.” And yet all the campaign rhetoric gives me sympathy for those who sacrificed body, soul, or psyche in military service only to be used as a political tool. It keeps bringing back memories of my own visits to Arlington.
As a Washington, D.C. resident, I’ve attended funerals at Arlington Cemetery for a church elder and others. A military funeral is not marked by nationalist nostalgia or chest-pounding bravado. Strict standards govern behavior for everyone in attendance. The ceremony is precise. If militarism were a religion, this would be its holiest of rituals. It is offered for all sorts of veterans — sinners and saints, those who did desk duty, and those who died in combat — and it respects the deceased and the grieving family.
But to walk among thousands of matching white headstones, especially those with the names of young men and women, is to be confronted by our country’s foundation of blood and stolen futures — those of soldiers, yes, and of those in their crosshairs. War is about destruction at all levels. Patriotic sentimentality and political grandstanding obscure its toll.
Armistice Day was first observed in the U.S. in November 1919, one year after the close of the bloody conflict we call World War I. Why? Because, as a joint resolution of Congress passed in 1926 observed, “the 11th of November 1918, marked the cessation of the most destructive, sanguinary, and far-reaching war in human annals and the resumption by the people of the United States of peaceful relations with other nations, which we hope may never again be severed.” The true price of war and the preciousness of peace were both acknowledged.
Whatever the election outcome, know this: The arduous work of peace won’t be a goal of either party. It’s up to us.
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