Today is
Veteran’s Day, November 11th.
Today we
commemorate the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, the war to end all wars, though regrettably
it was not.
I am a
veteran, as is my father and some few of my friends (very few).
From the end
of World War I, until 1954, we celebrated this day as Armistice Day, as a
remembrance of that moment in that first great-global conflict, when the
fighting stopped along the lines, in the trenches at the fronts. It stopped
suddenly, it stopped all at once, at the eleventh hour, on the eleventh day, of
the eleventh month; as if the war had a director who yelled “cut!” And all the
actors on the stage, all the pawns in the field, the millions of people in
their graves could get up from what they were doing and go home.
That is not
what happened.
Nearly
twenty million people were killed in World War I, twenty million families
broken, with many millions more suffering in the aftermath.
World War I was
perceived by those who endured it as so
horrible that it would end war itself for all time, but that would not be
the case.
The gods of
war are busy, always
The
conflicts they sew never end, ever
We hunger and
thirst for it, the failure
Of humanity
Today is the
feast of Saint Martin of Tours. He is the patron saint of soldiers, St. Martin
of the Sword, he is called.
He was the
first Christian Soldier.
It was in
recognition of him, and his feast that this date was selected, to bring a halt
to World War I.
It might
have come sooner for the soldiers in the struggle, but the politicians acting
like art directors wanted to wait for a symbolic moment, to bring it to a close.
11:11:11
The eleventh
hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, it was easy to remember.
Pope, Saint
Gregory the Great, the man who gave us our calendar, penned Saint Martin’s
hagiography. It is not likely that Martin ever even lived. All of Gregory’s
writing were works of fiction, either cut from whole cloth, or steeped and
dyed.
Even if the
life of Martin was based on the life of a real person did, his hagiography is a
fiction, our celebration of Saint Martin is a piece of propaganda, it is just another
terrible lie.
His
hagiography was a fable penned with a purpose, through it Pope, Saint Gregory
gave permission for Christians to takes up arms.
He gave
Christian soldiers leave to march to war, which had been theretofore a matter
of deep contention, a thing that was forbidden to the followers of Jesus.
The spirits
of conflict have a will of their own…their will is our own. There is no god of
war, there are only human pretenders.
In 1954,
President Eisenhower, the man who had been the Supreme Allied Commander in
World War II, he changed the nature of the November 11th holiday; from
Armistice to Veteran’s Day, in honor of all Veterans who had fought in any
conflict, anywhere in the world.
Friend or
foe, ally or adversary, we celebrate the courage of the average person, woman
or man, who was willing to risk everything for their tribe, their nation or their
clan.
That is what
we celebrate today.
We do not
celebrate the end of war, because it seems that war itself will never end.
We do not
celebrate the fictional life of a fictional saint, whose usefulness as a tool
of propaganda suggested that it was possible to serve Jesus, with a sword, and we
do not celebrate the lie that peace could ever be the fruit of war.
The fruit of
peace springs from a different seed altogether.
We celebrate
the character of those who have had the courage to enlist, to risk their lives
for the sake of their sisters and brothers, whether at home or beside them in
the field.
We should
always celebrate that quality of character, while simultaneously naming the
flaws in our own that lead us to war; fear and greed, anger and hatred, calamities
all.
The spirits
of conflict have a will of their own…they are the children of Aries; Fear,
Panic and Strife, they own a piece of us.
We are
possessed.
We are still
waging war all around the world, one hundred years after the end of World War I.
We the United States of America are waging war in Afghanistan, in Africa, selling
weapons to Saudi Arabia, fighting a war by proxy with Iran in Yemen, and
feeding other conflicts in every sector of the globe.
I served in
the Navy as a Hospital Corpsman, from 1990 – 1994.
I served
during the first Gulf War, though I did not serve in that theatre where we
killed 300,000 Iraqi people in the space of a few months.
My father
served for twenty-two years; the first four as a Marine, the next eighteen in
the Air Force. Our nation went to war only once during that time, in Southeast
Asia, where my father served multiple tours of duty, and in which we killed
3,000,000 people of Vietnam.
We have
killed millions more in many other nations in the decades since then.
Millions of
families broken.
We are
terrible, we are profligate killers, we are experts at it, we Americans.
Today our
President went to a ceremony to mark the one hundred year anniversary of World War
I. All of the leaders gathered there walked arm in arm down the Champs Elysees, all except two, Donald Trump
and Vladimir Putin, who arrived at the celebration late, in disgrace.
Make of that
what you will.
Every bullet
we fire, every missile we launch, each of them is an admission of our failure
as diplomats, as human beings.
Violence
does not beget peace. Violence it begets violence, and so it will always be.
Only peace
and reconciliation bring peace.
Love one
another; pay respect to the inherent dignity of every human being, regardless
of your disagreements, regardless of the pain you are carrying from your past.
To be free
from it, requires that we forgive.
Commit
yourself to meet conflict with love, respect all people, even your adversary, this
is the thanks you can give to a Veteran today.
