{"id":49990,"date":"2024-11-11T09:57:07","date_gmt":"2024-11-11T17:57:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=49990"},"modified":"2024-11-11T09:57:07","modified_gmt":"2024-11-11T17:57:07","slug":"veterans-day-and-the-purpose-of-veterans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2024\/11\/11\/veterans-day-and-the-purpose-of-veterans\/","title":{"rendered":"Veterans Day and the Purpose of Veterans"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reprinted from Bracing Views<\/a> with the author\u2019s permission.\u00a0 Originally posted for Veterans Day in 2020.
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I come from a family of veterans.\u00a0 My father and his two brothers served in the military during World War II.\u00a0 My mother\u2019s brother (Uncle Freddy) fought at Guadalcanal against the Japanese and was awarded the Bronze Star.\u00a0 Later, my eldest brother enlisted in the Air Force at the tail end of the Vietnam War, which my brother-in-law had fought in as a radio operator attached to the artillery.\u00a0 Their service helped to inspire my decision to become an officer in the U.S. Air Force.<\/p>\n

Military service is honorable, not because of wars waged or lives taken, but because of its purpose: to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.\u00a0 And this should be the purpose of Veterans Day: to take note of our veterans and their service in upholding the ideals of our Constitution, including freedom of speech and assembly, freedom of the press, a right to privacy, and most of all a government that is responsive to our needs and accountable to our oversight.<\/p>\n

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Yet since World War II America has fought wars without formal Congressional declarations.\u00a0 The Korean War, the Vietnam War, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and elsewhere, have lacked the wholehearted support of the American people.\u00a0 They were arguably unnecessary wars in the sense these countries and peoples posed no direct threat to America and our Constitution.\u00a0 Indeed, prosecuting these wars often posed more of a threat to that very Constitution.<\/p>\n

Naturally, America associates veterans with wars and combat. We say the dead made \u201cthe ultimate sacrifice,\u201d which indeed they did.\u00a0 But for what purpose, and to what end?\u00a0 We owe it to veterans to ask these questions: for what purposes are we risking their lives, and to what end are these wars being waged?\u00a0 If we can\u2019t answer these simple questions, in terms intimately associated with our Constitution and the true needs of national defense, we should end these wars immediately.<\/p>\n

Unending wars are the worst enemy of freedom and liberty.\u00a0 This isn\u2019t just my sentiment.\u00a0 As James Madison put it, \u201cOf all the enemies of true liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded\u2026 No nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.\u201d\u00a0 America once knew this; we were once a nation that was slow to anger and with little taste for large military establishments.<\/p>\n

A few years ago, I stumbled across old sheet music in a bookstore.\u00a0 Catching my eye was the title of the song: \u201cI Didn\u2019t Raise My Boy to be a Soldier,\u201d respectfully dedicated to \u201cEvery Mother \u2013 Everywhere.\u201d\u00a0 From 1915, this popular song captured American resistance to the calamitous \u201cGreat War\u201d that we now call World War I.\u00a0 Anti-war sentiment was strong that year in America, and indeed Woodrow Wilson would be reelected president in 1916 in large part because he had kept Americans out of the war.\u00a0 The lyrics put it plainly: a mother who\u2019d brought her son up \u201cto be my pride and joy\u201d didn\u2019t want to see that same son having \u201cto shoot some other mother\u2019s darling boy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The contrast in these lyrics to recent U.S. military recruitment commercials couldn\u2019t be starker.\u00a0 In a new Department of Defense advertising campaign<\/a>, featuring the catchphrase \u201cTheir success tomorrow begins with your support today,\u201d mothers are shown incongruously in military settings asking their sons why they wanted to sign up.\u00a0 Weapons are featured prominently in these ads but no combat.\u00a0 There\u2019s much talk of teamwork and being part of something larger than yourself but no talk of the U.S. Constitution.\u00a0 At the end of these spots, the young men depicted have convinced their mothers that it\u2019s desirable indeed to have your boy become a soldier.<\/p>\n

Recruitment ads, of course, have never been at pains to show the true costs of war. \u00a0When I was a teen, the Army\u2019s motto was \u201cBe all that you can be<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0 For the Navy, service was about \u201cadventure<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0 For the Air Force, it was about \u201ca great way of life<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0 These ads, by ignoring or eliding war\u2019s costs, have contributed to America\u2019s tighter embrace of war on the world stage and its severe impact not only on our veterans but on our democracy.\u00a0 America\u2019s strategy of \u201cglobal reach, global power\u201d has embroiled us in wars of choice that we increasingly choose not to end.\u00a0 Surely, it\u2019s time to chart a more pacific path.<\/p>\n

Sometimes the best offense is a good defense.\u00a0 On this Veterans Day, let\u2019s remind ourselves that veterans exist to defend our Constitution and our country, but that endless warfare, and intensifying militarism, are in fact among the most pressing dangers to our democracy.<\/p>\n

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My dad (R) home on leave with his brother Gino, c. 1944. Gino served in the ETO (European Theater of Operations). My dad, assigned to headquarters for an armored group, never went overseas. Their brother Pal (not pictured) served in the Marines in the Pacific.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

William Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF) and history professor, is a senior fellow at the Eisenhower Media Network (EMN)<\/a>, an organization of critical veteran military and national security professionals.\u00a0He writes at Bracing Views<\/a>. <\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author\u2019s permission.\u00a0 Originally posted for Veterans Day in 2020. I come from a family of veterans.\u00a0 My father and his two brothers served in the military during World War II.\u00a0 My mother\u2019s brother (Uncle Freddy) fought at Guadalcanal against the Japanese and was awarded the Bronze Star.\u00a0 Later, my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":290,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-49990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":"Some thoughts on what military service is all about"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/290"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49990"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49990\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49997,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49990\/revisions\/49997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49990"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=49990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}