{"id":50330,"date":"2024-12-01T08:34:21","date_gmt":"2024-12-01T16:34:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=50330"},"modified":"2024-12-01T08:34:21","modified_gmt":"2024-12-01T16:34:21","slug":"fourth-graders-singing-military-songs-to-celebrate-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2024\/12\/01\/fourth-graders-singing-military-songs-to-celebrate-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Fourth-Graders Singing Military Songs To Celebrate War"},"content":{"rendered":"
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After the fourth graders concluded singing the songs of the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force, they were hailed as \u201cour future heroes.\u201d Fifty-caliber machine guns and other weapons were on display. An invocation was offered for those missing and captured. A bagpiper skirled a haunting benediction of \u201cAmazing Grace\u201d and the school kids returned to close it out with \u201cThank You, Soldier.\u201d<\/p>\n

In between there were speeches by local dignitaries and military officers as 1200 people chowed down on pancakes, eggs, bacon, sausage gravy and biscuits, fruit salad, coffee and juice. When the grade schoolers filed out, several saluted, some tried a 10 year-old version of marching in step and nearly all said, \u201cthank you for your service!\u201d<\/p>\n

So concluded the 20th annual Veterans Day Breakfast that filled the University of Toledo basketball arena on November 11.<\/p>\n

That holiday, called Armistice Day for many years, observes the day in 1918 when the guns of the Great War finally fell silent, ending a slaughter the likes of which the world had never seen. Over 8,000,000 soldiers were killed. Some 13,000,000 civilians died, mostly from starvation and disease.<\/p>\n

The original Congressional resolution establishing the holiday said it \u201cshall be a day dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be hereafter celebrated and known as Armistice Day.\u201d At the height of the Red Scare in the 1950\u2019s, Congress changed it to \u201cVeteran\u2019s Day\u201d as part of a full court press to militarize Americans in preparation for the Russian invasion we were told to fear.<\/p>\n

And fear we did!<\/p>\n

Air raid sirens told us when to hide under our desks. The lives and careers of scores of people subpoenaed for McCarthy and Nixon\u2019s un-American hearings were ruined, as were thousands more who were named or whispered to be Reds. Labor leaders purged their most passionate organizers, insuring union membership declined from 1955 onwards and the South would remain largely unorganized for decades.<\/p>\n

Nationalism and its cousins, militarism and xenophobia have long been woven in our cultural fabric and they\u2019re seeing another peak in popularity. Such corrosions of spirit don\u2019t arrive fully formed in the minds of adults but are part of what we breathe every day from kindergarten on up.<\/p>\n

Veterans For Peace members and Palestinian supporters outside the UT arena distributed hundreds of flyers that explained the true meaning of November 11 and called for a modern day ceasefire in Palestine. We included copies of Wilfred Owens\u2019 \u201cDulce et Decorum Est\u201d<\/a> poem which was extremely well received when we explained he was killed one week before the end of WWI.<\/p>\n

Our effort stood out vividly because it was so very rare. \u201cMaybe it got a few people thinking,\u201d we hoped, knowing how difficult that is in a thoroughly militarized society.<\/p>\n

If that sounds like a too-harsh indictment, consider these few examples, many of which you\u2019ve no doubt personally witnessed in some version:<\/p>\n