{"id":56121,"date":"2025-11-11T06:23:26","date_gmt":"2025-11-11T14:23:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=56121"},"modified":"2025-11-11T06:25:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T14:25:12","slug":"an-inconvenient-and-problematic-holiday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2025\/11\/11\/an-inconvenient-and-problematic-holiday\/","title":{"rendered":"An Inconvenient and Problematic Holiday"},"content":{"rendered":"

Armistice Day and the Empire<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Remarks delivered at Community Church of Boston, November 9, 2025 (transcript edited for clarity and corrections).<\/em><\/p>\n

Thank you so much for having me again. It means a lot to get asked to speak to this group.<\/p>\n

Smedley Butler was just referenced, and the Veterans For Peace chapter \u2014 the Smedley Butler chapter up here \u2014 that was the very first Veterans For Peace outfit that I ever came into contact with. At that point in 2009, as I was speaking out against the Afghan war, I\u2019d spent 10 years in the Marine Corps, time in the State Department. I was a young man [I\u2019ll add arrogant] and this idea of Veterans For Peace was kind of like, who are these loons? Who are these guys that I\u2019ve got to now spend some time with?<\/p>\n

And I was just absolutely enthralled with them, endeared with them\u2014not just for their passion or for their experience, but because of their knowledge and because they put into practice, because they put into action what they had gone through. The mission of Veterans For Peace is to educate about the true costs of war. And that\u2019s what Veterans For Peace does. That\u2019s what chapters in Veterans For Peace, like the Smedley Butler chapter in Massachusetts, helped me do.<\/p>\n

Because as I was starting to speak out against the war and going through this psychological, psychiatric, spiritual struggle with who I had once been, it was finding resonance, finding familiarity, finding fellowship and comradeship with members of Veterans For Peace that really helped me survive that process.<\/p>\n

Easily the Most Profitable, Surely the Most Vicious<\/strong><\/p>\n

I want to go back to Smedley Butler for a bit. I know we have a youth group here, and they may not be familiar with Smedley Butler. He is the most decorated Marine in Marine Corps history. If the rules had been different, he\u2019d be the most decorated service member across the entire US military\u2019s history. Smedley Butler served for 33 years in the Marine Corps. He received two Medals of Honor. If the rules had been different, he would have received a third.<\/p>\n

Following his service, he decried war. He broke from the silence that often accompanies [service members], particularly general officers, when they retire. He broke from that and he spoke out against not just war, but America\u2019s imperialism.<\/p>\n

I want to take a moment to read a couple of his more poignant or forceful quotes. Smedley Butler\u2019s definition or commentary on war was that:<\/p>\n

War is a racket. It has always been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.<\/em><\/p>\n

He spoke about his own career, his own service, what he actually did. And I\u2019m going to read the longer quote here because I think it\u2019s very important as we are on the verge of war in Venezuela, and I think a broader war possibly throughout Central and South America to achieve the Trump administration\u2019s grand strategy of consolidation of control of the hemisphere.<\/p>\n

Of his own career, Major General Butler said:<\/p>\n

I spent 33 years and four months in active military service. And during that period, I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for big business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico, and especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of a half dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902 to 1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interest in 1916. I helped make Honduras ripe for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927, I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do is operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.<\/em><\/p>\n

You recognize his storyline, what he\u2019s sharing there about what he actually was doing as a gangster for capitalism, as he described his military service. Juxtapose that with not just this administration, but going back decades, American administrations and their role, their intervention, their interference in Latin America. And you can see why \u2014 and I say this to the youth group that\u2019s here \u2014 you can see why people like me, people like Dean, your teachers, we bang on about learning about history. As Mark Twain said, history may not repeat itself, but it certainly does rhyme.<\/p>\n

Smedley Butler\u2019s Medals of Honor\u2014he received one for his action in Mexico, one for his action in Haiti. And again, if the rules had been different, he would have received a third one for his actions in China. And I wonder how many Americans know that 100 years ago or 110 years ago, we had men winning medals of honor for military action in Mexico or in China, let alone the rest of the [world].<\/p>\n

I wanted to take that time to share about Smedley Butler because he is so instructive, not just his words that accurately describe American imperialism and American military service, but because it\u2019s not distant, it\u2019s not removed. This is congruent. This is a continuous line of history.<\/p>\n

When I was [a kid] in the 80s, when I was the age of you guys in the youth group here, we [the US] were in Central America. Constantly there was this idea, this story about American troops may be going to [Central] America. American troops may be going to help in El Salvador or to maybe go to war in Nicaragua. And all the storylines were the same. Well, if we don\u2019t do something to stop the communists in Nicaragua, then they\u2019re going to take Guatemala next and they\u2019re going to take Mexico after that. And next thing you know\u2014I mean, it\u2019s all the same storyline that gets repeated over and over again.<\/p>\n

And so here we are now with this administration, of course, what looks like on the verge of carrying out military operations to overthrow the Venezuelan government while murdering people in speedboats, extrajudicially, unconstitutionally, and of course, threatening the rest of Latin America. We saw the news last week. The American government is making plans for military action in Mexico. So, 111 years after Smedley Butler receives his medal of honor in Mexico, we have troops lining up to [once again] do the same.<\/p>\n

An Inconvenient and Problematic Holiday<\/strong><\/p>\n

The title of my talk today is Armistice Day and the Empire<\/a>. Armistice Day, of course, was the term, was the recognition for the end of the First World War. The idea that there needs to be remembrance. And in the United Kingdom, where this really has its foundations, following the First World War, the idea was Remembrance Day.<\/p>\n

The soldiers who fought in that horror show \u2014 16 million people were killed in the First World War, the first mechanized modern form of warfare between states that resulted in four years of war and 16 million deaths \u2014 the soldiers after the war in Britain marched under the banner of Never Again<\/strong><\/em>. The idea was to remember the horrors of it.<\/p>\n

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Veterans For Peace, London, Remembrance Sunday, 2016. Never Again was the banner carried by veterans following WWI. Veterans For Peace were the only ones marching with that banner. Photo: Ellen Davidson.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/picture>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

The idea of November 11th, for those who don\u2019t know: the armistice, the truce, the fighting stops in the First World War on the 11th minute of the 11th hour of the 11th day of November. And so November 11th becomes Armistice Day.<\/p>\n

That is recognized here in the United States up until 1954. And in 1954, those early days of the Cold War, this idea of having a reconciliation-based holiday was inconvenient and problematic for an American government that was pursuing a policy of aggressive containment of the Soviet Union. The idea of having a holiday that celebrated peace, that was a critique of war, that advocated for diplomacy rather than militarism, was something that the American government found to be, again, inconvenient and problematic in terms of its Cold War strategy and policies.<\/p>\n

So they come up with this idea in 1954 to change Armistice Day to Veterans Day. The idea being, or the stated reason according to the American government why they changed it, was to honor all generations of veterans. [This] specious explanation was that we can\u2019t just have Armistice Day anymore because we\u2019re leaving out the World War II veterans. Anyone [can] see right through that, but that was the rationale. That was the argument. That was the reasoning behind changing Armistice Day to Veterans Day.<\/p>\n

And of course, Veterans Day in a highly militarized society\u2014I\u2019ll get to that in a bit about how the American government has utilized that for its purposes, how the empire uses it for its purposes \u2014 Veterans Day soon becomes year-round, particularly in my lifetime, particularly following the end of the Cold War, when you didn\u2019t have the threat of the Soviet Union. There was a vacancy of enemies, a vacuum, an emptiness in terms of who are going to be the bad guys.<\/p>\n

I can remember in the 90s, this dilemma in Hollywood or among fiction writers like Tom Clancy: who\u2019s going to be the bad guy in the films and the books? The Soviet Union is gone. Well, you know, fortunately, you had people in the Middle East, you had narco-terrorists<\/em>, et cetera, et cetera. All the same people we\u2019ve utilized for 35 years, still using it today.<\/p>\n

For those students that are here, if you\u2019re interested in Venezuela, I suggest you watch a film from 1993, 1994 with Harrison Ford based on a Tom Clancy novel called Clear and Present Danger<\/a><\/em>. It is the same storyline that Trump is selling right now, with the exception that Tom Clancy, who wrote the book, was smart enough not to include the regime change. But you\u2019ll see that, again, history may not repeat, but it certainly rhymes.<\/p>\n