We need to restore Armistice Day as originally intended before being politically corrected to “Veterans Day.”

Created out of disgust for the rise of global war caused by a relatively few nationalists at the expense of the world’s peoples, Armistice Day internationally inspired “a day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace” — the world having endured the bloodbath of military technology and profiteering in World War I.

Instead, some estimates have more than 200 million slain in the 20th century by wars, including disproportionate numbers of civilian deaths that characterize modern military interventions. Rather than resolve conflicts, war enables authoritarians through political violence, leaving generations of broken soldiers, ohana and economies.

Instead of worshipping militarism, let’s acknowledge war for what it is: complete political failure. We owe it to those sacrificed and future generations to reprioritize peace, invest our many swords into ploughshares, and end this self-perpetuating systematic abuse of civil society — from the leaky tanks of Red Hill to the mobilization against refugees.

Pete Shimazaki Doktor

Veterans for Peace, Hawaii Chapter 113

Moanalua

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