The holiday that we celebrated (observed? passed? ignored?) yesterday was something that we used to call Armistice Day. At least I remember that my parents regularly referred to it that way. It celebrated, it memorialized the end of World War I, the "war to end all wars," though that end was, in the phrase of David Fromkin, a "peace to end all peace." Back then we remembered the veterans on another day, a day at the end of May called Memorial Day, which, of course, we still have.
I have no problem with remembering veterans on both days. Perhaps because I never served in the armed forces, I have great respect for veterans, and for current members of the military. Respect for their sacrifice. Yet I fervently wish that we didn't need them. I once visited a country that had no army. No army. A strange state of affairs. I wonder if there's another country in the world like that. War never produced anything but more war. How silly we are to think that it will produce peace.
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