Veterans Day has brought a number of mixed feelings for me. On one hand, I think we don't take it seriously enough here in the United States. On the other, the day has a propagandistic side I find disquieting...
I lived in Great Britain for two years, during which time I observed how the British celebrate Remembrance Day, their version of Veterans Day. Whereas Americans use the day as an excuse for car sales and war movie marathons on television, the British take it very seriously. In the week or two leading up to the day, you see former soldiers, in full dress uniform, selling plastic poppies to raise money for the disabled. This year, the moat around the Tower of London has been filled with said poppies to commemorate the centennial of World War I, with each poppy representing a dead soldier.
Our commemorations above all obscure this horrific reality. As W. J. Astore pointed out on his excellent blog The Contrary Perspective, Americans cheapen Veterans Day by using it as an occasion to sell beer, or even promote Bank of America.
This cheapening and unwillingness to focus on the harshness of war is intentional. It plays down the cost of war, turning the holiday into a celebration of militarism. Look, for example, at tonight's Concert for Valor in Washington D.C., which Rory Fanning aptly described as sounding like "something the North Korean government would organize." Rather than a commemoration of the dead and those who sacrificed, it glorifies militarism.
These "commemorations" are paralleled by an unwillingness to address the suffering of our veterans. The failings of our VA system are too well documented to discuss at length here. However, these failings are matched, and to a certain extent generated, by a desire to look away from the suffering of veterans, from the horrific results of often unnecessary war. In an interview with PBS Newshour's Margaret Warner, the CEO of Starbucks, Howard Schultz, and a Washington Post reporter, Rajiv Chandrasekaran discussed a book they've published which they hope will turn people's attention from the suffering of veterans with PTSD, drug addictions, and other after effects of war, promoting veterans as healthy members of society. Although I'm all for improving the lot of veterans, downplaying the fallout of war is not the way to do it. Doing so will only make it easier for the next war, and the next, to start.