At the same time, we need to rid the day of its propaganda value that makes it easier to declare or escalate wars, such as the Obama administration is doing in Afghanistan. Veteran's Day began as Armistice Day as a day commemorating the end of the "the War to End All Wars," "the Great War," or as United States historians now call it, World War I. As such we need to see its establishment, and embedded within it, the propaganda elements that the Wilson administration set up to turn the US into a major colonial and interventionalist state -- a major shift in foreign policy from that which was established by the United States original regimes.

A new book has been published that I recently read: Susan A. Brewer, Why America Fights: Patriotism and War Propaganda from the Philippines to Iraq (Oxford University Press, 2009). Brewer's thesis is simple: "To explain to Americans why they fight, government leaders translate war aims into propaganda--the deliberate manipulation of facts, ideas, and lies. To do so they condense complex foreign policies into easily communicated messages. . . . The official narratives have presented a conflict as a mighty clash between civilization and barabarism in the Philippines and World War I, democracy and dictatorship in World War II, freedom and communism in Korea and Vietnam, and, most recently, civilization and terrorism in Iraq. . . .These official narratives show that American fight for both their ideals and their interests. . . . . Compared to its enemies and allies, the United States suffered far less devastation and, in the case of the world wars, emerged a stronger and richer countery. . . . For many U.S. polictymakeers, observed Tony Judt, the message of the twentieth century is that war works.' To sell that message to the public, leaders equated the expansion of a U.S.-dominated international order with the aims of spreading democradcy andf reedom. The official narrative served to camouflage any contradiction that might exist between America's pursuit of power and its principles. Indeed, propaganda projected the appealing notion that American's global ambitions and democratic traditions are one and the same." (p. 4).

Despite its propaganda interests and origins, Veteran's Day radically calls into question that "war works" -- or at least asks the question, "for whom does war work?" and "for whom does war not work?" It calls families into the tragedies of war, and perhaps, even looks beyond the personal tragedies -- and they are there and they are profound -- to the tragedies "beyond," deeper, continuous, and creating new tragedies. Part of Brewer's tale is how the propaganda "gets beyond itself," turning against the ability of the national leaders to contain the very public that they aroused for the cause. Maybe we can observe Veteran's Day as a means to question the very 20th-21st century presupposition that "war works." No, human beings kill and destroy in war; in the face of this death, war brings forth heights of heroism and depths of depravity in human beings. But the workings of war involve death, destruction, and the fall-outs for human beings who encounter this is such a direct manner. To enfold Veterans into our lives, not in heroism but in sharing in the tragedy of their lives compassionately, hopefully, honestly, to end the cycles of violence and the propaganda of the state, is perhaps a message that we, the church, can take from the commemoration of Veteran's Day. We meet Veterans, not with "thank you" and bowing but with "I'm sorry" and a hug. They have encountered what no human beings has been created to encounter.