Hoping for Armistice

This being Veterans' Day, I could write another post about the need for a more compassionate policy for veterans who have returned from our recent (and not so recent) wars. This year, though, I wish to call attention to the fact that Veterans' Day was originally Armistice Day, a celebration of the end of the First World War. I'm hoping that NATO can move the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan prior to the projected 2014 departure. It sure would be good to have a genuine armistice, an end to the long, pointless war. I'm not holding my breath, though.

As is typical, I'll post the video to Tin Soldier by Belfast's Stiff Little Fingers, an angry but not unsympathetic view of the young men who composed an occupation force from a member of the occupied populace.





All too often, young people join the military to escape from dim economic prospects, only to be used as pawns by policy makers who will never have to bear the burden of suffering that inevitably results from war. Here's hoping to an early armistice, and a rejection of the impulses that have led us, again and again and again and again, to war.