Memorial Day 2023 Letter to the Editor

By Travis Weiner, Vice President, VFP Chapter 187

Dear Editor:

As our nation honors its fallen warriors this upcoming Memorial Day, it is useful to consider how Americans perceive its meaning and significance, and whether that is how we should actually be thinking about, or spending time on, Memorial Day. Many appear to consider the day to be a glorification of war and of our nation’s military might. However, former Marine Major General Smedley Butler, a two-time winner of the Medal of Honor, told us that war was “a racket…the only one in which profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.” Former General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander in World War Two, told us that “I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, as only one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.”

Former Generals Butler & Eisenhower are far from the only veterans who feel that way. Rather, many veterans in-fact believe that “Honoring” those that have been killed in our nation’s wars does not consist of attending department store sales, barbeques, or waving small American flags on Memorial Day. And it does not consist of platitudes and simple speeches about dying for freedom or our safety. Rather, those who died serving alongside me in Iraq did not die so that any American could be safe, or to defend America’s freedom. It dishonors those who died in that war and other wars to refuse to engage with that reality, and to espouse alternative history, especially on memorial day.

The Weld County Veterans Memorial, at Bittersweet Park in Greeley, Colorado, is both my local Veterans Memorial and a perfect example of this. It has monuments whose inscriptions describe the reasons and conduct of our nation’s wars; but those descriptions are nothing short of pure propaganda and alternative history. Such inaccuracies on such a sacred memorial in-fact dishonors, rather than honors, those who have died in those wars. The irony is a tragic one, as it is entirely unnecessary. Rather, we owe our war dead better than that. They displayed great courage; we now owe them the courage to speak the truth about our wars, rather than the laziness, cowardice, and self-interest that continuing to lie and propagandize about our nation’s wars on such sacred days consists of.

As a member of Veterans for Peace & an Iraq War veteran, I believe that working for peace is the thing that truly honors those who made the ultimate sacrifice. Doing so properly honors our war dead, as well. That is true patriotism, for there is no better way to honor the dead of our nation’s wars than to work to ensure that the tragedy of these wars is not repeated. We must honor our war dead by being ever vigilant, in working toward preventing one more needless death, in wars our country does not have to fight.