Eighty-five years ago, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, an armistice officially ended what the world hoped had been the War to End All Wars, World War I.

The horrors of the mass slaughter of that first mechanized and chemicalized war were fresh enough in people's minds that Woodrow Wilson, in a 1919

Armistice Day proclamation, could declare that "the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations." (Emphasis added.) In 1938 Congress provided that each November 11 would be "dedicated to the cause of world peace" when it established Armistice Day as a national holiday.

But the day has lost its connection to peace. Now high school ROTC drill teams parade the colors, elected officials mouth platitudes about the honor of warfare, and photo ops abound for ambitious electoral candidates (not the least of whom this year will be George W. Bush).

I am a veteran and a pacifist, a fairly unusual breed. I work with the War Resisters League, which asserts that war is a crime against humanity and violence is never the answer, and Veterans for Peace, which seeks to abolish war as an instrument of national policy but has many members who still believe violence is sometimes needed. Nevertheless the organization was opposed to the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq from the start.

Through Veterans for Peace I am also working with Military Families Speak Out, many of whom initially supported attacking Iraq. Now, however, the 1,000-plus families are decrying the endangerment of their loved ones for oil and empire and imaginary weapons of mass destruction Vets for Peace and Military Families have together mounted the Bring Them Home Now campaign. The campaign demands that the U.S. government devise an exit strategy and yield to the international community until Iraqis can establish their own government. Around the country, at least 20 Veterans for Peace chapters are leading lead their communities in Armistice/Veterans Day commemorations. Many of them include active-duty soldiers and family members of service women and men speaking against this war. The message is, "Support the Troops, Bring Them Home Now, and Take Care of Them When They Get Here!"

The Bush administration is doing none of the above. As it cynically calls on the nation to support the troops by supporting the war, it is both mistreating thousands of injured soldiers-whose stories have been kept out of the news to avoid stirring up more resistance to the war-and slashing veterans' benefits.

Hospitalized soldiers are being charged for their meals. Wounded reservists housed in decrepit training barracks without bathrooms or air conditioning at Ft Stewart, GA, have waited weeks and months to see doctors. Soldiers in Iraq have found the Bring Them Home Now website and are filling it and their e-mails to their families with outcries about inadequate water rations in 100-degree-plus temperatures, short supplies of effective modern bulletproof vests (especially for reserve units), and frequently changing lengths of duty tours. (It is particularly cruel to tell troops they are going home and then cancel the orders.) And the GI Rights Hotline (supported by peace groups including the War Resisters League), to which Military Families Speak Out and Bring Them Home Now refer many soldiers, has had a 75 percent increase in calls in recent months, especially from soldiers home on leave who are desperate not to return to Iraq. Meanwhile, Congress keeps imposing massive cuts on veterans' programs, some of them passed, incredibly, the very night of the initial attack, March 19.

It was disheartening to watch the Bush administration override the will of so many people in the streets all over the world who protested the impending invasion of Iraq. But the fact that the resistance began well before the invasion, instead of years later as it did with the Viet Nam war, and the fact that alliances are solidifying among disparate groups across the spectrum, give hope.

For this hope to be realized, it is imperative that the peace movement reach out to resisting and questioning soldiers and families. Their voices have a particular cachet in the mainstream, and their credibility could put them in the forefront of the voices for peace. More simply, giving soldiers and veterans a hearing is the right thing to do. As Noam Chomsky notes, veterans, soldiers, and military families are "authentic groups," groups it is hard for the mainstream to marginalize. They are seen as having paid their dues. If people think I'm just another "peacenik," that's one thing; when they hear I'm a vet, I get a much more respectful hearing.

While the peace movement seeks nonviolent ways for young people to serve their country, and decries the cynical manipulation of their untutored patriotism, it must also honor the open-hearted willingness of the soldier to serve. It must acknowledge soldiers' pride of service and support their demand that the government honor the contract it signed to care for them in return for that service. (The War Resisters League sees the government's failure to do so as part of its larger assault on the well-being of all its people.) Then, in the words of the Veterans for Peace membership flyer, "increasing public awareness of [all] the costs of war" will help convince the public that that cost is too high- in Afghanistan and Iraq, as Veterans for Peace says, and maybe, as the War Resisters League says, always.

Ellen Barfield (wrl@warresisters.org) served in the U.S. Army from 1977 to 1981. In 1988 she became a full-time peace and justice activist and is now the national Vice-President of Veterans for Peace (www.veteransforpeace.org) and a member of the National Committee of the War Resisters League (www.warresisters.org) . She lives in Baltimore, MD.

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