Started 102 years on November 11, Armistice Day was established in the UK to commemorate the armistice which ended WWI a year earlier. In 1926 Congress made it a US remembrance to "perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations…a day dedicated to the cause of world peace."
What a wise way to turn the most destructive war in history at the time into a lesson for peace. Alas, in 1954 Congress changed Armistice Day to Veterans Day to commemorate military personnel past and present. The raging Cold War with Russia may have inspired the switch from peace to militarism during a dark era of fear and loathing in America.
Since then, ‘perpetuating peace and mutual understanding between nations’ has been left behind. Veterans Day has largely become a commercial to promote American militarism around the world, which today sees over 150,000 soldiers deployed at 750 bases in 80 countries. Almost daily we bomb innocents in at least 7 countries we know of. Crippling U.S. economic sanctions degrade, if not extinguish life for innocents in 19 nations.