President Donald Trump wants to change the name of Veterans Day. He announced last year on Truth Social that the holiday, observed each year on Nov. 11, should henceforth be called “Victory Day for World War I.” Holidays, he said, should be used to celebrate America’s “military brilliance.”
My grandfather, Lt. Irving Goldsmith, would disagree. Goldsmith, who died in 1980 at the age of 89, was — unlike Trump — actually a soldier, serving in the trenches in World War I. He was 26 when he enlisted. Like other Americans, he was told that our fight against Germany and its allies was “the war to end all wars.” Once the Kaiser was defeated, world problems would be resolved peacefully.
Goldsmith’s unit was assigned to a 47-day offensive between the Argonne Forest and the Meuse River in northeastern France. They faced cold rain, thick fog, intense mud and recurring machine-gun fire. More than 26,000 soldiers were killed and almost 100,000 were injured in America’s “bloodiest battle.”
“It was the sort of thing no human being should be forced to go through again,” he recalled many years later, when my brother interviewed him for a school project. “All the killing and all the horror instead of doing good has done just the opposite for the world. And I hope that some means will be found in the future to prevent it.”
He wasn’t alone in feeling that way. The day World War I ended — Nov. 11, 1918 — was officially declared Armistice Day. Congress passed a resolution recognizing that the day “marked the cessation of the most destructive, sanguinary, and far reaching war in human annals and the resumption by the people of the United States of peaceful relations with other nations, which we hope may never again be severed.”
Early observances of Armistice Day (renamed Veterans Day in 1954 after lobbying efforts by veterans service organizations) included moments of silence, church services and reflections on the horrors of war. Veterans groups and peace organizations alike supported the holiday as a reminder of war’s terrible cost and the importance of preventing future conflicts.
After World War I, one of the war’s distinguished generals, Smedley Butler, published a book called “War Is a Racket” that summarized the greed he had witnessed from corporate military contractors.
“War is a racket,” Butler wrote. “A few people make huge fortunes. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States” during World War I. He continued, “The general public shoulders the bill. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries.”
In 1961, another former wartime general, Republican President Dwight Eisenhower, echoed these words as he warned of a growing “military-industrial complex” more interested in profit than in peace.
In the decades since, much of Eisenhower’s warning has come true.
The United States maintains at least 750 military bases in more than 70 countries worldwide — more than all other nations combined. American taxpayers spend nearly $900 billion per year on military contractors, more than the next 10 countries’ military budgets combined.
The Iraq War — launched under false pretenses about weapons of mass destruction — resulted in massive gains for military contractors and profits for global fossil fuel companies. The war in Afghanistan enriched corporate contractors for two decades while failing to achieve any meaningful strategic objectives. Israel’s war on Palestine — largely funded by U.S. taxpayers — has also generated huge profits for U.S. contractors.
This Veterans Day, it’s time to return to the original meaning of the holiday — not a glorification of war, but an occasion to reflect on the damage that it causes. Veterans who arrive home with physical or psychological injury deserve care and support. And, as my grandfather suggested, we should be doing everything in our power to create fewer veterans by preventing wars.
Veterans Day is a good time to resolve that the United States should stop deploying troops, weapons and taxpayer funds to defend the special interests of global corporations or to support dictators and corrupt authoritarian regimes. That was the true spirit of the holiday when it was established, and it should remain so today.
