We gather to remember those who serve their nation, die and are injured in war. We have been indoctrinated into believing that sacrifice in war is a noble thing. We cannot have it both ways. There is nothing noble about killing and being killed.

Sometimes people die defending what is dear to them.That fact should not make us glorify war or the men and women who engage in it.

In the words of Stan Goff, an ex staff sergeant in the special forces whose son is in the army and who is a member of the Bring Them Home Now coordinating committe: �We need to honor our veterans without idealizing them, because idealizing does much to erase the reality that was (and is) our story. Instead of honoring us as heroes on pedestals this Veterans Day, tell our real stories. Many of us have never craved a pedestal, and we do not want our reality to be erased in yet another stage-managed orgy of nationalism designed to gain the acquiescence of the public to send yet more soldiers to risk life, limb, health, and sanity on an errand of plunder disguised as self-defense or liberation.�

No one realizes this more than the soldiers themselves. They want our support. But what does that support mean?

Cheering them on into battle is not supporting them. It is criminal.

Using them to wage political campaigns is not supporting them. It is immoral.

Chanting �support our troops� is not supporting them. It is hypocritical.

Telling those among them who have been wounded in body and spirit to seek help from their communities and churches is not supporting them. It is betrayal.

We cannot support peace and wage war at the same time.

We cannot support our troops and send them to their deaths and neglect them when they come back.

We cannot support any human being if we send that person out to kill and be killed for the benefit of those in power.

Fear is no excuse to send innocent people out to die. We cannot advocate for peace when we continue to elect people who are far from peaceful. Whatever our political inclination, if we are firm believers that peace is a basic right of all human beings and if we believe that life is sacred, we have to elect the people who embody such ideals.

We cannot be for peace and elect men of war because we are afraid of the men of peace.

We cannot say we are peaceful when we marginalize those who practice the way of peace by making excuses for not supporting them.

We cannot remain comfortable in our predictable world and refuse to accept change because ideas that we value so much are deemed too alien.

Is there a contradiction? There surely is.

In order for us to become shapers of our history we have to practice what we believe in.

In order for us to move from the realm of our little cliques and clubs of liberal or any other kind of thinking, we have to be willing to physically support those who mirror our values. We have to get our hands dirty and we have to go out on a limb; it does not have to be a long limb, but a limb nevertheless. We have to be able to exist outside our little circle of comfort and status quo. Most importantly, we have to stand by each other and we have to support those who speak on behalf of all people.

We cannot say we are for peace when we encourage our men and women to join the military.

We cannot say we value our children when we place glory, nationalism, job, and status above human life and freedom.

We should stop lying to our children and we should show them, from an early age, what war is like and what being in the military is really like once the chips start falling. Wars are no video games and arenas for self-gratification. They are a killing field where ally and enemy become one and the same. They are the stage where the sanctified orgies of violence are practiced to feed the empty personalities of those in power.

War creates victims for generations. Victims become victimizers and the cycle never ends. We have to break the cycle. We can break it if we step outside our little bubble of comfort. We can break it if we support and elect those who embody our values regardless of whether we think they will win or not. If we continue to vote out of fear and not out of conviction, we will continue to face the same problems. Our challenge today, no matter what political party, belief system, or which religion we belong to, is to vote for those who embody our ideals. If we believe in peace for all people, we can only take that one path.

Our men and women in uniform are looking to us for support. They want to be valued for who they are, not for what their uniform bestows upon them in our minds. We have to support them by making sure that the physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, and economic hardships they encounter as a result of war are alleviated as is proper and as promised to them. They should not be begging for assistance for what is rightfully theirs. Please let us support our men and women in war and support those who are looking out for their welfare and the welfare of all humans. Let us do it with actions and with respect for human life and the human being. Let us not cheer them on to die and forget them and their hardships when they come home.

Marilyn Farhat
Women in Black
San Luis Obispo, CA
Old Mission Plaza
Vigil in Memoriam of Veterans
11 November 2003