This Veterans Day, we must gather to discuss the causes and consequences of war, as was intended by Woodrow Wilson when he proclaimed the first “Armistice Day” in 1919, on the fist anniversary of the “War to End All Wars.”

That’s what we must do this Veterans Day.  Don’t go shopping.  Don’t watch TV.  Spend time with friends and family and discuss the current political situation in America. Here’s what a reasonable veteran sees.

On December 9, 2000, John Bolton shouted, “I’m with the Bush/Cheney team, and I’m here to stop the count” of votes from the November Presidential election.

Bolton and his storm troopers, mostly Republican Congressional staffers flown from Washington, were successful.  Hundreds of thousands of votes were never counted in Florida.  On December 12, 2000, the Republican Supreme Court selected George W. Bush as the head of the executive branch.

On that tragic day, I could have never dreamed the next five years would be the start of worst nightmare in American and world history.  And the situation keeps getting worse.

On January 20, 2001, the U.S. became a one-party state, as all three branches of government -- executive, legislative, and judicial -- became fully controlled by a tight-knit group of militant Republican extremists.  The consequences are devastating to all but those in power and their campaign contributors.

After taking office, on August 6, 2001, Bush took a one month vacation in Texas.  He was briefed about an expected attack by terrorists using hijacked planes to strike specific U.S. cities.  Yet Bush failed this leadership test, and he did nothing to respond to the clear and detailed warning about Osama bin Laden.

After the September 2001 attacks, instead of launching an offensive against the suspected hijackers and their supporters, Bush and the Republican Party turned on Americans and limited our freedom under the “Patriot Act.”

Shortly thereafter, Bush and his neo-conservative reactionary religious fanatics ignored the rule of law and our Constitution and created a global system of secret prisoner of war camps, which were finally exposed in great detail in 2005.  The haunting term Gulag Archipelago resurfaced.

Also during late 2001, the Bush administration began manufacturing lies in order to justify a pre-emptive and unilateral war against Iraq.  In late 2002, just in time for the November election, the Bush administration used massive amounts of fear-inducing propaganda and false “terror alerts” and secured a blank check from Congress to invade Iraq.

Although the U.S. invaded and secured Afghanistan in 2001, Osama bin Laden fell off radar when Iraq became the focus of the one-party state, the military, and the compliant media.

In 2002, the Bush administration pushed through the “Help America Vote Act,” which resulted in private corporations with close ties to the one-party government placed in full control of running elections.  This ended the independent, non-partisan administration of elections.  Bolton wouldn’t need to take any more trips to Florida.

By 2003, the invasion of Iraq was launched, and the bloody, failed occupation began.  Bush and his team hyped the war with visions of nuclear bombs and horrendous mushroom clouds.  He called it a “crusade” and erroneously described his war as a conflict between good (Christianity) and evil (Islam).

In early 2004, massive amounts of evidence documenting widespread torture, rape, and even murder at U.S.-run prisoner of war camps was exposed.  Abu Ghraib grabbed headlines, yet no one was held accountable. The “rendition” of citizens to other nations for torture was also exposed.  And the victory in Afghanistan was fleeting: Bush still failed to secure Afghanistan over the long-term or to capture Osama bin Laden.

In 2004, voter registrations forms were rejected by the one-party state.  Voting machines malfunctioned, yet there was no independent auditing of the election results.  Voters were challenged at the polls by Republican Party operatives, and election observers were blocked by the government.  A shortage of election machines in heavily populated areas with a history of voting for the Democratic Party caused long lines and many voters turned away after spending several frustrating hours in line.

The Census Bureau later revealed that millions more citizens believed they voted than there were votes cast, once again casting serous significant doubt on the legitimacy of another election.

By 2005, the Iraqi civilian death toll ranged from 30,000 to more than 100,000.  The number of wounded Iraqis is unknown.  The U.S. military death toll rose past 2,000.  The number of U.S. military personnel wounded, injured, and ill reached more than 120,000.  By 2005, more than $200 billion was spent, yet the violence in Iraq worsens by the day, and the people go without freedom, water, power, food, and security.

In 2005, Afghanistan effectively split into areas controlled by several war lords, and there is no freedom.  The Taliban is on the rise, opium crops used for heroin blanket the countryside, and Osama bin Laden still remains at large.

At home, Americans learned that Bush used a religious test to name judges – a including Harriet Miers and Samuel Alito – an act clearly at odds with our Constitution.  In fact, Alito believes a woman must first receive her husband’s permission before terminating a pregnancy, thus imposing a narrow religious belief upon all citizens.

Furthering their attempts at religious indoctrination, the new religion-based Republican Party launched an enormous hate campaign against fellow citizens, targeting gays and lesbians as less than equal, and thus not eligible for all the same rights as other citizens.  The GOP wants to bring religion-based creationism into classrooms and delete centuries of scientific understanding about evolution.

Who could have possibly believed that, in a period of five years, our beautiful experiment launched by Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson would devolve so terribly?  A nation of 300 million people lurched backwards, with horrible consequences.

Five years ago we were a free, peaceful democracy with a government budget surplus and a well-established system of checks and balances within a two-party system that provides some oversight of the executive branch.

Today, we are a fearful people under the grip of a militant, Christo-Fascist, one-party government accountable to no one, heavily in debt, and mired in a brutal and unwinnable war in Iraq started by an executive branch answerable to no one.

Bush failed to respond to the Hurricane Katrina  disaster at home because he appointed political cronies loyal only to him and because National Guard troops, leaders, and equipment were bogged down in Iraq.

Where does all this lead us on Veterans Day?

After World War II, Nobel Prize recipient Elie Wiesel taught the world a humbling lesson about what happens when power is concentrated in the hands of a few religious militants and no one pays attention when the canary in the coal mine dies.

This Veterans Day, read his book, “Night.”  Think about Moshe the Beadle and his persistent warnings.  Then visit the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC.

After your visit, challenge yourself and your friends with this question: “What has become of our Nation, and how can we extract ourselves from the grip of the militant and reactionary religious right and their corporate sponsors?  How many more soldiers and civilians must die, be injured, or have haunting memories of warfare?  The alternative to immediate peaceful action is too horrible to contemplate.

I leave you with this stark warning from the religious right this Armistice Day...

Here are the words of Republican Senator Orrin Hatch, one of the leaders of the current reactionary movement against liberty in America:  ”This is going to be Armageddon,” he said when describing the further concentration of power among Chrsto-Fascists with the looming confirmation of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court.  Armageddon -- the final battle and the end of the world described in the Bible -- is their ulimate and immediate goal.