Andy Rooney hates to be called a veteran

The following is a script of "A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney," which aired on Nov. 8, 2009.

Andy Rooney: I keep this calendar on my desk, and while I don't look at it very often I notice that this Wednesday is Veterans Day. It's one of ten federal holidays that we have. Well, I'm a veteran but I hate that name. Considering that we aren't technically at war now, there's an awful lot about war in the news, too, even when it's not something like Veterans Day. I suppose that's because there's so much fighting in the world. There are half a dozen small wars going on right now, some of them in places most of us have never been to or even never heard of before. Too many young men and women with a whole life ahead of them are getting killed before they have a chance to live it and for what?

Andy Rooney: Of all the things that men do, historically mostly men, fighting a war to kill other men is the most uncivilized. Wars have been fought through time and we may think we're more civilized now than people were a hundred or five hundred years ago but there's no sign that fighting wars is a thing of the past. There's always one going on somewhere. Eight of my classmates, friends really, in school and college were killed in World War II. I've had sixty years of life that those eight friends never had. We call this a civilization?

Andy Rooney: More than 5,200 American men and women, kids really, have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. It may be a small number in two small wars but if you're one of those killed or even a father or mother of one of them, there's nothing small about it. Why not, instead of commemorating Veterans Day, we establish and work on what we could call a No War Day. The name doesn't have much of a ring to it but a day like that would be worth celebrating.