Veterans for Peace

Veterans for Peace is a nonprofit membership organization founded in 1985. The group works to promote alternatives to war. Initially made up of US military veterans of World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War - later including veterans of the Gulf War, the War in Afghanistan and the Iraq War - as well as peacetime veterans and non-veterans, it has since spread overseas and had an active offshoot in the United Kingdom called Veterans for Peace UK from 2011 to 2022. The British offshoot of VFP, Veterans for Peace UK, was permanently shut down in August, 2022.

The organization has opposed the military policies of the United States, NATO, and Israel, and has opposed military actions and threats to Russia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Libya and Syria.

The stated objective of the group is as follows:

Veterans For Peace was founded and incorporated as a non-profit organization in the state of Maine on July 8, 1985. It was approved by the Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt educational organization that year. It was also recognized as a United Nations non-governmental organization (NGO) in 1990. VFP's first permanent representative to the United Nations was Benjamin Weintraub of Staten Island, New York, who was seated in 1990. Chapters and members are active in communities throughout the United States, Puerto Rico, and Viet Nam. National conventions are held annually and members communicate through quarterly newsletters as well as daily listserve news, online discussion groups as well as the national and chapter websites. Veterans for Peace has a national office in Saint Louis, Missouri and members across the country, both organized in chapters and at-large.

At least one unrelated anti-war group from the Vietnam War era had a similar name: "Veterans for Peace in Viet-Nam" participated in a number of demonstrations in 1967. And another demonstration in Washington, DC.^{[self-published source?]} Yet another group with a similar name may also have existed at the time of the Korean War.^{[citation needed]}

VFP first began organizing major anti-war protests in 1987 when, on Easter Sunday, hundreds of its members marched on President Reagan's "Western White House" in California, and Vice President Bush's vacation home in Kennebunkport, Maine, protesting U.S. support for the Nicaraguan Contra counter-revolution.

Starting in 2003, Veterans for Peace became a major participant of protests against the Iraq War.^{[citation needed]}

In 2004, its Southern California chapters began installing Arlington West, a weekly "temporary cemetery" in tribute to those killed in the war in Iraq, each Sunday in Santa Barbara and Santa Monica, California.^{[citation needed]}