By popular demand, here's a post on Memorial Day:
1. Throughout human history, some people have been fortunate enough to live their entire lives in relative peace, dealing with the ups and downs of everyday life until, hopefully at a ripe old age, they pass away, with a legacy behind them and only God knows what ahead of them. These lives were filled with securing food and shelter and what luxuries fortune alloted them; filled with celebrating births, unions, and seasonal holidays; and in between filled with fighting disease, acts of nature, injuries and perhaps their spouses or in-laws, but nothing more widespread than that.
2. But those in group 1 are the rare few. Most other humans are at some point in their lives touched by war. The fortunate among them only hear of the horrors of the front line, but few escape knowing someone, even if only by their name, who died in such conflicts. And usually war makes them re-evaluate the ups and downs of everyday life and reconsider the choices they make.
3. Still others come face to face with the horrors of war and live to remind us of the rapes, the torture, the maimings, the bombings, the degredations, and the fear. These people carry those memories the rest of their lives. Some adjust and go on to realize triumphs. Others never quite get over their experiences, moving among us as enduring symbols of those horrors.
4. And, of course, there are those who come face to face with the horrors and don't live to tell of it. Some of those people are soldiers. It's they whom we honor with Memorial Day. It's an honorable tradition, respecting those who have made the greatest sacrifice for their country. Those who have put on a uniform and marched into battle so that most of us can remain in group 2 and apsire to see our posterity live in group 1. On Memorial Day we pause to reflect. The President places a wreath at the tomb of the unknown soldier. We have parades. We wave to or salute the members of the armed services we encounter in the streets or buy them a drink if we meet them in a bar.
All of this serves us well. But I wish we did all that AND honored the dead in a more lasting way. I'd rather we make Memorial Day also a nationwide opportunity to reconsider the choices we make. In addition to the soldiers, I wish we honored the civilians in group 4 and those in group 3. I wish we would also focus on the horrors of war, not just the sanitized pomp and ceremony.
We celebrated Memorial Day in my house by watching "Sometimes in April." (h/t crionna). There it was in two hours of gut-wrenching drama--a depiction of war and its consequences for everyone involved: the soldiers, the politicians, the church, the civilians, the victims, the victimizers, the outside world, and the nation's own future. My partner's first reaction when the film was over, thinking of how his own country is perched on a similar precipice to the one Rwanda sat on in 1994, was to insist that school children the world over should be forced to watch this film. People should be forced to face the horrors of war before their ambitious, heartless, power-grubbing politicians lead them there under the guise of nationalism or religion or whatever. In short, Memorial Day would honor the dead best by striving to increase the numbers of our soliders (not to mention our civilians) counted among the fortunate few in group 1.
Jess was considering protesting yesterday. I was considering putting up a Kos diary.
But then I thought about it. And while I will not look down on people who believe that the appropriate way to honor our fallen soldiers is to speak out against the lie that sent them to die, I decided that for me yesterday was a day to take a break from politics and simply take a few minutes out to think about their sacrifice and let it settle on my shoulders.
Posted by: Catsy | May 31, 2005 at 12:11 PM
I like that, Edward.
Posted by: Bruce Baugh | May 31, 2005 at 12:25 PM
I like that a lot, Ed.
Posted by: von | May 31, 2005 at 12:34 PM
I was reluctant to think about anything serious all Memorial Day, too. I don't want to think about the sacrifice made by all those soldiers and civilians, some of them so young. Makes me too angry.
Posted by: lily | May 31, 2005 at 12:37 PM
Yes, thank you, Edward.
Posted by: Lily | May 31, 2005 at 12:47 PM
Great post, Mr. Underscore.
Posted by: Dantheman | May 31, 2005 at 12:48 PM
Thanks, Edward.
Posted by: hilzoy | May 31, 2005 at 12:49 PM
Thanks, Edward
"face the horrors of war before their ambitious, heartless, power-grubbing politicians lead them there under the guise of nationalism or religion or whatever"
I blame the politicians and leaders a lot less than this, and put more of the blame on people themselves. Your description does not to me adequately cover the facts of Rwanda or Bosnia or most other wars. Nor explain why wars happen. When I try to think about war and warriors in any kind of objective,fair,humanistic way, I recoil in horror at excusing barbarism. Yet Alexander, and the men who followed Alexander, were just men;and I can't seem to call them extraordinarily evil men.
To use a trivializing analogy: adultery is a bad thing, and adulterers cause so very much pain to others, yet there is just such a darn large amount of it that I have trouble wishing there were no adultery because it seems we wouldn't really be humans without it.
But on Memorial Day, I give honor and gratitude to the Sacrifice. My heart beats in sync as the obsidian blade descends.
Posted by: bob mcmanus | May 31, 2005 at 03:34 PM
I blame the politicians and leaders a lot less than this, and put more of the blame on people themselves. Your description does not to me adequately cover the facts of Rwanda or Bosnia or most other wars. Nor explain why wars happen. When I try to think about war and warriors in any kind of objective,fair,humanistic way, I recoil in horror at excusing barbarism. Yet Alexander, and the men who followed Alexander, were just men;and I can't seem to call them extraordinarily evil men.
That reads to me as if you're contradicting yourself, though, perhaps Bob. I believe there is evil in everyone, just as there is good. I believe individuals choose how to deal with these extremes, choosing which behaviors are acceptable to them and which are not, but I believe the threat of punishment for behaivors others deem unacceptable is part of what separates us, as members of society, from barbarians or animals. When leaders say that not only will there be no punishment for letting one's evil side dictate behaivor, but actually rewards for it, that threat of punishment is removed and is actualy itself then a negative to be avoided (only "lazy Hutu traitors" weren't out killing Tutsi's, for example). But as the leaders make the laws, only the leaders can relax or rescind the laws, and so the leaders are in fact, IMO, more responsible for such evil.
Posted by: Edward_ | May 31, 2005 at 03:43 PM
our memorial day is May the 4th and though inspired by WW2 it had a different theme each year and usually expands to include all those who have died in armed conflict.
The memorial that touched me most this year was a few weeks earlier, in the memorial dedicated to the operation 'market garden' ("a bridge too far"). Lot's of people adopt a 'war grave' to honor those who have fallen in defense of our country but have no family in our country to do the grave maintenance and caretaking. This year in Arnhem they had a schoolchild next to every grave, and had them all read out loud the names on the graves, one by one. Because their names should never be forgotten. The list of names, read one by one, in this solemn procedure, was really heartbreaking.
Posted by: dutchmarbel | May 31, 2005 at 04:54 PM
Point of 3:43 taken. The soldiers at the prison in Afghanistan, however predisposed they might have been to brutality, might not have acted out without what they thought was permission from the President.
...
1) Yesterday in a very weird coincidence, out my vastest mp3 collection popped up "Universal Soldier" as sung by Donovan. A brutal song that deeply affected many of us in the late sixties, saying that wars are impossible without young men being willing tools of the politicians.
Lyrics are easy to find with google. I do not completely agree with those sentiments, but neither am I easily able to see all soldiers as victims of their leaders.
2) These predispositions, if they exist and are widespread, can give the people warlike leaders. I spent some time last week trying to convince Democrats that it was a practical necessity, in America, at this time, to accept a certain level of militarism. Knowing that this would lead to deaths, military and civilian. That otherwise Democrats would not win elections, and would not only lose the liberal society to the Right, but would be indirectly responsible for a far less competent and humane militarism that the Republicans would implement, and a greater and less productive destruction.
A sacrifice for freedom.
3) I found Tacitus's piece quite moving and thought-provoking. If the motives of the soldier are not relevant...Tac talks of draftees, soldiers risk and kill for any number of reasons, their buddies, money, because they like it, even ideals and patriotism sometimes...if the reasons don't matter so much on their side then they matter more on ours. And Memorial Day appeals to something very ancient, outside of specific outcomes and particular causes. Not about self-defense, or ideology, or ambition. I have read too many blogs saying that WWII required sacrifices, but the Philippines and Grenada and Panama and Beirut were wastes. This is ungrateful and irreverant and irresponsible.
"Willing or not, they died so we might live, and live better. We don't know why it is asked, but it is necessary." is a sentiment that would be understood 5000 years ago. The deaths in Iraq, soldier and civilian, are not meaningless if we take responsibility for them.
Life and the World are hard, and require Sacrifices.
But I hate careless exploitation. Sorry for the length.
Posted by: bob mcmanus | May 31, 2005 at 05:28 PM
We celebrated Memorial Day in my house by watching "Sometimes in April."
We watched Hotel Rwanda and Hero
Hotel was another kick in the gut but Hero was simply incredible. If you see it e, you may change your mid about the benefits of a large screen TV...
Posted by: crionna | May 31, 2005 at 07:07 PM
Hero, of course, is not to be confused with Hero, just as Crash shouldn't be with Crash, nor Kicking And Screaming with Kicking & Screaming. Isn't it great that by recent law, 50% of all movie titles have to be re-used?
Posted by: Gary Farber | May 31, 2005 at 07:22 PM