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memorial day
Memorial Day Is a Day for Remembering the Victims of War
We remember all those who our sociopathic, delusional leaders told us were "the enemy." We remember the multitudes of women, children, the old, and the sick they obscenely wrote off as "collateral damage." We don't forget them.
May 27, 2024
Members of Veterans For Peace remember America's war dead not just once a year, but every day of our lives, with the solemnity they deserve, not the crass commercialism Memorial Day has become.
We remember the war dead and the far greater number of wounded with missing limbs and the even greater number living with invisible, lifelong devils and injuries in their heads.
We remember the lost contributions they could have made to society that they literally bottled up or destroyed in the epidemic of suicide rampant among veterans.
We remember the domestic violence caused by their devils. We remember their children whose lives were more painful and less joyful than they could have been because of those devils. We remember the way the pain echoes through generations, refreshed by each new war. We remember how our communities and our nation are so much less than they should be because of this underserved burden.
We remember all those that our sociopathic, delusional leaders told us were "the enemy." We remember the multitudes of women, children, the old and the sick they obscenely wrote off as "collateral damage."
We remember our innumerable brothers and sisters of Mother Earth who were killed and wounded: the birds, the four-legged, our family in the seas, the trees and life-giving plants destroyed without thought, the crops and animals that sustain human life.
We remember the billions of people who go without clean water, education and health care because war has stolen the money.
This year we also remember the few winners in what Marine Corp General Smedley Butler called the racket of war, the elite who delight in telling their puppets in government to order up another one. And we remember the winners’ mantra, "Even losing wars make money."
We remember all the losers of that racket, too; we remember each one. We do not remember some and ignore others. Nor do we glorify warriors or war because there is no glory in war. On Memorial Day we remember all the folly and all the costs of war.
We remember what Jeanette Rankin, the first woman in Congress, said as she voted against declaring war in 1917, “You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.”
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Memorial Day Should Be a Solemn Occasion to Value Peace
The U.S. is not in a conventional shooting war, but we are behaving as though we don't care if we fall into one.
May 29, 2023
On Memorial Day, the United States is not in a significant shooting war. It seems to me that the best way to honor our more than 1.1 million war dead is to work to keep it that way. Memorial Day should be not a paean to war but a solemn occasion to value peace.
Memorial Day began after the Civil War, with local observances, including at Arlington Cemetery. It was formalized in 1869 as “Decoration Day,” and May 30 was chosen because flowers would be in bloom across the nation by then. It only became a federal holiday in 1971, as the Vietnam War was winding to a lugubrious end.
War is always a failure. It is a failure of imagination, a failure of vision, a failure of politics, a failure of diplomacy.
As all those dead bodies attest, war is always a failure. It is a failure of imagination, a failure of vision, a failure of politics, a failure of diplomacy. There are times, as with the Confederate plot to secede so as to keep human beings enslaved in perpetuity or the Nazi regime’s murderous rampage through Europe, when war landed on our doorstep and was unavoidable, at least from our side.
Sadly, many of our wars have been elective and underpinned by unworthy motives, as with the Mexican-American land grab of 1846-48, or the Spanish-American War (and land grab) of 1898, or the Iraq War (and oil grab) of 2003-20. Those wars of aggression in American history are the biggest failures of all, since they are moral failings above all and put American soldiers in the grave for a reason other than the defense of the United States. Sometimes the reason was to feather the nest of economic and political elites.
It was that realization that led Smedley Butler to his bitter denunciation in 1933:
War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses. I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we’ll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6% over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100%. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.
I wouldn’t go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket. There isn’t a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its “finger men” to point out enemies, its “muscle men” to destroy enemies, its “brain men” to plan war preparations, and a “Big Boss” Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism.
I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-12 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested. During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.
While we are not in a hot conventional war at the moment, maybe for the first time since the Clinton era, we are courting such disasters. The 900 U.S. troops in Syria may have originally had a mission of defending the U.S. from ISIL plots, but it is hard to justify their presence today, when the Syrian government objects to their presence. The 2,500 trainers in Iraq are not wanted there by a majority in parliament, according to the vote they took in 2020 when Trump blew away one of their generals along with Iranian General Qasem Soleimani. Those two situations are perilous and those troops should be withdrawn.
The unprecedented economic and financial sanctions that the U.S. has imposed on Iran and Russia would be a casus belli if this invisible blockade had been put in place through gunships rather than bank officials. Sanctioning Putin and his circle or Ali Khamenei and his could be justified. A full-on attempt to cripple entire national economies is perceived as an act of war, and in both cases it could spiral into one.
We are not in a conventional shooting war, but we are behaving as though we don’t care if we fall into one. Our men and women in uniform deserve better. They deserve better politics and diplomacy. Because as Major General Smedley Butler, USMC, correctly said, we can only legitimately ask them to make the supreme sacrifice to protect the coasts of the United States of America. The geopolitical gamesmanship of the national security state may be important. It doesn’t rise to the level of justifying war.
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No Parade for Me: On Getting Memorial Day Wrong
The days has too often and for too many become an expression of faux patriotism that further exploits the sacrifices of the slain and the grief of their family members and friends to encourage militarism and perpetuate a mythology that misrepresents as heroism and nobility the savagery and insanity of war.
May 29, 2023
Perhaps some may find what I will argue below as disrespectful, especially coming from a veteran who participated and lost comrades in the American War in Vietnam. But it must be said. How Memorial Day is currently observed does not, in my view, fulfill its intended purpose—that is, as a day of remembrance, reflection, and appreciation for the sacrifices of those who fought and died in this nation’s all too numerous wars.
With its focus on picnics, barbecues, and sales at the mall, Memorial Day has become primarily a celebration of the unofficial start of summer and a festival of consumerism and greed. Perhaps most regrettably, it is an expression of faux patriotism that further exploits the sacrifices of the slain and the grief of their family members and friends to encourage militarism and perpetuate a mythology that misrepresents as heroism and nobility the savagery and insanity of war, in many, if not most cases, unnecessary and immoral war. In reality, Memorial Day has significance and meaning primarily for those relatively few who experienced war themselves or suffered the loss of friends and family members.
If you wish someone a happy Memorial Day, you fail to understand its true meaning.
March of Folly
Between the barbecues and trips to the mall, celebrants may allege to express their appreciation and gratitude by attending a “remembrance event” and applauding enthusiastically as a high school band, a local scout troop, and a contingent of aging veterans in ill-fitting military uniforms, march by in a parade of their creation before retreating to their local American Legion Post for an afternoon of drinking and commiserating about their beloved comrades whose suffering and deaths accomplished nothing.
Many march to remember, others to forget.
But for those who truly know war
and suffer its consequences,
no ceremony or parade is necessary
as the memories,
the images of war,
and the faces of our comrades wasted in battle
visit us each night in our dreams.
Nor do ceremonies and parades
help us to put to rest
the turmoil of a life interrupted
and devastated by war,
or to forget the killing and the dying.
Memorial Day ceremonies and parades accomplish nothing,
save to allow those who make war easily
or distance themselves from its insanity and horror
to feign support and appreciation
and to relieve their collective guilt
for immoral war and crimes against humanity.
Nor do ceremonies and parades
educate, inform, or lessen the burden of loss.
Rather they celebrate and perpetuate
the myth of honor and glory,
and “The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est pro patria more.
I shall march no more.
If you thank a veteran for her “service” in war you fail to understand what living with the experience entails.
Air Shows: Celebrating the Military’s High-Tech Weaponry of Death and Destruction
For those whose Memorial Day observance includes attending an airshow extravaganza, celebrants experience what is, for all intents and purposes, a mobile military circus and amusement arcade. In addition to “enjoying” the thrills and excitement of precision aerial acrobatics and simulated bombing runs performed by the U. S. Airforce’s “Thunderbirds” or the Navy’s “Blue Angels,” attendees, some as young as ten years old, need only enter their contact information into the military database to receive an array of propaganda, recruitment material, and many sought-after souvenirs – personalized dog tags, T-shirts, hats, footballs, etc. To excite even greater interest, passersby are invited to operate remote control robotic devices through a “battlefield” obstacle course, “pilot” an Apache helicopter flight simulator, participate in a fully immersive, adrenaline-pumping, and highly realistic, virtual “Humvee mission experience” in which they engage “insurgents” and kill them.
Sadly, what goes unnoticed is the insidiousness of these Memorial Day activities and the mythology it perpetuates. First, celebrants and their children are conditioned to view war and military service as entertainment, to desensitize them to killing and dying, and to encourage their support and involvement, with the eager recruiters always close at hand. Second, by misrepresenting war as honorable and heroic, it encourages the next generation of cannon fodder to contemplate enlisting in military "service". Third, memorializing those injured and killed in war makes honest and critical conversations about American foreign policy less likely, eliciting instead enthusiastic support for sending our military to faraway battlefields to "quell" what in many cases are manufactured crises. Fourth, by affording hero status to members of the military and veterans, it provides an “illusory refuge” of sorts, whereby veterans may avoid facing the reality and the trauma of their experiences in war, a task that is crucial if they are to rehabilitate and achieve some semblance of normalcy in their lives. Finally, faux gratitude and support mask the reality of the scandalous way in which this nation ignores the needs of its returning warriors and veterans. Tens of thousands of American soldiers go untreated or undertreated for the injuries they have sustained in combat, including Traumatic Brain Injury (the “signature wound” of Iraq and Afghanistan), Post Traumatic Stress, and Moral Injury, all devastating and disabling injuries that often require lifelong care. Since 9/11, the number of veterans and active-duty military dying from suicide is 4 times higher than the number of those killed in combat.
Conclusion
Tragically, we have been conditioned to ignore what we have become. We live in a culture where violent video games has replaced Mr. Rogers as entertainment for our children; where the youngest and most impressionable among us cyber kill virtual human beings for amusement, to occupy their time, and as a means to prepare them to become weapons in perpetual war that goes unquestioned; where violence has replaced diplomacy; where torture is condoned; where truth-telling (“whistleblowing”) is a crime warranting imprisonment and solitary confinement; where murder is celebrated as a positive achievement of leadership; where drones summarily execute human beings without trial, accusation, and with little outrage; and where the adoration of the weapons and technology of killing and destruction is “guaranteed” by the 2nd Amendment and to honor those wasted in war. We have lost our moral compass and have become a culture of hate, greed, and violence—killing our own as we kill others.
It is time, long past time, that we reject this mythology and the continued exploitation and commercialization of the memory of those sacrificed in war and the suffering of their families to enhance militarism, consumerism, and profit. Instead, we must acknowledge and grieve the waste of ALL human life, at least, (perhaps of ALL living entities), not with feigned expressions of patriotism, gratitude, and appreciation, but by renewing our commitment to peace, by educating the public about the realities of war, by bringing our troops home immediately from the 750 military bases it occupies in over 80 countries around the world, and by ensuring that they receive adequate and effective treatment for their physical, emotional, psychological and moral well-being upon their return.
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