Mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind.
- John F. Kennedy
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Today is a day rightly set aside to honor those who’ve fought and died for their country. It’s not just another cheap excuse for a four-day weekend, though there’s certainly nothing wrong with having an extra day or two to rest and/or recreate- responsibly, of course. It should be about more than beer, brats, and riding your jet ski, though.
In this era of rote, thoughtless, knee-jerk patriotism- American flag pins, ritualized bland “thank you for your service” chants- we should remember the reason Memorial Day exists. We celebrate those who fight and die in our wars…yet we never seem to do the heavy lifting necessary to ensure that the flower of our youth doesn’t continue to return home in a flag-draped casket. It doesn’t seem to be trafficking in hyperbole to wish that Memorial Day would become more a day to honor our war dead in our distant history than to remember those who’ve recently died.
For most of us, war is an abstract concept, something we understand on an elementary level while having no real concept of the damage it does and the havoc it can wreak on lives and countries. It may be trite, but it’s true- as Bertrand Russell once said, “War doesn’t determines who’s right. It determines who’s left.” Killing another human being is not a natural act, which is why so much American ingenuity and capital has been invested in finding newer, faster, and ever more efficient ways of dispatching the “other poor, dumb bastard” (apologies to George Patton) to the Hereafter.
It would be nice to think that soon, perhaps even in my lifetime, war would become a distant memory and we’ll no longer be faced with having to mourn those lost in the conduct of it. It would be nice, but human nature being what it is, I suspect little will change in the foreseeable future, and Russell’s words will be proven correct time and again.
Same time next year.
