Today We Celebrate the Human Cost of War

A thought for memorial day: “If we do not end war – war will end us.” ~ H.G Wells

Eyes Wide Open, Chicago 2007

Memorial Day. What are we memorializing when we celebrate and participate in this day? To whom do we give memory? For what do we give remembrance on this day that we consecrate (make holy) the deaths of millions of soldiers since 1861.

Today we celebrate the human cost of war…

So much death. So much sadness.

I am not excited, nor glad, nor jubilant, for those who have “given their lives for this country.” Although, like the African Americans who disinterred so very many Union soldiers from their mass grave at Charleston and placed them respectfully into individual graves, I understand the need to call to mind how very many individual lives have been snatched from us – in war after war after war after war.

Remember them we should. If we have to remember those who died in war, then we might also have to remember that we each bear at least some responsibility for all the wars our country wages.

Battlefield deaths are usually quick and always awful, and in some ways pointless. But all of these dead rely on our memory to credit their sacrifice. Solidarity across the transom of death, anonymity and time. ~ Josh Marshall

I remember them — and I am saddened by their death, sad that they had to die such a violent, bloody death. I am sad for all the people who have died in war, in violence.

It bears reminding that the citizens of Charleston who observed the very first Memorial Day celebrated the end of war, … and they celebrated the freedom of African Americans. It was, for those first Memorial Day celebrants, a day to recognize and honor those persons who died a violent death at the hands of their own countrymen, in pursuit of the freedom of African Americans, and in pursuit of a nation indivisible, many states, one nation, with freedom and pursuit of happiness and justice for all.

Memorial Day, 1865

The African American originators of Memorial Day held a parade, and a picnic, not only to honor the dead, but also to celebrate the return of peace. At last, they no longer lived in fear of war and violence and destruction, and their brothers and sisters to the south no longer lived in chains.

Back in 1975 — over a quarter of a century ago — Dana Greeley wrote, “War is insanity in this day and age. It is total destructiveness; it is total immorality; it is total waste. The end of war should be our goal today.”

Today war is even more insane, even more costly, even more destructive. The technology of war today could conceivably end all or most human life on Earth. That is, or should be, a terrifying prospect.

We can honor those who die in military service, even though we may disagree with the principles of the war in which they were killed. We also can honor those people who have fought for truth and justice using non-violent means, people like Ghandi and Martin Luther King, Jr. We can honor all of our dead on Memorial Day.

But how? How do we best honor the fallen?

Perhaps the best way to honor our dead soldiers is to end warfare altogether. Perhaps the best way to honor all the dead who have died in pursuit of truth and justice is to commit ourselves to making peace. Perhaps the best way to celebrate Memorial Day is as those who originated the holiday did — celebrating the end of war.

Perhaps we could also spare a moment to remember the non-military — the civilian — casualties of war:  those who neither asked for war, nor fought in it, but who fell maimed and bloody just as surely as if they had taken up a weapon — those for whom an accident of birth put them in harm’s way.

Perhaps when each of us lets go of striving to fix the entire world and instead simply says, “Let peace begin with me,” then peace on Earth will be made, one step at a time, one individual at a time. On that day, war shall be no more. On that day we can rest secure in the knowledge, celebrate the knowledge, that no more  of our brothers or sisters or fathers or mothers — no not one more — will fall in battle.

WAGE PEACE
Republished fm May 2011.