...But Many Are

My previous entry rubbed some folks the wrong way, and so I would like to clarify my thoughts on this most somber of sunny days. Remembrance Day, Armistice Day, Veterans' Day, call it what you will. It matters.

Several times at school and many times at work, I was the one asked to give the announcement at the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month. I've read "In Flanders Fields"  for an audience on several Remembrance Days, and I make a point of reading (when I can), "Dulce et Decorum Est", linked in the last blog, as well. It conveys, as few other works in my experience can, the horrors of war and the birth of a global cynicism that has deadened our society.

I don't have any direct link to the military in my family, but my father raised me to respect service, and I do.

One friend of mine gently chided me yesterday for what she perceived as criticism of the uniform and what it stands for. She feels very strong that the choice to join the military does automatically make one a hero--after which point, of course, one is obligated to live up to the heroic standard. That some disgrace their uniforms does not disgrace the nobility for which a military is supposed to stand: the steadfast determination to protect strangers, even in the face of death, is possibly the highest ideal to which a human can strive.

It's a pity that on so many occasions their deaths and maimings accomplish so little. It's a pity that returning veterans are so often treated with contempt by the very governments that sent them off to die in the first place. It's nothing short of disgusting that war has become just another industrial endeavour...and THAT's what I was vociferously protesting yesterday: the weird dichotomy that glorifies the soldier while remaining resolutely ignorant of what it is that soldier confronts.

I will explain that.

Once a year, we stop to remember. Once a year, for a whole minute or perhaps two, we're asked to consider the fallen and those who stand ready to fall. We pay them a minute or two's worth of respect; they paid with lives and limbs. And after that minute or two is over? Back to business as usual, killing and being killed, for small causes made great by a society that is thoroughly infatuated with war. It's infiltrated the language: the War on Drugs, the War on Poverty, the War on Christmas(!) It's so thoroughly a part of our culture that it sickens me: the average child sees thousands upon thousands of deaths long before she reaches the age of ten. We rush out and buy the latest instalment of Call of Duty so we can play-act war even more realistically. And most distressingly, we get all jingoistic about it.  All sentiment, no substance. Even today, in many cases, it feels as if sentiment has won out.

If we really cared about peace, we wouldn't be at war so damned often.

I think most soldiers would agree with me. For all the stripping of individuality that is the hallmark of all things military, these people remain people, with minds and hearts and souls of their own. Most of them join with ideals held aloft like banners, and many of them live up to and surpass those ideals, in life and in death. I feel very strongly that the overarching causes these men and women fight for have been warped beyond recognition. Most of them aren't aware of it; I doubt many of their commanders are truly aware of what they're really fighting for. Far too often, it's not freedom.

But that does not lessen the sacrifice. Indeed, for me it makes it even more poignant. What passing bells for those who die as cattle?

I remember. Not just today, but every day. I wrote this entry ten years ago today and I stand by it. Saluting.