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Memorial Day - 2005
For Memorial Day in 1976,
Howard Zinn wrote an op ed piecefor the Boston Globe.
In it he said:
"Memorial Day will be celebrated ... by the usual betrayal of the dead, by the hypocritical patriotism of the politicians and contractors preparing for more wars, more graves to receive more flowers on future Memorial Days. The memory of the dead deserves a different dedication. To peace, to defiance of governments."
......
"No politician who voted funds for war, no business contractor for the military, no general who ordered young men into battle, no FBI man who spied on anti-war activities, should be invited to public ceremonies on this sacred day. Let the dead of past wars he honored. Let those who live pledge themselves never to embark on mass slaughter again.
"The shell had his number on it. The blood ran into the ground...Where his chest ought to have been they pinned the Congressional Medal, the DSC, the Medaille Militaire, the Belgian Croix de Guerre, the Italian gold medal, The Vitutea Militara sent by Queen Marie of Rumania. All the Washingtonians brought flowers .. Woodrow Wilson brought a bouquet of poppies."
Those are the concluding lines of John Dos Passos angry novel 1919. Let us honor him on Memorial Day.
And also Thoreau, who went to jail to protest the Mexican War.
And Mark Twain, who denounced our war against the Filipinos at the turn of the century.
And I.F. Stone, who virtually alone among newspaper editors exposed the fraud and brutality of the Korean War.
Let us honor Martin Luther King, who refused the enticements of the White House, and the cautions of associates, and thundered against the war in Vietnam.
Memorial Day should be a day for putting flowers on graves and planting trees. Also, for destroying the weapons of death that endanger us more than they protect us, that waste our resources and threaten our children and grandchildren."
.........
"We must be practical, say those whose practicality has consisted of a war every generation. We mustn't deplete our defenses, say those who have depleted our youth, stolen our resources. In the end, it is living people, not corpses, creative energy, not destructive rage, which are our only real defense, not just against other governments trying to kill us, but against our own, also trying to kill us."
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As we honor those who fought and died, let us also honor those who fought and survived and walk the world as living memorials...warriors for peace. These are the voices that have earned the right to speak today of their brothers in arms, once called 'friend' or 'enemy', who have looked deep into the eyes of war, died their own quiet death, and rose from the ashes of their particular generation's inhumanity to man to speak out, for their brothers' sake, for the children's sake...for our sake.
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A Living Memorial
If there is a heaven
a lifetime before death
surely, it is a simple place
where men such as we,
who have earned the right
to call each other brother,
and women, such as you
who grace our lives,
would come and stand together
in the common truth of our world
and learn there, a human language
in which we would speak of peace
to the children who bless our lives.
It is the courage of America
and the strength of our world
that the essence of our patriotism
is not nationalism,
it is humanity.
Therefore, we will survive together -
all our good and natural intentions
realized in quick, evolving thrusts
from chance to choice,
from random twitches at self-determination,
to deliberate, articulate commitments.
Generation to generation.
And there will come one fine day
when the best and the brightest of us
will be men and women dedicated to tolerance.
Human beings all, not willing
to be the posthumous heroes of their time -
deceased for country and for transient cause.
These will be the living heroes
of our final victory.
Warriors for peace
who will live with human dignity
to serve conscience
and the nature of all life.
They will be those of us who know
the spirit of peace is brave compromise.
And the character of negotiiation
is the value system of the community.
Until then
it is not enough
to love our children
(the most human of ourselves).
We must respect their right
to inherit our only world
on the morning of some gentle tomorrow
encouraged with their joy.
Until then, we must teach them
what they already know -
there is no victory
other than in balance.
From such
is all we can pray for today
and all we will ever come to know
of forever.
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from 'This Time, A Warrior for Peace'
In my sad past
when I was still young,
I came home from war, alone;
my soul an unhung murderer.
One dark night
it stepped heavily on the trapdoor of my guilt
and decorously hanged itself.
I pray it has found peace
away from me.
Perhaps, even now
it is grandfather
to the unborn dreams
of several particular rice farmers
I knew years go
(and killed before I ever met).
These days,
the rest of me
is less agreeable
to romance and to war.
I am hard at work
making tomorrow come true
for the children
who have (thus far) survived.
I am a warrior for peace
And not a gentle man.
from 'Only One Mother'
There is only one life
just as there is only one death.
It is time, I think, to die
(from what I am)
to exchange myself
for a bright, new thing
some clever god might fashion
to serve a better end -
time to let some cosmic "mother"
change me into something special
which expands itself
and expends itself
that others may live a higher truth
and come to know
that illusive, natural balance
we call the one and only "peace"
I would go now (and gladly)
to be its champion.
Perhaps you could tell me
what else there is to do.
Or, maybe, you could join me on the way -
brothers and sisters, in the cause of peace.
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~from 'Warrior for Peace'
Copyright © 1988 by Steve Mason,
author and Vietnam Vet
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