Memorial Day and Politics

Yesterday I read an opinion piece written in Friday’s Christian Science Monitor called “Keep politics out of Memorial Day,” written by the “national commander” of the American Legion Paul Morin. The gist of this piece is that this day should be about honoring dead soldiers and not about picnics, parades, or political statements, it should be about “honor, duty, and the ultimate sacrifice… and people who have decided that the United States is worth dying for.” To a certain extent, I would agree with Mr. Morin. Just as anyone who dies tragically, those killed in war should be remembered and memorialized. Their deaths are tragic and they reorient the lives of their loved ones, friends, and communities. However, I question the veracity of the statement that these are always “people who have decided that the United States is worth dying for.” For those people who died during the draft era, a proportion of these folks may simply be those that thought that risking the probability of death by joining the military was a better option than imprisonment or fleeing the country. In the post draft era, some of these people may be those who thought that serving in the military was a good way to pay for college, get out of debt, or escape imminent poverty.

My point is simply that it is an awful reality that war has been the cause of death for more than a million people U.S. and that these people should not be treated as a homogenous population of people who decided that their country was worth dying for. Some of these people died because their country thought that the maintenance of its interest was worth their death, and they felt they had little choice but to serve in its military. Some of these people were born poor and thought the military would be a good way to escape the poverty of their lives. And just as there is variation in the reasons people decided to put their lives on the line by joining the military, it seems reasonable to assume there would be variation in the way they would want to be remembered and memorialized. Would they want to be remembered as brave, heroic, noble, and a cut above the rest of us civilians – probably, I image that most of us want to be remember in the most favorable light. Would they want the wars that took their lives to be valorized and above contempt on the day they are to be honored and remember. Maybe not – maybe some of them would be pretty pissed off that they died, and some of them might have even preferred that their comrades and colleges not continue to die. Of the 100 soldiers that have died in the past three weeks, I imagine at least one of them would want their death to be mourned, the grief of their family the be shared, AND a voice of dissent to question whether or not they should have been in this situation that caused them to die.