LEST WE REMEMBER
Some say that Remembrance Day is a time when we get to celebrate our freedom, a freedom hard-won by the brave veterans who fought and died ensuring it for the rest of us. You could say that. That version of events certainly is warm and fuzzy and full of sentimentality – and being so it’s easily swallowed, easily digested, and easily regurgitated. Trouble is, it’s a pretty narrow, simple, and misleading story.
The slogans of remembrance ignore just about all of the realities of war, including its causes and effects. (But what else do you care about?) They ignore the fact that wars are often won by the side willing and able to slide farther down the slope of (justified) insanity.
I mean, you don’t have to be a history or military scholar to notice that WWII, for example, was essentially a protracted series of war crimes committed by both sides. And, further, that the only reason the Allies won was because we were willing and able to take the killing, of combatants and innocents, farther than the losers. No? We (the good guys) fire-bombed entire cities, burning thousands of civilians alive. And this was the insane horror in Europe, a strategic catastrophe so hellish that, by comparison, Hiroshima and Nagasaki (the instantaneous incineration of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians) were deemed a desirable alternative... Do our remembrance ceremonies help us understand and remember this or conceal and forget it?
Further, the Remembrance slogans forget and ignore the money-making and deal-hatching that starts wars and keeps them going. (Would war exist if it were not so extraordinarily profitable?) Our rose-coloured Remembrance also ignores the reality that it’s a nation’s poor who fight its wars – and only against another nation’s poor. What a bore! (Which begs: would war exist if it was fought by those who declare it?) Our Remembrance stories also ignore the reality that wars never seem to bring about peace; that the “post-war period” was not a time of peace nor is the present. (The U.S. and it’s friends are engaged in the longest war it’s ever fought; a war started based on known lies. This, when legal and just reasons for intervention in Iraq were clear to everyone.) Further, we talk about peace as though there was a period in which our nation and its allies weren’t actively spying on, conspiring against, and preparing for conflict, or engaged in it with other nations. We pretend that there was a time when we weren’t providing logistics, strategic resources, and other assistance to (and thereby profiting from) everyone else making war. We choose not to remember that we’re constantly developing, procuring, and employing weapons and weapon systems that cause and fuel conflicts across the globe. That is some powerful forgetting we’re remembering to do.
If we’re so keen to remember those who killed (helped kill, or died trying) then it only makes sense to celebrate all of the folk who do the exact same for the same reasons. No? After all, the bloke born in Manchester, had he been born in Munich, would have answered his nation’s call to arms all the same (lest he be labelled a coward or traitor by his friends and family.) Likewise, much has been said in recent years of the militant martyr, dying for his cause, and the evil of his way; but, is the violent religious fanatic not remarkably similar to the First or Second World War volunteer we’re asked to remember? Aren’t they precisely the same as any of the thousands of kids who bought into the propaganda campaign hatched by their government, answered the call to defend their nation under threat, and went to fight for what was right and good and just? Is today’s suicide bomber all that different from the sixteen-year-old who went off to a land he did not know, to kill an enemy he had never seen, for a reason he could not articulate but to recite the line on the poster he’d read in his local newspaper, or plastered on the wall of his church? (We told him of the greater good; we gave him all manner of righteous reason; we trained him not to think for himself and reject all personal responsibility; we showed him how to kill and we supplied the tools to do it; we offered him camaraderie and a sense of belonging; we assured him that he is loved and that in death he will find peace; and then we dropped him off on some distant shore to take as many lives as possible.) Where is the difference? I fail to see it.
Yet, from where I stand, this is not the only hypocrisy. In my mind, one cannot remember the horrible cost of war and suggest that it is the worst of all evils, while at the very same time label all the brave souls who fought as heroes, recount and glorify all the great battles, and celebrate our overall victory. Yet we do exactly this. And this, I imagine, is how we end up with “freedom”embedded in the conversation: to smooth it all over and diffuse any questioning. “Well, it was the worst thing ever, and we’d never do it again, but it had to be done to preserve our freedom and the freedom of unborn generations!” The trouble is, this idea of bringing about freedom is the same as the argument used to justify every war in modern history, from the Boer War on. (Just go look through old newspapers. It’s shocking.) What we forget and neglect to talk about is the right to freedom of those who are occupied and those who are killed. In all the Remembrance Day ceremonies I can remember words have only ever been spoken about the fallen heroes. No one ever acknowledges the innocents caught in the cross-fire. Why is that? Why aren’t these people recognized or remembered with great memorial? I wonder if talking about all the dead babies, their mothers, grandparents, and kittens may muddy the valorous waters somewhat?
Further still, I don’t feel like we can be committed to peace while planning, supporting, and helping make excuses for war. Is that so wrong? And I don’t think we can play both sides either. Old George W. Bush was right when he said, “You’re either with us or against us.” The trouble with that statement, and what got everyone so upset, is that it forces whole nations to be both transparent and committed, something no nation ever wants to be. Nations, institutions, and individuals generally don’t like to be truly honest, and seldom are, because it exposes one’s beliefs and intentions. Yes, playing both sides as we like to do, particularly in the political realm, makes perfect strategic sense because it gives us a defence, an escape route, allowing us to benefit regardless of the outcome. This kind of thinking, however, is, ultimately, mad. For instance, Canada can’t officially be against the war in Iraq while continuing to fund the American war machine, provide intelligence, and send ships, personnel, and other material support to the Persian Gulf. And yet, that’s exactly what we do! You can’t sign both the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and the Nuclear-test-ban Treaty all while mining and exporting most of the world’s uranium with the knowledge that this very material ends up in nuclear tests and in the munitions used by our friends on the global battlefield. Yet that is exactly what happens! And, of course, when someone points it out we stand back as argue that, “Well, we didn’t build the bombs.” This is madness, but it’s nothing new. This is the game we’ve always played. (For instance, it’s well-documented that we did the same during the First and Second World Wars, when we sold to Germany metals like nickel: the key ingredient for making all of their stainless steel weapons of war. If this is new information, let it sink in for a moment.) This is the untenable juggling act we are never officially asked to perform. This is what is left out, and what we tacitly agree to continue to forget, every November.
I could imagine there being a good reason for war; but such a circumstance is going to be exceptionally rare – and not come around every ten or twenty years like clockwork. Further, such a situation would have to be completely transparent. Those being asked to fight, and the public being asked to support such an effort, would have to know what was going on and why. And the reality of such a situation alone would obviate the usual obfuscation, propaganda, and conscription. Needless to say, that I’m aware of, this situation has never existed.
Ultimately, I think we should have Remembrance Day; but only if it is about remembering and not forgetting. The most recent Remembrance ceremony I attended felt like some kind of government re-education camp for the children of dissident parents. Innocent babies were forced to publicly recite “Canada is peace, Canada is freedom, Canada is democracy.” Not only is this paean obviously untrue but having a group of kids recite it is just twisted. (I wish I’d recorded it...) All I want is a little honesty. And really, I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to remember another war. I want to celebrate a day when war was averted: a day when brave, intelligent, thoughtful people from both sides – despite overwhelming odds and ten thousand years of history – stood in the way of the gears of war and instead engaged in conversation. And I want every school child to learn about that day and all of its colourful figures and complex nuances. And I want them to learn how difficult the struggles were to prevent war, and how the people involved are all heroes for having saved millions of lives.
And I want them to learn about how the world is a safer, better, more sane place for having not fought a war. And I want them all to learn about all the sacrifices that were made for this commitment to peace. And I want there to be built a park, in every city, with a monument at its center acknowledging the tremendous valour and dignity of this courageous act of non-violence. And then I want a thousand films and a thousand books and a thousand songs made to commemorate the people and places of peaceful significance… for that would actually be something to remember.
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