Memorial Day and Peace
brianlux
Posts: 42,055
Memorial day is such a strange holiday. It's set aside to honor those who died in service but it's also a holiday that celebrates the change of seasons (though it doesn't seem so in some parts this year). It's a day when some reflect in sadness the loss of loved ones while others think only of barbeque and beer. It's a very confused holiday. Maybe "holiday" isn't the right word.
Another thing that makes it confusing- to me at least- is that for those of us not caught up in the beef and beer aspect of the day it should be a day to think about peace. If there has to be war, shouldn't the goal be peace?
Today I'll think about how lucky I am that those closest to me whom I know who served are still alive, think good thoughts for those in grief over loss, and I'll think about and hope for peace.
Peace.
Another thing that makes it confusing- to me at least- is that for those of us not caught up in the beef and beer aspect of the day it should be a day to think about peace. If there has to be war, shouldn't the goal be peace?
Today I'll think about how lucky I am that those closest to me whom I know who served are still alive, think good thoughts for those in grief over loss, and I'll think about and hope for peace.
Peace.
“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man [or woman] who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
Variously credited to Mark Twain or Edward Abbey.
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http://blog.americanhistory.si.edu/osay ... l-day.html
"...I changed by not changing at all..."
Good article. I can see why they call it "Decoration Day" but again the language doesn't seem to fit very well. I don't think of "decoration" on a day such as this.
The idea with most, I believe, is that you are celebrating the very freedom to just relax and have fun and enjoy friends, family, and food due to the very sacrifice our men and women in uniform have made.
I'm not going to any gatherings today ( a bit under the weather ) but I know at my sisters house right now are at least 3 vets who have served, fought and bled in the line of duty. They don't seem to have a problem with the family getting together on this day to grill out, play games and drink a few beers.
I think our troops everyday, I don't think enjoying a day with family in friends because of the freedom provided is wrong.
"To question your government is not unpatriotic --
to not question your government is unpatriotic."
-- Sen. Chuck Hagel
I'm not American, but this is what I get from it as well. Pay tribute to those lost defending freedom by enjoying it.
Fargo 2003
Winnipeg 2005
Winnipeg 2011
St. Paul 2014
Barack Obama now continues the symbolic practice, which celebrates the definitive triumph of white supremacy over all vestiges of Black Reconstruction, at the highest level of the U.S. government. African Americans are supposed to accept that the first Black president sends a wreath to honor Confederates, because he also sent a wreath to the Black Unionists’ memorial. Obama doesn’t think we’ll notice that that puts the Black Civil War dead on an equal basis with the people who were trying to put them back into slavery. He pretends not to recognize that that’s an insult to every decent American.
(This article, above, is good example of bad journalism.... they weren't biased at all.
http://cwmemory.com/2009/05/20/should-b ... arlington/
I post something like this every memorial day, I'm sorry. Bush was the first president to visit. I wonder what Obama did this year?
I just feel slapped in the face every year. I pretend it's a different holiday.
Re. BBQ and Beer: It's not my thing but I'm not dissing it either. I'm just saying there's more to it than that. Honestly, I think a lot of people forget that or never give it much thought and some are probably even totally clueless.
That's a good question. This is what I found:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/2 ... 42317.html
"President Barack Obama was expected to lay a wreath Monday at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery across the Potomac River from Washington. Earlier in the morning, he and first lady Michelle Obama planned to host a breakfast at the White House with "Gold Star" families of service members who have been killed."
I can't recall him ever going to Arlington. At least he made plans to go. Arlington is sacred because the deceased are in unmarked, unknown graves. They can be White, Black, Yellow, Purple, Red, or Glow in the Dark for a race description. These deceased graves bear the remains of fallen soldiers. We don't know which side they fought for, and we don't know if they were 10 years old or 30 years old.
We only know that they died in the stupid! Civil War. Americans killed Americans.
That Cemetery is a place they can be at PEACE together, and for eternity.
we would not have memorial day without the opposite of peace, which is war.
we continue to wage war, and we continue to commit the same international and cultural offenses that lead directly to war, and memorial day does not give us pause so that we think about our actions. to me, memorial day is an empty gesture so that we as a country and we as a government take one second to remember the war dead, bless them. say that we honor and thank them, all while we continue to do the things that directly cause perpetual war.
to me it is a futile gesture, and an insult to those who paid the ultimate price.
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
Please, admit that fallen soldiers can rest in PEACE together in a cemetery.
The ones that can fight, do this for me. I'm not as strong. In the end, it really matters what side you were on or what you did.
:nono:
You can Fail, You can TRY, You can kick some BUTT.
People that can/will fight and people that can't/will not fight are separate species.
We all live together. We all die together.
I can't carry the 80 pound backpack. My vision is awful.
:wave:
I'm so lost.
"To question your government is not unpatriotic --
to not question your government is unpatriotic."
-- Sen. Chuck Hagel
I've been asked several times to join the armed forces.
I do not have, whatever it takes.
I'm too wimpy. Are you still lost? :?
(There should be an innocent victim's day)
That is everyday.
Ummm what??? you're so obviously ignorant about Arlington Cemetery and Tomb of the Unknowns its wacked :-?
if you'd ever been to or knew anything about Arlington you'd know that the Tomb of the the Unknowns contains the remains of an unknown solider from WW1, two from WW2 (one that served in the pacific, the other in europe,) a soldier from the Korean war and one from Vietnam(who was identified by DNA in 1998, exumed and returned to his family for reburial in Missouri)
there's no solider in the Tomb from the civil war from either side...or from any other war prior to WW1 and none after the Korean because DNA has elimanated any soldier's remains will go unidentified. there are no unmarked, unknown graves at Arlington, nor or any marked by race of the solider or a soldier's family member possibly buried there
The cemetery was orginally Robert E Lee's family plantation. Once union troops overtook Lee's property they began burying union dead there in his 'front yard' to prevent him from ever returning home. while a few confederates were buried there, it was a union veterans cemetery. until adding soldiers from the Spanish-american war. it wasn't until 1900 that they set up the confederate section. confererate remains were reintered from cemeteries in Alexandria & DC and allowed in additional vets. around 15 years after that the confederate memorial was placed in the center of that section of graves. So they are segregated so to speak
No idea what your bitching is about considering Obama placed a wreath yesterday at the Tomb of the Unknowns. in 2010 instead of Arlington he went to a veterans cemetery in IL. he's attended Arlington each Veteran's days too. you are aware that Bush Sr never once showed up at Arlington Cemetery during his presidency? and Bush jr skipped Memorial day at least twice during his...once to vacation at his ranch.
to the OP.... peace should always be the foremost goal imo. too many veterans in this country have already suffered or paid the ultimate price up to this point and it's only right that we remember them. it'd be nice to be able forget the politians that push for war...since they don't even care what it does to those that actually go out and do the fighting on their behalf
angels share laughter
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Whom Will We Honor Memorial Day?
by Howard Zinn
Published on June 2, 1976 in the Boston Globe (from the Zinn Reader)
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.
In 1974, I was invited by Tom Winship, the editor of the Boston Globe, who had been bold enough in 1971 to print part of the top secret Pentagon Papers on the history of the Vietnam War, to write a bi-weekly column for the op-ed page of the newspaper. I did that for about a year and a half. The column below appeared June 2, 1976, in connection with that year's Memorial Day. After it appeared, my column was canceled.
* * * * *
Memorial Day will be celebrated as usual, by high-speed collisions of automobiles and bodies strewn on highways and the sound of ambulance sirens throughout the land.
It will also be celebrated by the display of flags, the sound of bugles and drums, by parades and speeches and unthinking applause.
It will be celebrated by giant corporations, which make guns, bombs, fighter planes, aircraft carriers and an endless assortment of military junk and which await the $100 billion in contracts to be approved soon by Congress and the President.
There was a young woman in New Hampshire who refused to allow her husband, killed in Vietnam, to be given a military burial. She rejected the hollow ceremony ordered by those who sent him and 50,000 others to their deaths. Her courage should be cherished on Memorial Day. There were the B52 pilots who refused to fly those last vicious raids of Nixon's and Kissinger's war. Have any of the great universities, so quick to give honorary degrees to God-knows-whom, thought to honor those men at this Commencement time, on this Memorial Day?
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.
On Memorial Day we should take note that, in the name of "defense," our taxes have been used to spend a quarter of a billion dollars on a helicopter assault ship called "the biggest floating lemon," which was accepted by the Navy although it had over 2,000 major defects at the time of its trial cruise.
Meanwhile, there is such a shortage of housing that millions live in dilapidated sections of our cities and millions more are forced to pay high rents or high interest rates on their mortgages. There's 90 billion for the B1 bomber, but people don't have money to pay hospital bills.
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.
Let us not set out, this Memorial Day, on the same old drunken ride to death.
Very much so.
I have no idea what this
"Please, admit that fallen soldiers can rest in PEACE together in a cemetery.
The ones that can fight, do this for me. I'm not as strong. In the end, it really matters what side you were on or what you did."
had to do with anything else. It's almost as if you are finishing a conversation from another thread maybe?
I don't know.
"To question your government is not unpatriotic --
to not question your government is unpatriotic."
-- Sen. Chuck Hagel
You have opened my eyes. I'm no longer lost. I corrected your spelling, I hope you don't mind.
I'll say again (maybe it's the weather) but things are seeming a bit...oh, I dunno - whacked - as of late.
Circular talking, odd points made. Could be just me (though I highly doubt it
I hope for peace, Brian. I don't expect it though.
That said, while true world peace is out of our reach - the fact that some go for it, live it, practice it - no matter how tiny the initial effect or the ripple - that means something to me.
Hell knows I fall short at times but I do try. Sometimes, that's enough - has to be, at least for the time being.
Honestly, I do too. I just kinda wish there was a little more remembrance than has been my experience on Memorial Day.
"...I changed by not changing at all..."
I believe that this is a true meaning of a Memorial.
Hey, Brian there is some Peace!
(I'm attending another memorial service 4pm ETD, #tributeride #wlf, a member of the group lost 25 this week :shock: )