Memorial Day is a Down Payment on Peace

Memorial Day is the day we honor those who died while serving in our nation’s armed forces.  The numbers of those honorees are staggering.  
   
Civil War:                  750,000                      
WWI:                          117,000
WWII:                        405,000
Korean War:              37,000
Vietnam:                     58,000
Iraq/Afghanistan:       7,000 
Each one of these numbers represents a personal tragedy.  Lives not just lost, but collateral lives altered and a cascade of opportunities never realized.  These lives were not wasted, they were given for what was hoped to be a greater good.  We owe all of these people our attempt at that better world.  But success will not be achieved without a realistic look at a world of humans who are imperfect creatures and where evil is always at work.
If there is anything mildly positive about these numbers it is that they show a general downward trend.  Grim as it sounds, the more deadly and specific weapons become, the easier it is to target the enemy while maintaining a safe position.   A swift conclusion with the least possible casualties, even a prophylactic strike, is better than the prolonged conflicts of the past.  
We can now eliminate a deadly threat by pinpointing the cause of that threat and removing it in a surgical manner.  Consider North Korea which is currently the greatest threat to world peace.  If the 509 Bomb Wing at Whiteman Airforce Base suddenly lost track of its B-2 Stealth Bombers and, concurrently, every nuclear facility, missile launch pad and the last known residence of that pathological little Pez dispenser they call “fearless leader” were all turned into deep, finely powdered craters, I would breathe a sigh of relief.   Of course, we would have to shrug our collective shoulders in disbelief as to how this could have happened.  Given a few hours for the right orders to go up and down the chain of command we could even send a slow truck out to Knob Noster, Missouri and check to see if our long-range bombers were still in the hangers.   They would be.  Cooling down.
We know that in every surgical procedure, clean tissue is removed with the diseased.  Pain is always involved and there can be complications.  But despite all of this, we do not forgo surgery when a life, or even a quality of life is in the balance.  We would like to be healthy and vigorous without medical intervention.  That is our goal, if not for ourselves than at least for our progeny.  The same is certainly true of the larger disease of war.  But let us be realistic.  Saying you hate sickness and will never allow disease to enter your body does not keep you well.  You might improve your chances with good practices, but you can't avoid the possibility of illness. 
Weakness never won a war, but strength can keep a peace. 
The decreasing numbers of dead from national conflicts speaks to our continued aversion to the inhumanity, the waste and horror of war.  Our weapons keep increasing in efficacy, but the numbers of American dead keep going down. 
I hope that Memorial Day will become a holiday of history-long-past for my grandchildren.  I pray for it.  I work for it.  But such a goal stretches even the most optimistic credulity. 
I am a realist when it comes to human beings.  I don’t believe we are inherently good or bad.  We are generally ruled by an instinct to advance our well-being.  We are generally restrained by a group ethos that must include deterrents as well as rewards.  Some people will do evil despite every offer of kindness.  Some people will rise above hate and despair to show goodness in all they do. 
We must play a game of percentages.  If surgery saves the life, you go for the surgery.  If you can’t live in a world without aggression you must make it a dangerous choice for those who would use it to harm us.  World peace will never be achievable on a lasting basis.  That is an honest assessment of the human condition.   But that does not mean it is not a worthy goal, and that is also an honest assessment of humanity. 
On Memorial Day we need to look at the list of dead and try to make each of those lives count as a down payment on a greater, sustainable, and equitable peace.  
If each peace is longer and deeper than the one before, we keep the faith.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Generation of Serfs

  On October 25, 1415, Henry V of England laid some serious hurt on the French at the Battle of Agincourt at Pas-de-Calais, France.   Part of the success of this campaign was due to Henry’s use of the longbow, but part of it also goes to the creative use of military indentures.   These legal contracts required all the English captains to provide specified amounts of men, material and time to the King’s cause.             An indenture was a document, written in duplicate and then torn along a jagged line, like little teeth ( dents ), in the paper.   One portion of the contract was in possession of each party and when the required conditions and period of service were fulfilled, the parts reunited, and the debt was considered paid.   Many of the people who first came to this country from England came as indentured servants, worked off their debt and became the backbone of the country.             Today we are creating a nation not of indentured servants, someone with a carefully
Read more

Our Beautiful Constitution and its Ugly Opponents

 The Constitution is our anchor of stability in a turbulent world!   We can withstand a bad President and a petulant Congress (for the short term, at least) because our Constitution both guides and limits.   If someone asked me to provide proof of a loving God, I would simply ask them how else so many geniuses in the matter of human governance could have been clustered together in the right time and place to create both our country and the means to govern it.    Our founding fathers had the vision to devise a way to not only govern themselves, but govern a country that they could not imagine, yet believed would prevail. The constitution of the United States is like a good parent.   It has allowed us to grow up as we have grown older, with the result that the United States of America is the oldest living democracy in the world.   The miracle of this document is that it lives, breathes and moves with the times.   The three branches of our government work together while standing alone
Read more

"You Didn't Build That:" Part I

Late in the day on Friday, July 13 th , President Obama mounted the stage of Historic Firehouse Number One in Roanoke , Virginia .   The room held around 800 people but it was hot and several people fainted.   In front of a carefully screened group of supporters he gave one of the most important speeches of his reelection campaign.    It was not meant to be a major speech.   That will come in the even more carefully scripted Convention Hall in Charlotte , North Carolina this September in front of adoring media and rabid political supporters.   But this speech in Roanoke is crucial to the 2012 election because on Friday, in Virginia , President Obama went off message.   Whether through error or hubris, he abandoned his script and spoke off the cuff.   And in so doing, he showed us the man behind the curtain.   The angry but controlled, insecure yet charismatic, market fearful, socialistically inclined man that Barrack Obama really is. I am speaking, of course, of the now famou
Read more