Memorial Day 2005

I seem to be contributing to this blog not just alone, but only on holidays. Well, I hope to contribute a bit more over the summer. In June, I'll be away but during the rest of the summer, writing will be my primary focus. I hope that some of you will join me.

In the meantime, I offer the following thoughts about Memorial Day, that day we nominally set aside to remember fallen soldiers. Almost 2,000 American soldiers have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, another 200 "Coalition forces", and tens of thousands of Iraqis and Afghanis. Every day I am saddened by these deaths, and uncomprehending that so many people seem to think that war is the right answer for any problem at all. Even on the left, the anti-war sloganeering seems to focus on the wrongness of this particular war, all the while accepting the premise that war is sometimes right. I feel very alone in my opposition to the idea that war is ever justifiable. Often these days, when I'm feeling like my ideas are way out of the mainstream, I turn to Dr. King for inspiration, and fellow feeling. As always, his eloquence and clairty console and inspire me.

More recently I have come to see the need for the method of nonviolence in international relations. Although I was not yet convinced of its efficacy in conflicts between nations, I felt that while war could never be a positive good, it could serve as a negative good by preventing the spread and growth of an evil force. War, horrible as it is, might be preferable to surrender to a totalitarian system. But now I believe that the potential destructiveness of modern weapons totally rules out the possibility of war ever again achieving a negative good. If we assume that mankind has a right to survive then we must find an alternative to war and destruction. "Don't ever let anyone pull you so low as to hate them. We must use the weapon of love. We must have the compassion and understanding for those who hate us. We must realize so many people are taught to hate us that they are not totally responsible for their hate. But we stand in life at midnight; we are always on the threshold of a new dawn."

--Martin Luther King, Jr., "Pilgrimage to Nonviolence" in Strength to Love (1958)

I feel that these ideas are all but moribund in our daily lives. So while we honor all those war dead, let us also honor peace and non-violence. Those ideals don't deserve to die any more than the soldiers do.