This day began as Decoration Day, a day on which communities commemorated their dead from the U.S. Civil War. After World War I, the commemoration was expanded to include all those who gave what Abraham Lincoln called at Gettysburg "the last full measure of devotion" in the service of the United States in any war or military action.
I am a man of peace. I hate war, and I hate violence of all kinds. But I'm also an historian, and my area of specialization is the first half of the twentieth century--and that means I spend a lot of time studying about wars. My doctoral research project involves a military occupation after a major war, and one of my major interests is the Nazi period. And so, while I hate wars and everything about them, I recognize--I have to recognize--that they are sometimes necessary evils. And even in the case of our present illegal, immoral, and unjustifiable war in Iraq and Afghanistan, I recognize that it is not the soldiers' and sailors' and airmen's and Marines's problem that we have no business being where we are and doing what we're doing, but rather a colossal failure of our national leadership. I hate the war. I do not hate the men and women who are fighting it.
On the contrary, I respect their willingness to serve in difficult times, in difficult conditions, and for little rewards, at great personal risk and hardship to themselves and to their families. If you doubt me on this, I'll recommend that you take a look at Carrier, a 10-hour series that PBS recently broadcast covering life on the U.S.S. Nimitz, an aircraft carrier that was deployed to the Persian Gulf in support of the Iraq war in 2005. Look at what those men and women went through, and what their families and loved ones were going through, and then tell me that we don't owe them something--and something more substantial than a couple of federal holidays each year that most people treat as just another excuse for a vacation.
I am not a veteran. I registered for Selective Service when I turned 18, as required by law, but was not required to serve. I get asked, occasionally, what I would have done had I been called up, and the only truthful answer I can give to that question is to say I don't know for sure. I might have sought conscientious objector status. More likely, I would have opted for a non-combatant role--at least if I felt the cause was just. But the justness of the cause is not an excuse to renege on the promises we've made to the men and women who signed up, allegedly of their own free will but--as Carrier demonstrated quite effectively--in reality often because of poor choices in their civilian lives or poor economic prospects. We promised them educational benefits, we promised them medical care if they were wounded or disabled in the service of our nation, and we promised to take care of their families and loved ones if they paid the ultimate price. It is our sacred obligation to live up to those promises--and not to find ways, as the Bush administration and the Republican Party generally seek to do, to skimp on them. Why? Because we gave our word to those men and women raising their right hands to God and swearing to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic," that's why. Just as we expect the members of our armed forces to be true to their oath, we have an obligation to uphold our part of the bargain. And if we don't, there will be a reckoning someday: at the very least when we each of us stand before the Great Judge and have to give an account of our lives.
Men and women of my family have worn the uniform of this country since before there was either a country or a uniform. My father was manning a radar station in South Korea during the Vietnam conflict when I was born. He didn't get to see me, except in pictures, until I was a year and a half old. My stepfather served in the Second World War--and still doesn't like to talk about what he saw and what he did. A distant cousin of mine on my mother's side was killed in action when his bomber was shot down over Germany in the final year of that same war. Three of what we're 95% sure were very distant cousins fought in the Revolutionary War, including one who died during that horrible winter of 1777-1778 at Valley Forge.
I don't think that lineage makes me anything terribly special--just that it gives me plenty to reflect on each year on Memorial Day and Veterans Day. Neither do I think that veterans are necessarily better people--or better citizens--just because of their service. But I do think that their service should earn for them at least a modicum of respect from the nation--and its citizens--that they served: and that that recognition should be more substantial and more substantive than dedicating a couple of days out of the calendar allegedly in their memory. We owe them that, too--but we owe them far more, and we haven't always been that good about paying that debt.
As Lincoln also said at Gettysburg, "...in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow..." either the ground in which our war dead rest until the Last Trumpet, or the memory of all those who have served, living or dead. But we can at least pause once in a while and, in the words from the Requiem Mass that I took for the title of this post, offer a gift in thanksgiving "for the souls of those whom we commemorate this day."
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