The rant of one citizen.
If anybody suggests that you should have a "Happy Memorial Day," ask him or her what's so happy about dead U.S. soldiers. If a southerner wishes it to you, tell him or her that you do not find the historical reality of Confederate unlawful combatants shooting U.S. soldiers in the face and killing them "happy." Then ask him or her what should happen to people who kill U.S. soldiers. My answer: they should not get parks, highways, schools, colleges, etc., named in their honor, unless we are ready to make way for "Tariq Aziz Boulevard" in Cleveland and "Mullah Muhammed Omar Junior High" in Biloxi.
To its disgrace, one of the Baltimore region's largest parks is named after the general who led Confederate armies to roar through western Maryland, killing U.S. soldiers north and south. Apparently no Baltimorean or Marylander merited the honor in this state that never joined the Confederacy. Maybe Vermont will name a park for the traitor Robert E. Lee as well, who in an extraordinary act of U.S. generosity was not only not executed as a traitor but was allowed his dignity in surrender at Appomattox, his citizenship restored and a comfortable end to his life. The least that these modern Confederate apologists could do would be to express bland regret for their heroes' killings of U.S. soldiers on this day, but apparently that's just too much to ask of them.
To those who wish you a "Happy Memorial Day," ask them what would make Memorial Day even happier. If we will carry the day on the calendar at all, it should be for somber remembrance of the Union dead of the Civil War, many of whom were indeed draftees but many were also idealistic volunteers who fought both the violence of a new enemy bordering the United States as well as the disgrace, the national "original sin" or "birth defect," of slavery. Let no modern-day Confederate apologist talk you into believing that the Civil War was about cotton and textile tariffs, it was about the maintenance of slavery as noted explicitly by every Confederate state's secession resolution. Let no Confederate apologist describe the Civil War as the "War of Northern Aggression" unchallenged; the U.S. Fort Sumter was the first victim of Confederate aggression, not the first attacker of poor Confederates, in the Civil War.
Now you may say, "who cares?" Who cares about U.S. dead? Who cares about dead soldiers today? As Dick Cheney noted, every soldier today in Iraq is a volunteer, ergo the dead soldiers are dead volunteers. The grieving families can, in that view, pound sand. But if U.S. casualties both past and present don't matter, then let's rip the holiday out of the calendar and go back to work. But if you actually think that the day matters, that soldiers' lives past and present actually matter, then that imposes moral and civic duties on you. At a minimum, you should exert the effort to correct the obscenity of "Happy Memorial Day." The day is not happy, not if you in fact love the United States of America.
Not every soldier who gets killed by war dies on the battlefield. Some die from war conditions, some chemical/nuclear (e.g. my uncle who died in the 1980s from cancer likely from his radiation exposure in WWII on a submarine), some from alcohol/drug use from maladaptive coping, from PTSD which is in modern understanding a grievous war wound needing treatment no less than a severed spine does. While the original day focused on U.S. "soldiers" in the Civil War, nothing should be taken away from the sacrifices of all service branches that either did not exist or did not participate as centrally in the largely land conflict of the Civil War.
Probably most of the people who stupidly wish others a "Happy Dead Soldiers Day" do so out of blithe ignorance, not mockery. They don't know that the day is a dirge, not a jig or an doe-eyed American Idol ditty. So perhaps busting their chops too hard isn't fair. But there comes a point where your love of country should compel you not merely to cheer when the U.S. takes on Cameroon in soccer, though cheer you should. It should motivate you to fight the lazy ignorance that this well-protected bonehead thinks protects our republic from, well, people giving a damn too much and being too informed, and thus overthrowing democratic institutions (??!). Whether you are a severe skeptic of the Iraq war like me or an advocate for its successful prosecution, you should not tolerate the slap in the mouth that "Happy Memorial Day" conveys not only to the memory of the dead and the dignity of their families, but to the surviving soldiers who had to collect the bodies, count the bodies, load the bodies into transport caskets and onto planes, the soldiers who have to drive the miserable drive to the next-of-kin's front door and deliver the most hideous, obscene news imaginable: your son, your father has died, his body massacred, in pursuit of the war policies of the President of the United States.
If your lips say "Happy Memorial Day," you should take cognizance of grieving widows and mothers, meet the children of the dead, and teach your lips not to say "Happy Day" to an atrocity. For the survivors, they must undergo two horrific days every year, at least: the anniversary of when they got the news from the military disaster-news-bearers-on-the-welcome-mat and the commercial obscenity of Happy Memorial Day when tacky car dealers HAVE A DEAL FOR YOU on an SUV! Yes, that SUV, the gluttonous consumer of what we want most out of not only Iraq, but Russia, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, and other freedom-loving states. While I won't reduce the advocacy of this war to the trite "No Blood for Oil," we should take notice that the current plans for the Green Zone are for luxuries and golf courses, and - better - these are U.S. government plans. Pentagon plans. What the hell does a U.S. golf course in the middle of a war zone have to do with weapons of mass destruction? Why are DoD personnel involved in Baghdad urban planning? And will Baghdad get to decide whether the open storefronts in my apartment complex will hold kebab stands or nail salons? (My strong preference would be for the former.) And in any event, why are soldiers dying for this? Isn't urban planning traditionally a municipal, not colonialist plan? No blood for the 14th green, I say.
But even if I am wrong and we need the Department of Defense to protect our national interest in golf bunkers, not military bunkers, the soldiers who die for these policies deserve MORE honor, not less. When soldiers die for a stupid policy, their deaths deserve MORE reverence, not less, for they pursue duty and sacrifice for duty when their leaders have failed. This lesson we failed to learn in Vietnam, when returning soldiers encountered disrespect and disregard (though far less "spitting" than is commonly believed). We must not fail to learn it now; we do honor the dead in our hearts, and we should be grateful to them and preserve their memory and sacrifice. Perhaps we should be "happy" that some love their country to risk it all, though "happy" still seems obscene. But even so, the day is not happy, unless you are a sociopath.