There have been so many good diaries today, that it has made me notice a fundamental flaw in our one-sided celebration of Memorial Day: we limit it to honoring
our dead, but not their victims. This seems at least ungenerous, but I think that through this limitation, we lose a tremendous opportunity for peacemaking. It is interesting to consider some of the history of Memorial Day in this regard.
Memorial Day began with the informal decoration of Confederate graves, a practice that was observed in 1868 by
Mary Logan, the wife of a Union General, John Logan. He was inspired by her description of this practice to issue a
general order commanding that the US Army decorate Union graves, for the purpose
of preserving and strengthening those kind and fraternal feelings which have bound together the soldiers, sailors, and marines who united to suppress the late rebellion. Although it started as Union-only and Confederate only, the people who decorated the graves didn't distinguish between Blue and Gray, and soon, at least in the North, Decoration Day, as it was then known, was taken to be a day of remembrance of all Civil War victims. (There are still several southern states that have a different day to memorialize Confederate dead.)
In the Civil War, of course, this blurring of which side a dead soldier was fighting on was relatively natural, because once the war ended, the two sides united. However, once Memorial Day was extended to include WWI dead, its inclusiveness was lost. It is now taken as a day to remember all American war dead, but none of those from other countries who died, either by our side or by our hands. Unfortunately, this makes it all too easy to see it not as a day of mourning for those who died in war, but as a day to glorify war and its exploits.
Yet, isn't it true that if we are to end war, all human beings must unite, just as the Union and Confederate sides united after the "late rebellion" ended? I think that as a country we would be substantially strengthened if we made an effort to include not only Confederates, but Spanish, German, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Iraqi war dead in our remembrances, because they died fighting for their countries just like our dead did for ours. Also, and even more importantly, civilian "collateral damage" casualties must be include in our memories, for their deaths are even more stupid and horrible than the putatively more glorious demise of the soldiers. I believe that by including all the dead, and all the injured, we will learn to hate warfare rather than to glorify it, and maybe someday we will find peace.
Well, that was my thought for the day.
Greg Shenaut