Reflections on Memorial Day 2007

Today we are told to remember the sacrifice of Americans who fought and died for their country. Remembrance of dead warriors is not a new or unique ceremony; the Ancient Greeks did it, and many more recent societies as well. Most social organizations who willfully engage in violence have a special ceremony for the death of their members in combat -- from street gangs to nation-states. In one sense these ceremonies are mass funerals: the reading of names, visiting of graves or battlefields, gatherings of family and friends. But they are also affirmations by the ruling elite of that organization that those who died did not do so in vain. They died fighting for our freedom. They died so that we could live.

This year in particular Memorial Day is shaded by strong political sentiments. The public has turned fully against the Iraq War, and against the people and policies which created it. The end of our military involvement, and with it a de facto admission of the failure of our supposed mission, is now inevitable. The timing of this fin de siècle depends more on the courage of a few key Democratic members of Congress than on anything going on outside of the Beltway. Guilt and anger pervade the national psyche. Those who supported the war feel guilty for the pain it has caused for families in the US military and anger at the Executive Branch for its multitude of mistakes. Those who were against the war from the beginning feel guilty for allowing their country to create such a dismal mess and anger at those who were supposed to represent them for not having the backbone to stand up for their beliefs. The political mood of the country is at a low. The economy, stuck in the doldrums for years, has failed to generate any positive momentum. The vast majority are working more hours for low wages, and paying more to provide basic necessities to their families with rapidly shrinking hopes that their children's lives will be better than theirs. It is not a new phenomenon for people to think that the country is headed in the wrong direction; you can't make everybody happy all of the time. But it is new for this opinion to be held by such a large number of people. It is a smoggy dusk in America.

Memorial Day descends from an event held on May 1, 1865 in Charleston, South Carolina. Thousands of newly freed slaves - men, women, and children - paraded through the city, joined by local Union army soldiers and white abolitionists. They marched around the site of a former prison camp and mass grave for Union soldiers known as the "Planter's Race Course". Just previous to the march, several black residents had reburied all of the soldiers in proper graves and built a tall fence and archway around the site. On the archway they inscribed the words 'Martyrs of the Race Course'.

The Charleston march celebrated the end of slavery by remembering those who had died during the long and bloody war which resulted in emancipation. The Civil War was the first instance of the government using humanitarian impulses to support its military action. This image of America as the 'protector of the downtrodden and repressed' fit well with the religiously-infused idea of 'American exceptionalism'. It is America as the political missionary, spreading democracy and capitalism to the needy peoples of the world. We fight for their own good. Every war since the the Civil War has utilized this rationale in some way. This ideology is the cornerstone of the American Empire. One hundred and thirty-eight years after the Charleston march another Republican president invokes the same rationale, blindly expecting the same parades and admiration for freeing another society of non-white people.

Comparing the Iraq War to the Civil War and George Bush to Abraham Lincoln? Before you either castrate me or nominate me for US Attorney (depending on your affiliation), please allow an explanation. It seems all too possible that the Iraq War will be the last time the government will be able to use humanitarian impulses to persuade the American public into supporting military intervention. The trend towards Empire which started with the Civil War ends here. Many of those on both the Left and the Right may cheer; good riddance, they say, empire never did anybody any good. The Right says we have enough problems at home, and it is not our duty to be the policeman of the world. The Left scorns the 'American exceptionalism' empire, pointing to human rights abuses, support for dictators, and big business reaping the rewards of our brand of globalization. And they are both right.

The world is rapidly moving towards a highly militarized international system of rigid alliances and dependencies all too reminiscent of that preceded both World Wars -- except with the added element of nuclear proliferation. Democracies and respect for human rights are on the decline, and terrorism is on the rise. The stupendous advances in technology in the past half-century have failed to significantly alleviate the serious social and health problems faced by the vast majority of the world's population. Wealth is more stratified than it has ever been in human history. Human-caused climate change threatens to overturn our entire way of life. To be sure, American imperialists have largely ignored, if not facilitated, the development of these threats. Our hands are bloody. We are not God's gift to Earth, not a shining city on the hill. As a people, as a nation-state, we are not exceptional.

These threats, however, are very exceptional. And it will take exceptional international will and cooperation to confront them and take us off the path towards rising oceans, rising poverty, and a nuclear World War III. And it cannot be disputed that if Americans are not part of that international will and cooperation, then it will certainly fail. This dismal future is not a certainty, but it gets closer to one every day. What can we do?

Everything: Get involved. Volunteer. Travel. Vote. Donate to charity. Use energy more efficiently. Question authority. Question yourself. Learn a language. Talk to someone you hate. Talk to someone you love. Educate yourself. Dream big. Solving our problems is not the sovereign occupation of the government. Building a better world requires us all to play a part. In reality we are not special. But sometimes perception becomes reality. Perhaps if we believe we are special, we can accomplish special things.

On Memorial Day we are supposed to remember those who died so that we could live. But why should this honor be extended to soldiers only? Perhaps this day should also be to remember those whose lives were committed to bettering the world. Being murdered should not be the only qualification for honor. Let us honor those who took to the streets in Charleston on May 1, 1865 to celebrate freedom. And let us commit ourselves to using that same freedom to make the world better for everyone.