May 31, 2004
Wishful thinking
I am a veteran of WWII, and I’m lucky that I never got shot at (but once when we forgot to turn on the IFF system), and that I never shot at anybody else. I never joined the American Legion or the VFW when it was over. The only veteran’s parades I ever marched in were in my high school bands for WWI vets. I enjoyed the full and considerable benefits of the GI Bill, and I’m mighty grateful for that.
I’ve no brief with Memorial Day, I think it’s a splendid idea, but I do not especially celebrate it. The lives given to make it possible are legion and precious and altogether worth celebrating, but the wars that took them are not. I wish we would not call the monuments “war memorials,” but “peace memorials,” instead.
I wish we would not define peace in terms of war, but war in terms of peace. I wish we would not define peace as the absence of war, but as the presence of justice. It will take far more than wishful thinking to make all that so.