Rachel Weeping

Memorial Day began as Decoration Day: a day to remember, grieve and decorate the graves of soldiers, North and South, who died in the Civil War. 

Was that war inevitable? Could it have been avoided? 

Historian David Goldfield has written several studies probing that question. In a 2013 article, Give Peace a Chance, Avoid the Carnage of War, he wrote: 

In commemorating the Civil War, we should remember that wars are easily made, difficult to end, and burdened with unintended consequences and unforeseen human casualties.

Was the Civil War a just war? He answers "No". 

More than 750,000 men died in the Civil War. Extrapolated to today’s population, the death toll would be close to 10 million. Consider also the millions who mourned the loss of their husbands, brothers and sons, and consider those soldiers who survived yet who returned home maimed in mind or body. Most historians today would lament the casualties, but commend the outcome: the liberation of 4 million slaves.

I disagree. The Civil War was not a just war. It was a war of choice brought on by the insidious mixture of politics and religion that caused our political process and, ultimately, the nation to disintegrate.

Would our bitter national dialogue about race have taken a different course if the conflict over slavery had been addressed in a different way?

Burning of Richmond, Virginia

Would our national politics be less divided if abolition had been achieved through moral persuasion, as happened in England and other countries, rather than through bloody conflict? 

The question of just wars presses in today as the world watches and grieves the carnage of Rafa. The people of Gaza, frightened and hungry, were told to take refuge in Rafa, a Palestinian city in the southern Gaza Strip. Last night Israeli forces dropped dozens of bombs on a designated safe space, in direct defiance of international law. 

Every conflict is born of small decisions, accumulated grievance, escalation or de-escalation, wisdom or folly. 

In his challenging, thoughtful graduation speech at Brandeis University, filmmaker Ken Burns reminded his audience that history is complicated and choices are rarely as simple as we would wish:

it's clear as individuals and as a nation we are dialectically preoccupied. Everything is either right or wrong, red state or blue state, young or old, gay or straight, rich or poor, Palestinian or Israeli, my way or the highway. Everywhere we are trapped by these old, tired, binary reactions, assumptions, and certainties. For filmmakers and faculty, students and citizens, that preoccupation is imprisoning. Still, we know and we hear and we express only arguments, and by so doing, we forget the inconvenient complexities of history and of human nature. That, for example, three great religions, their believers, all children of Abraham, each professing at the heart of their teaching, a respect for all human life, each with a central connection to and legitimate claim to the same holy ground, violate their own dictates of conduct and make this perpetually contested land a shameful graveyard. . .

 A very wise person I know with years of experience with the Middle East recently challenged me, "Could you hold the idea that there could be two wrongs and two rights?"

In Israel and Gaza, there are millennia of wrongs. Countless just claims. Many self-motivated decisions by leaders who now look away as innocents suffer. 

In our own national response, there are wrongs and rights: political posturing. Economic interests. Anxious fears for family and friends in Israel, Palestine, neighboring countries.

For our leaders there are legitimate fears about geopolitical alliances, balances of power, unintended consequences. 

In his speech, Burns spoke of our habit of argument, the need to choose sides, "our preoccupation with always making the other wrong at an individual as well as a global level. "

I am reminded of what the journalist I.F. Stone once said to a young acolyte who was profoundly disappointed in his mentor's admiration for Thomas Jefferson. "It's because history is tragedy," Stone admonished him, "Not melodrama." It's the perfect response. In melodrama all villains are perfectly villainous and all heroes are perfectly virtuous, but life is not like that. 

There is no shortage of villains in the story unfolding in Israel and Gaza. And no shortage of heroes. 

Answers, solutions, are in short supply. 

I've been carrying the words from Jeremiah 31:15: 

“A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.”

Always the innocent are casualties. 

Harm on the scale now taking place doesn't just vanish when the conflict ends. It shapes the lives of all who take part. Every inhabitant of those refugee camp. Every aide or health worker who witnesses the carnage. Every Israeli soldier who participates.

The pain, trauma and grief will shape the region, and global politics, for decades to come. Just as the Civil War has shaped, and still shapes, our own nation.

Lord have mercy. 

You can watch the full Ken Burns speech (21 minutes) here.

An earlier Memorial Day post: Picturing Peace, May 29, 2016