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

Picturing Peace

This is a big moving season among my friends and family. Upsizing, downsizing, relocating for a new job.

It hard work picturing the future. Lots of photos have been shared, and questions: will that table in the basement fit? What about bookshelves? Anyone have extra lampshades?

  

Even the birds in my yard are busy building, planning, rearranging. A pair of house sparrows rounded the entrance to their chosen birdhouse. Two great crested flycatchers spent days visiting unclaimed nesting holes, hopping in and out, calling back and forth, flitting from tree to tree.

We all carry pictures in our heads of how the world should be, what's possible, what isn't. Friends who grew up on farms can’t picture themselves in neighborhoods like mine. The neighbors are too close. The yards are too small. Friends who grew up in inner-city Philly enjoy my hammock, the flowers, the peaceful patio, but after a few days find it all too quiet. They can't imagine being so far from the corner bodega. Can't picture how they'd make friends in a place where no one sits on the stoop on a summer evening. 

We picture the future with reference to the past.

In America, that picture is shaped by war.

At a graduation ceremony this weekend, I listened again to our national anthem:

and the rocket’s red flare,
the bombs bursting in air,
gave proof through the night
that our flag was still there. 

Our nation was born through war. Still carries the scars of civil war. Still sees war as an essential component of who we are, who we will always be.

Memorial Day, when I stop to think, makes me uneasy. Our kids march through our leafy streets and stop at the bandstand for speeches honoring those who have died.

It’s right to honor those who have sacrificed for our nation, but I sometimes wonder: do we glorify that sacrifice rather than mourn?

And when do we honor those whose sacrifice led them in a different direction? When do our children march in celebration of those who worked to avert conflict or gave their lives to end disease, build schools, feed the hungry?

I follow a group called Veterans for Peace, begun in 1985 by U.S. veterans concerned about the nuclear arms race and U.S. military intervention in Central America. Since then the group has grown into over 120 chapters around the US, with affiliate chapters in Vietnam, Mexico, Ireland, the United Kingdom and Okinawa, Japan.

The group’s mission is to call attention to the human costs of war, for both those who fight and the civilian victim communities. And to invite world leaders to picture a world where diplomacy, humanitarian aide and education are more well-funded priorities than guns and drones and spies.

Each Memorial Day chapters around the world ask us to remember more honestly,  and mourn more fully, the reality of war: 

It is natural to first remember those who are closest to us. Many of us have been personally touched by war. But we must also extend that mourning. We must remember the combat veterans, civilian victims, and their families, who are all equally human beings. Honoring and remembering some deaths while ignoring others not only perpetuates war, but also ignores the moral injuries of war, which some now recognize as a significant cause of veteran suicide. This Memorial Day, Veterans For Peace is reminding the public that the human cost of war is more than human soldiers, but also the people who are caught in the crossfire. “Our message for Memorial Day is to remember all who have died in war and to understand that no one wins,” said Michael McPhearson, Veterans For Peace Executive Director. “There are people who profit from war, mainly those who invest in the defense industry or possibly the oil sector. But the veterans and civilians who survive war suffer for the rest of their lives. And the entire society is robbed of billions of tax dollars which could be spent on jobs, education, healthcare, infrastructure and sustainable energy.” 

I’ve posted before about military spending before, and about the call to be agents of peace.

Chapters of Veterans for Peace point out that a strong defense lobby drowns out other voices, even those of military leaders who insist that investments in aide, education and diplomacy would go farther to secure real peace than additional military funding.

According to the Borgen Project, an organization dedicated to ending global poverty, 

The U.S. Military Wants Global Poverty Addressed

The Secretary of Defense: Former Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates emerged as one of the strongest advocates for increased development funding. The former head of the Pentagon repeatedly said that the U.S. can’t win today’s national security challenges with force and military might alone. Gates warned of the “creeping militarization” of U.S. Foreign Policy.  

Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen said he would hand part of his budget to the State Department, “in a heartbeat.” Admiral Mullen also said, “U.S. foreign policy is still too dominated by the military, too dependent on the generals and admirals who lead our major overseas commands, and not enough on the State Department.”

The Generals: In March of 2010, fifty retired three and four star generals called on Congress to increase funding for the International Affairs Budget. The Generals noted that investments, non-military tools of development, and diplomacy foster economic and political stability on a global scale. It also strengthens our allies and fights the spread of poverty, disease, terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.
 84% of military officers said that strengthening non-military tools, such as diplomacy and development efforts, should be at least equal to strengthening military efforts.

What would it take for Congress to pass a budget that held defense spending steady and doubled aid and diplomacy?

What would it take for us to picture and work for peace, rather than endorse and support those who profit from weapons and war?

The Borgen Group offers suggestions for impacting budget and policy.

Veterans for Peace offers ideas and events for Memorial Days for Peace.

For my own Memorial Day observance, I’ll be spending time praying about what it means to “seek peace and pursue it.”

Asking God to show me my place in his larger picture of peace.

Other posts about war, guns, peace:

Making Peace: What God's Children Do, March 24, 2013 

Guns, God, Mercy, March 10, 2013

Guns and Good News?, Jul 15, 2012 

Choosing Life,  Jan 27, 2013 

Blessed Are the Peacemakers?, Jul 22, 2012 

Earth Day Shalom: Ripples of Resurrection, Apr 22, 2012

Reconciling Righteousness, May, 20, 2012