Memorial Day 1969

Every year Leonia, New Jersey had a Memorial Day parade that was run by the American Legion as a grand display of patriotic militarism. 1969 was not a good year for that sort of thing. A majority of those polled were saying it had been a mistake to get involved in Vietnam. In early 1969, the death toll for American troops passed that in Korea. May 1969 saw the Hamurger Hill fiasco, which killed 46 marines, while the Times reported on Nixon's secret bombing in Cambodia. The anti-war movement was kicking into high gear.

So for the first time in the history of the town there were separate parallel Memorial Day observances--the American Legion parade, and a peace vigil organized by my parents and their friends; one to mourn the far too many deaths from the war, and another to put a happy spin on why they died--and a good deal of acrimony between the two.

The thing I remember most vividly is my oldest brother's part in the whole thing. He and several other kids in the marching band showed up that morning with black armbands. The band director told them they couldn't march in the parade wearing them. So they didn't; instead, they marched on the sidewalk alongside the band, in full uniform (plus armbands), playing along, marching in step. Some people jeered and cursed at them. Some of us cheered.

Now it's another Memorial Day, and we're in another war we never should have started. Now, as then, we have the clash between two completely different conceptions of what Memorial Day means.

For a lot of us, it's all about the loss. Memorial Day is when we should think about the cost in human lives of this war and every war. We honor their individual courage, their willingness to serve, but we do not buy the political rationale that got them killed. The style of protest may be different, but the end is the same as it was in 1969: to prevent the further loss of life.

For the warbloggers, like the American Legion in 1969, patriotic militarism is the order of the day. Their catchphrase is 'remember their sacrifice'--a wording that implies that they all (including, and especially, those who died in the Iraq War) died for something. They take the admirable sentiments of Memorial Day and try to attach them to their own political ends, to use the fact of their deaths to ennoble the catastrophic stupidity for which they died. It's a bit of chutzpah reminiscent of Reagan attacking the Democrats for (in Reagan's version) saying the marines in Lebanon 'died in vain'.

To them, our lack of support for the grand cause (whatever it is this week) equals disrespect for the troops (living or dead); to us, their enthusiastic support for a dubious adventure in which they themselves play no role is partly responsible for the senseless loss of life. We believe our duty to the soldiers is to bring them home. The warbloggers believe their duty is cheerleading. As in 1969, there is no reconciling the two. It all has a depressing familiarity to it.

What matters in the end is that we've lost 2,465 (and counting) American soldiers--including one earlier today. If there is any common ground at all, it lies in remembering them as humans--in trying to comprehend the staggering loss (to families, to friends, to comrades in arms) those numbers represent. Let us all, whatever our beliefs about the war, at least do that much.

[That's all, folks]