Although Memorial Day in the United Sates is ostensibly a day for honoring soldiers killed in wars, it is, rather, a day for promoting war. If it were to honor the dead, all its pageantry would be in opposition to war. Rather than being haunted by the ghosts of war, many Americans are very proud of all its soldiers killed while killing foreigners for the military industrial complex and the super-rich who own the country.
For the U.S.A. is a warfare state; it has been waging imperialistic overseas wars for a long, long time, and using its soldiers as cannon fodder. Most families of dead soldiers find it impossible to admit that their loved ones died in vain, even if courageously.
Without waging wars, the U.S. economy, as presently constituted, would collapse. Business goes on as usual.
Remembering all the war dead is like drifting on a ghost ship in a still sea of burning water. Haunted by the eerie silence of their absent presence, if we listen closely enough, we can hear such victims calling to us: Remember me, Remember me, why did it have to be?
“All warfare is ghostly,” writes the classical scholar Norman O. Brown, “every army an exercitus feralis (a funereal exercise), every soldier a living corpse.”
The world is littered with the corpses of wars’ victims, those of the killers and the killed, soldiers of every nation – but the vast majority are innocent civilians who never picked up a gun. The earth is so saturated with all their blood that one would expect the rivers to run red as a reminder. But that only happens in poems, as with Federico Garcia Lorca: “Beneath all the totals, a river of warm blood.”
But what do poets know that the potentates, politicians, and mad generals don’t? These killers are experts at shedding innocent blood to satisfy their blood lust and then erecting monuments to the killers. They are necrophiliacs, while all the poets do is to remind us that we will all die and that we should affirm life and love each other before we do – that war is an evil lie, as Wilfred Owen told us about World War I in Dulce et Decorum Est:
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
But that was long ago. War’s victims still fall everywhere, every day they are stilled in deserts, mountains, jungles, cities, houses, hospitals, schools, on the open roads, in bedrooms, in woods, in alleyways, crouched in basements, killed from the sky, the ground, directly, remotely, by their own desperate hands, slowly in despair. Why count the ways, why count the victims – the truth is countless?
But we must count, not to wave a flag and march down Main Steet to the sound of a marching band behind a fire engine with little kids on bikes and old men with rifles on their shoulders, but to galvanize ourselves to stand and oppose the warmongers who run the government.
Who can not weep and scream in opposition as the U.S./Israel commits genocide against the Palestinians? Savage slaughter for all to see but ignore.
Who is so blind as not to see the wars waged from administration to administration as smoothly as the change of seasons?
Once the warmongers shot down the U.S.’s great antiwar leaders. Now they suck the population in with Memorial Day sales and dreams of cookouts.
But business goes on as usual, as the great Roberta Flack sang so mournfully, “except that my brother is dead.” George M. Cohan was right: “The Yanks are coming.” They are always coming, but he was wrong to think it is ever over. It’s not supposed to be ever over.
And “over there,” Maha Khalil, a one year old Iraqi girl, was killed in the first few months of America’s criminal war against Iraq.
Mrs. Ngugen Thi Tau was slaughtered by U. S. soldiers at My Lai, Vietnam.
Mohammed Nidal Hisham Attallah, Ahmad Shadi Talal Al-Haddad, and Masa Mohammed Youssef Nasr are a few of at least 16,500 Palestinian children killed by Israel/U.S. in Gaza since October 7, 2023.
Who knows all the dead in Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, Gaza, Ukraine, Libya, East Timor, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, El Salvador, Chile, throughout Africa, and all the other countries where the American military and the CIA have been dispatched? Who can grasp it? Their names mean nothing to those who didn’t know them, just as the endless names of the U.S. military dead (most drafted into a war they didn’t want or understand) that line the Vietnam Veterans Memorial are a sad blur to those who come to look but didn’t know the fallen. The same is even truer for anyone who views the Holocaust memorial in Boston where all one sees are rows and rows of concentration camp numbers; for every number a real person, each one reduced by the Nazis to six-digits tattooed on arms.
When we try to name and count wars’ victims, we are overwhelmed and stunned. Yet the wars persist. Like the pawns conscripted to fight them, the anonymous ghosts of all the victims murmur in our ears: Why?
Dylan sings:
Oh my name it is nothin’
My age it means less
The country I come from
Is called the Midwest
I’s taught and brought up there
The laws to abide
And the land that I live in
Has God on its side.
But not all of the wars’ victims die. Vast numbers become “living corpses,” also mostly anonymous and forsaken. Across the world and here at home wherever the American war machine has set its sights, the lame and crippled struggle on, victims of bombs and bullets, napalm and white phosphorous, nuclear radiation, torture, biological weapons – all the grotesque weapons the ghouls of the weapons’ industries have conjured up from hell for their paymasters. Countless living victims, yes, but the weapons industries carefully count their bloody profits, as do those who invest in these companies while turning a blind eye to their own complicity.
Many of the wounds of war are psychological and spiritual. And so many of the victims suffer silently. Wars’ terrors follow them everywhere down their nights and down their days, and they can often find no escape from the nightmare images that populate their minds, flashing in and out. It’s beyond imagining the living hell of children worldwide reliving the sight of the bloodied mangled bodies of their parents at their feet, victims of bombs or death squads or perhaps “collateral damage,” as if any words or reasons could undue their everlasting trauma or cover up the radical evil of those who killed them
We owe it the wounded, dead, and tormented war victims everywhere to memorialize them with the words:
War is a lie, and only truth will free us.
And to stop marching with the drums drumming and the flags flying as if we are proud of the U.S. killing machine.
Edward Curtin: Sociologist, researcher, poet, essayist, journalist, novelist….writer – beyond a cage of categories. His new book is AT THE LOST AND FOUND: Personal & Political Dispatches of Resistance and Hope (Clarity Press)
The other day I had a conversation with a guy abhorred with carnage in Gaza. I said that carnage in Ukraine is even worse regarding the body count, still somehow people care less. Even the orange-one seems to care more than average Joe, at least he is using proper words (carnage, bloodbath) when scribbling on (anti)social media. Well, it’s mostly about soldiers dying and getting crippled and my interlocutor showed no understanding for my way of thinking. I defended my stance on moral grounds, a man should never be merely a means to end, but always end in itself. I’m idealist without ideals, he said (wtf).
In the article “The Silent Tragedy of Gaza: A Global Crisis of Morality and Humanity” author, philosopher Prof. Ruel F. Pepa, is full-mouthed of morality.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/silent-tragedy-gaza-global-crisis-morality-humanity/5888331
Nevertheless, his final passage in the article starts with: “A Final Reckoning: Will We Stand for Justice?”
Justice????
Wouldn’t morality suffice? Wouldn’t be actually preferable? I dare to say that in case of a firm and actionable morality justice would become obsolete. Of course, that is not today’s morality when we are left just with the language of morality while its substance is mostly gone (A.MacIntyre: After Virtue).
Lao Tzu about war:
Weapons are the tools of violence;
all decent men detest them.
Weapons are the tools of fear;
a decent man will avoid them
except in the direst necessity
and, if compelled, will use them
only with the utmost restraint.
Peace is his highest value.
If the peace has been shattered,
how can he be content?
His enemies are not demons,
but human beings like himself.
He doesn’t wish them personal harm.
Nor does he rejoice in victory.
How could he rejoice in victory
and delight in the slaughter of men?
He enters a battle gravely,
with sorrow and with great compassion,
as if he were attending a funeral.
https://web.archive.org/web/20200305074234/http://thetaoteching.com/taoteching31.html
I, too, am old enough to remember the Vietnam War. I didn’t go, but a friend – many friends – did. This particular friend was very dear to me. My freshman year at Junior College, I walked into Biology Class and sat down – the one student there at first. Then in walked the Captain of our Football Team and sat down beside me. Here I was, at the time, a nobody – and someone important came and sat beside me. That one act endeared him to me more than I can ever express.
He was killed in Vietnam. And even 60 years later, I still think of him. And still refuse to forgive my country for sending him to his death. As Shakespeare wrote in “Julius Caesar”: “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.” So let it be with America.
Excellent article/post. Your statement “if we listen closely enough, we can hear such victims calling to us: Remember me, Remember me, why did it have to be?” This caused me to remember the reason for the fate of Ancient Israel & ponder the fate of the modern State of Israel.
(Genesis 4: 9-11) “9 And the Lord said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother’s keeper? 10 And he said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground. 11 And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother’s blood from thy hand;”
Exodus 20:13 13 Thou shalt not kill.
Leviticus 17:11 11 For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.
Numbers 35:30-34 “33 So ye shall not pollute the land wherein ye are: for blood it defileth the land: and the land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it.
34 Defile not therefore the land which ye shall inhabit, wherein I dwell: for I the Lord dwell among the children of Israel.
2 Kings 21:10-16 10 And the Lord spake by his servants the prophets, saying,
11 Because Manasseh king of Judah hath done these abominations, and hath done wickedly above all that the Amorites did, which were before him, and hath made Judah also to sin with his idols:
12 Therefore thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Behold, I am bringing such evil upon Jerusalem and Judah, that whosoever heareth of it, both his ears shall tingle.
13 And I will stretch over Jerusalem the line of Samaria, and the plummet of the house of Ahab: and I will wipe Jerusalem as a man wipeth a dish, wiping it, and turning it upside down.
14 And I will forsake the remnant of mine inheritance, and deliver them into the hand of their enemies; and they shall become a prey and a spoil to all their enemies;
15 Because they have done that which was evil in my sight, and have provoked me to anger, since the day their fathers came forth out of Egypt, even unto this day.
16 Moreover Manasseh shed innocent blood very much, till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another; beside his sin wherewith he made Judah to sin, in doing that which was evil in the sight of the Lord.
2 Kings 24:3-4
3 Surely at the commandment of the Lord came this upon Judah, to remove them out of his sight, for the sins of Manasseh, according to all that he did;
4 And also for the innocent blood that he shed: for he filled Jerusalem with innocent blood; which the Lord would not pardon.
Mr. Curtin – your essay is an answer to a prayer yesterday – literally – as I was sickened by the constant drumbeat on media and in our environs on the celebration of death…..caused by wars – for what? Will someone write please write about reality of war!
Business must go on! After all, when Trump floated the idea of cutting the DOD budget in half: “On February 13th of 2025, Trump 47 briefly proposed cutting the Pentagon budget in half. That announcement had the immediate effect of “costing” Northrup Grumman, General Dynamics, and Lockheed Martin an estimated $6 Billion in stock valuation. Congress and the defense lobbies had their mission, and not only did they deliver, but Trump, Janus-like, on April 8th proposed a record-breaking $1 Trillion dollar DoD budget. Trump said “We have things under order now.” Nothing could be further from the truth……” – Karen Kwiatkowski at Lew Rockwell.
Your column on REALITY was a Godsend!
Thank you!
Trump is making a lot of rich people even richer with his on/off switch:
Off- cutting the pentagon budget, military supply stocks tank – stocks shorted in advance, stocks rebought at huge discounts
On – record funding of pentagon budget, stocks soar, short sellers cash in. (And options trades too).
Off – tariffs, tariffs, tariffs. Stocks plummet, same short selling shenanigans
On – hold those tariffs, stock soar, rinse & repeat
Insider trading off the hook, and the plebs still bleeding to death from manufactured inflation
Thanks, Ed, for voicing all that! “The killing of masses of people we ought bewail with sorrow and grief. Victory in battle we ought commemorate with mournful rites.” ~Lao-Tzu
In Australia we call it ANZAC Day.
Remembering the sacrifices of the (mainly) working class soldiers, men and women.
The politicians bathe in the celebration of patriotism.
Their offspring are rarely called to the frontlines.
Eric Bogle said it best:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnFzCmAyOp8
Bravo, Johnny! D’accord! Jim
And does anyone truly care about anything? “Not only have we accepted our enslavement…, we have even become proud of our enslavement…, and this is a terrible thing ! Then the other person said; “We are destructive. We have antagonized every living being on this earth. That’s why we have no friends”.
And so after 500 years of ruthlessness we’re still expecting something rational from our grand deciders? The citizens need to have conversations about how to transcend this insanity! Put the question, the vibrations into the atmosphere at the very least. Yes, you will get blank stares mostly! Don’t despair.