Telling Lies Over Good Soldiers’ Graves
Dishonesty Has Gutted The Last Patriotic Holiday That Means Something.
Memorial Day is a lovely day in America, a day of reunion in small towns, where people drive up to the cemetery on Monday morning and file in, old-timers carrying lawn chairs, and even if you’ve missed a few years, people will come over and shake your hand and thank you for coming. You don’t have to dress up or support the war in Iraq. You just come, and afterward there’s hot dogs and potato salad at the Legion Club.
It’s the last patriotic holiday that still means something, and it persists year after year despite the wooden rituals and leaden speeches. In Central Park on Monday, an admiral with a chestful of ribbons gripped the lectern and read his lines, and the line of his that got quoted was, “Their sacrifice has enabled us to enjoy the things that we, I think in many cases, take for granted,” which does not ring, does it? No.
“Their sacrifice has enabled us to enjoy the things that many of us take for granted” would have been better, but still it’s nothing people will take home with them and ponder. How about, “Their noble sacrifice has enabled us to see the ignobility of the leadership that sent them to their deaths”? How about “We have sacrificed enough of our young men and women and it is time to bring them home to enjoy the things that the rest of us take for granted”?
The Current Occupant drove over the bridge to Arlington and spoke at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, a site of powerful reverence, and his speechwriter, in a hurry to finish and enjoy his weekend, gave him “From their deaths must come a world where the cruel dreams of tyrants and terrorists are frustrated and foiled — where our nation is more secure from attack, and where the gift of liberty is secured for millions who have never known it,” a line cobbled together from scrap lumber. Shades of “the last full measure of devotion” and “we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain” but made from different cloth. The reputation of the Gettysburg Address remains secure.
Dishonesty makes for poor rhetoric and that’s what has gutted this beautiful holiday. The ideas it celebrates — that our young men and women did their duty and died in defense of their country — are simply not true. Vietnam was lost and it didn’t matter to the security of the United States. Saigon fell and life in the States went on without a blink. And since the end of selective service, these honored dead are somebody else’s sons and daughters, not ours — one good reason why there is so little protest of this war: If the Army was conscripting our children to go to Baghdad, the Occupant’s approval rating would be in the low teens.
Memorial Day survives on the faint memories of World War II, the Good War. Those old Legion and VFW guys are the ones who keep it going. Some come in fatigues, some ride in golf carts past the rows of tombstones and the urns with fresh gardenias planted in them, and the Boy Scouts line up, and the auxiliary ladies in blue hand out little American flags. There is a distant HEE-YUP and the crowd shushes and the honor guard marches in, left, right, left, right, left, right, and Old Glory is raised on the flagpole, and we all recite the Pledge of Allegiance. The names of the dead are read and wreaths of poppies are placed and maybe somebody recites “In Flanders Fields”:
In Flanders Fields the poppies blow,
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky,
The larks, still bravely singing, fly,
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
Everyone is a little stiff and self-consciously reverent. And then comes the speech. That’s the problem. It is time for the truth to be told and we cannot bring ourselves to tell it. Good men and women were sacrificed to the vanity of politicians and generals. It is a miserable business to tell lies over the graves of good soldiers, but we do, and then we all sing “America the Beautiful,” including the verse about heroes proved in liberating strife, and the honor guard fires its rifle salute and somebody presses Play on a boombox and we hear “Taps” and the guard turns about-face and marches off and we walk away, thoughtfully, and there is much to think about.
Garrison Keillor’s “A Prairie Home Companion” can be heard Saturday nights on public radio stations across the country.
© 2007 by Garrison Keillor. All rights reserved. Distributed by Tribune Media Services, Inc.
US soldiers die to protect what kind of freedom?
The notion of freedom of Isiah Benjamins? Consumer robot freedom? The freedom to be a waged slave to buy programmed desires? That’s not freedom. That’s a trap.
Check out the BBC documentary called “The Trap” on YouTube.
And, of course, George Lakoff has recently written an entire book on framing the different notions of freedom by progressives and conservatives.
http://www.rockridgeinstitute.org/research/lakoff/freedom
Nothing like sacrificing a few willing youths to glorify the leaders. Leaders have been doing this sort of thing for centuries, and they feel good about all the blood that’s shed to honor them. They won’t admit it, but it’s why they keep the kids in harms’ way and why they won’t heed the counsel of the people.
edited
In Flanders Fields
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army
IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
Do you think if the dead could speak to us they would cry out for yet more war dead as this poem suggests? I don’t think so. They would say it’s time to stop the killing. They would remind us that 90% of the war dead are civilians, the women and the children and the old. What we should do on Memorial Day is read Mark Twain’s War Prayer.
Bravo Mr. Keillor,
Along with Gore Vidal and Thom Hartmann, you remind us that there is another America where Patriotism has not been soiled by lies and schemes of “Patrioteers”.
Thanks and keep up the good work.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Keillor shows us the right way to approach swing voters and undecided voters in our districts.
We must show them that opposition to the war is consistent with their core conservative values: honesty, self-reliance, respect for the law….
Because, in the end, “what doth it profit a nation to gain an empire, but lose it’s soul?”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
I dunno about “Flanders Field”… that last stanza probably stirs strong feelings down at the VFW. Maybe we could change it to “Take BACK our quarrel from the foe”.
These lies find their way out in the general society. Whenever, for example, I feel lazy, I’m encouraged by the horrors performed by the hard workers at Auchwitz, whose camp motto, I believe, was ‘work will make you free’.
When future generations express a lack of patriotism, it will no doubt be informed by the knowledge of how easily excess patriotism had been exploited during this time and Vietnam. Horror in the name of patriotism: at some point even the casual observer recognizes the connection, and eshews ALL patriotism, even the good kind. Just as one can look at Auchwitz and realize that sometimes working hard can be bad, it encourages a response that laziness is good, and in that way it allows evil to continue forward.
The War Prayer
by Mark Twain
It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and spluttering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spread of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts, and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country, and invoked the God of Battles beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpourings of fervid eloquence which moved every listener. It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt upon its righteousness straightway got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety’s sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way.
…
The Rest is posted at: http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/making/warprayer.html
From where does Garrison Keillor get the courage to say these things? All though it on the Internet and not in a publication of note.
From Lincoln at Gettysburg to Bush at Arlington. From the pen of one of history’s most complex geniuses to the cynical drivel of a David Frum recited by a pointless slobbering jackass. We are the hollow men, and America’s flirtation with greatness is fast being reduced to a mere footnote in the chronicle of civilizations past and present. It is too early to guess whether there will be a future, or whether it will be worth discussing.
This whole country is one big sorry lie. From the masses to the “decider-in-chief,” Americans are in denial.
What goes unsaid on Memorial Days:
“Why, of course the people don’t want war. The people never want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war in which the best he can hope for is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don’t want war. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.”
Nazi HERMANN GOERING, during the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, 1946. Nuremberg Diaries, written by G.M. Gilbert
Here is an illustrated version of Twain’s War Prayer.
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/illuswarprayer.html
Enjoy a bit if truth in pictures…
In Memory of the women and children slaughtered at the hands of men who believe they have authority to do so.
Ah, Garrison,
You tell it so well.
Thank you for speaking for us all.