Memorial Day and the Pacifist Conscience

Another Memorial Day is upon us. Social media sites are filling up with the call to remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom.  One cannot log onto facebook without seeing earnest images of military graveyards or soldiers in wheel chairs, paired with reminders that Memorial Day is not just about a long weekend and a barbeque party.

The images and messages do their inevitable work on me. I feel compassion for those who lost so much. I see the numbers--the nearly half million American soldiers who died in WWII--and think about them and the millions of others around the world who died during that conflict--both soldiers and civilians. And then I think of all the other wars, all the soldiers who came home physically or emotionally scarred, or who never came home at all. And I think, "Yes. We must remember."

But what does it mean to "remember" the wages of war and the sacrifices of our soldiers? The standard American answer is this: We remember that "freedom doesn't come free," that soldiers died and sacrificed themselves so that we can enjoy our freedom and way of life, and we remember this in order to express our gratitude to them.

But this answer, however much it resonates with those around me, doesn't quite capture how I feel when I reflect on our wars and the sacrifices of our soldiers. Here's the problem: Sometimes soldiers have been called into service by our government, torn from their families, required to fight and die--and their sacrifice didn't contribute to our freedom or way of life. They were sent off to fight optional wars for questionable purposes. And while it makes their loss more bearable to suppose that it served some great good, sometimes that's just not true. Sometimes our government made a bad decision, and our soldiers' bravery and sacrifices served a dubious cause. And I want to remember them, too. I want to remember and grieve for them, too. I want to honor them, too.

Part of what makes it difficult for me to earnestly repeat the platitudes so often quoted on Memorial Day is this: I believe that the number of cases in which our soldiers were sent out needlessly is far greater than most people seem to suppose. For much of my life I've described myself as a pacifist, although what I've meant by that term has evolved over the years. Sometimes I question whether the term is entirely fitting, since I worry about the kind of dogmatic or uncompromising implications that "pacifism" is often taken to connote ("It is NEVER morally permissible to resort to war").

It is more accurate to say that I am deeply skeptical of war. I look at the world around me and I see a war system. By this I mean that nations treat war and the threat of war as go-to responses to the range of threats that they face, and they devote often enormous resources to improving their capacity to wage war successfully. And what is the result? In a sense, it has become true that we have no choice but to go to war in many of the cases that we do--no choice but to send our soldiers out to kill and die. But the reason we have no choice is because we've put all our eggs in the military basket, so to speak. We haven't explored the nonviolent alternatives enough even to know what they might be, let alone invested in our capacity to deploy these nonviolent measures effectively.

How many trillions have we spent on the military budget? Can any of us honestly say that, yes, the US government has devoted just as much in financial and personal resources, in time and talent and energy, in training and preparation, in order to turn war into a genuine last resort, one that comes only after the enormous battery of powerful nonviolent tools we've developed have failed us?

No. We don't have an enormous battery of powerful nonviolent tools. Certainly nothing to compare with our military arsenals. Is that because there aren't in principle such nonviolent tools? Or is it because we haven't spent nearly the resources to discover them and develop them that we've devoted to developing military tools?

Too often in international conflicts, the only real alternative to walloping others with our big stick is approaching them and saying, "Hey, you really don't want me to wallop you with this big stick, do you?" Far too often, this is what diplomacy amounts to, and when others don't respond to it--when they get defensive, when their egos won't allow them to "lose face"--we say, "See? Some people just can't be reasoned with." And we wallop them with our big stick.

Is it ever the case that wielding a big stick on the international stage is the only way to promote our safety, our prosperity, our freedom? Perhaps so. But our big stick is people. People who are taken away from their homes and families, often for long stretches of time. People who suffer and sometimes die. People who kill and who live with the memory of those they killed. People who sometimes come home without arms and legs, or who come home with post trauma.

And our big stick wallops people--and usually not the ones who respond defiantly to our underdeveloped efforts at diplomacy, the big egos in charge. Usually it's people very much like our own soldiers, people with families they've been taken away from, people who would rather live and love than fight and die. And then there's the "collateral damage"--again people, in this case civilians, who were in the wrong place at the wrong time when the big stick fell.

Is it sometimes necessary to resort to a big stick? Perhaps so. But the costs are so high that we'd better make damned sure we've explored the alternatives, cultivated our capacity to pursue the alternatives effectively, and exhausted the alternatives before we send real human beings out to kill and die for our sakes. For me, remembering and honoring those who've died in war should mean redoubling our commitment to reducing--and perhaps one day eliminating--the need for war.

Going to war may sometimes be the best we can do under the circumstances. But we need to keep in mind our role in shaping those circumstances. And we need to look for ways to change them.

I am grateful that when our collective fixation on military solutions puts us into a situation where the only option is war, there are those who are willing to leave home, to leave love and comfort, and to risk themselves for our sakes. But I also want to honor those who were sent out to fight and die when war wasn't the only option--and not by pretending that it was. I think we honor all of them by striving to expand our options, by increasing the range of national alternatives to our big stick made of human lives.