In a War-Loving Society, Peace Activism Takes a Lot of
Guts and Bravery 

by Clancy Sigal, Alternet

Monday 30 May 2011 

http://www.truth-out.org/war-loving-society-peace-activism-takes-lot-guts-and-bravery/1306771522

"War will exist until that distant day when the
conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and
prestige that the warrior does today."
 -- John F. Kennedy

I lost a friend recently with whom I'd grown up. As
adolescents, we'd shared enthusiasms, and death-defying
leaps into Lake Michigan off the Adler Planetarium, and
chased the same girls. He had a puckish sense of
humour, sometimes ghoulish, the kind of stuff you laugh
at only when you're 15. He could crick his neck with a
loud snap, as if being hanged from a gallows, a party
trick that revolted grownups but we thought hilarious.
He could pick out a tune on a banjo on first hearing
and sing political parodies of pop songs. As we grew
up, we shared a history, not only of our acne-scarred,
ego-obsessed selves, but something broader and deeper I
best call antifascism.

We ran wild in the streets of Chicago itching for
showdowns with anyone who disagreed with us - we were
young Communist fronters and couldn't wait to enlist or
be drafted. In the middle of the second world war, it
was patriotic to be a red - "communism is 20th-century
Americanism", went the slogan. Passion, not cynicism or
detachment, was our deal.

With his death, I've lost a big part of the thread, a
connection to the original meaning of things. I'm not
alone in this broken thread on Memorial Day.

If you're in the United States while reading this, try
a little test: ask someone, anyone, what Memorial Day
memorialises? I've queried several friends and none
could tell me that Memorial Day, once called
"Decoration Day", began in the aftermath of the civil
war to honour the more than 600,000 dead Confederate
and Union soldiers - the deadliest war in US history.

Once, Memorial Day was a fairly solemn occasion when
local communities lowered the courthouse flag to
half-mast in salute to the "fallen", with jamboree
parades to follow. In the 1960s, Congress changed the
date to the last Monday in May so that people might
have an extra day off on the weekend. Hence the current
barbecues and shopping mall mania - and national
amnesia. Except for the boy and girl Scouts, who still
place little American flags on grave sites in our
veterans' cemeteries, like the one almost within sight
of my house, and a few soldiers' and sailors' relatives
who come to visit, the original meaning of it has
fallen into dust.

Curious, this. Because the publishing industry
continues to pump out torrents of civil war books to
feed a niche audience with pop biographies of bearded
generals and Pickett's charge-type battle studies.
Historians continue to debate the core cause of the
war, and movies get made like Glory, Gettysburg, Cold
Mountain and Robert Redford's recent The Conspirator.

No matter, most of us like to go on a Memorial Day
shopping spree, warm up the coals, pull out the cooler
and slap shrimp tacos on the broiler.

I don't care how Memorial Day is spent, whether in a
relaxed holiday mood or a visit to the dead. I've
walked through the military graves at my nearest
military graveyard, the 114-acre national cemetery near
UCLA with its huge adjacent Veterans Administration
hospital and old soldiers' home, full of sick and
traumatised ex-combatants, and a homeless encampment of
veteranos under the 405 freeway, a grenade's throw away
from cemetery where some of their buddies lie under
white crosses or stars of David.

Meaning no disrespect, but on this "war heroes'
weekend", isn't it time to also honour those who have
"fallen" in a different battle - against the
slaughtering wars?

Over time, my attitude to conscientious objectors and
deserters has shifted. Once, I held them in contempt.
But the Vietnam war, when I came into contact with war
resisters, changed me. I saw then, and see now, that
often it takes a different kind of moral and, yes, even
physical courage to resist a call to serve your country
in a war you believe is a crime, when all your family,
friends, teachers and the vast American majority
support joining up. When I was called to my war, I went
with shining eyes and revenge in my heart and couldn't
wait to get my hands on a .30-calibre machine-gun to
wipe out those Nazi bastards.

But what about those "cowards", "traitors" and
"slackers" who don't want to kill other people? They're
an odd breed who count among their number such as
Muhammad Ali, Mahatma Gandhi, Sergeant York, David
Hockney, three US weapon-refusing combat medics who won
the medal of honour, and the 27 Israeli air force
pilots who refused orders to "track and kill" civilians
in Gaza and the West Bank.

I continue to be amazed at the stupendous bravery of
any currently serving soldier or marine who goes out on
foot patrol in Afghanistan knowing beforehand that his
command - after spending $20bn on an "anti-IED" project
- still has no clue how to protect him from a cheap
roadside bomb that causes 80% of our casualties. (On
Wednesday, seven Americans on a single patrol were
blown up and killed by an IED in Kandahar province.)

But what kind of guts does it take for war objectors,
whether they're Quakers, Jehovah's Witnesses,
Mennonites or secular, who simply don't want to kill?

On this Memorial Day, it might be a time to think about
the outcasts who refuse to take life.

___________________________________________

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