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.
President Woodrow Wilson brought the American forces into WWI to help put a stop to the most terrible war the world had ever known. He sought to broker a peace between the old-world super-powers that had thrown absolutely everything into the war effort, shattering Europe, and with it, the social order of the last century. When the armistice was finally signed, the understanding was "Never Again". Never again would countries seek to eradicate each other in total war. Never again would nations sacrifice an entire generation of young men to satisfy the imperial ambitions of that nation's rulers. Never again would entire regions of land be devastated and poisoned by the modern weapons war had created. Never Again.
Twenty years later the world was back at war. The enemies were the same as last time, the weapons were even deadlier, the cost was even higher. This new conflict would be so devastating that the above-mentioned conflict would no longer be known as the Great War, but would instead be the first of a two-part series, WWI and WWII. When WWII finally ended after years of bloody and total war, humanity had devised a weapon that could destroy all life on earth if used in open combat - the Atom Bomb. As America and the Soviet Union divided up the world into two power-blocs these nuclear weapons proliferated in a policy of Mutually Assured Destruction. The Cold War, as this struggle was named, was fought via a series of proxy wars in Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, various African and South American countries, Afghanistan, and the Gulf War. As America became weary of war, hawkish politicians and generals reminded their citizens that they could not dishonor the memories of those brave young men and women who died in the name of "freedom" during the last conflict (usually WWII) to be in vain. They must not disobey the poet by "breaking faith" with the fallen.
Thus John McCrae's poem was subverted by the propaganda arm of the military industrial complex. Instead of the clarion call for peace, we have created a state of perpetual war. Instead of picking up the torch of peace from the failing hands of the last generation, we have snuffed it out and buried it. We have not kept the faith with those veterans who fought, sacrificed, and died for the peace and security of their children, and children's children. Instead, we have offered up those children to the gods of war, sacrificed upon the altar of "remembering our heroes".
Mennonite Central Committee has a peace-making campaign centered around Remembrance Day. Instead of the poppy, they pass out red pins that read "to remember is to work for peace". This encourages people to honour the sacrifice of our armed forces by building a world where they are no longer needed.
Today I remember all those who have fallen in battles waged by peoples around the world since time began. I weep with the loved ones they left behind. I weep for the things we have asked them to do, for the murder we have asked them to commit, and for the atrocities they have been forced to see and endure. I weep for the veterans who came back to a society that has no room for their PTSD. I weep for the fact that the men and women whom we have shattered in our wars have no place to grieve or heal. I pray "Lord Have Mercy" and "Never Again".
This Remembrance Day, we are a nation at war. I confess and repent of the ways that I have lived that have not been peaceful. I am sorry that this year we have to remember the lives of more soldiers who have died, either by the hands of their enemies or by their own hands in the desperate throes of PTSD. I remember our soldiers today and I grieve. Let us not isolate these men and women further by placing them on the pedestals of heroism where they can neither show pain nor receive healing.
War is a terrible crime, the victims of which are not just the innocent civilians bombed as "collateral" damage, the victims are not just the enemy soldiers sent into battle in loyalty to their government/religion/leader, but they are also our own soldiers. War is a crime that has no winners, the losers lose everything, the winners win nothing, and the earth bears the wounds to prove it.
This year, let us rekindle the torch of peace. This year, let us not have failing hands. This year, let us keep faith with the fallen by not offering up yet another generation of soldiers dishonour their memory.
Let us never again have war.
Lest we forget.
