Lest we Forget
This Remembrance Day do not think of our men and women in uniform. Do not think of bravery. Do not think of patriotism. Do not think of our sacrifices and victories. None of this is of Remembrance Day.
Lest we forget, we mark the armistice of what was then the Great War but is now only World War One to remember the horror of war. This Remembrance Day think only of the corpses, the piles and piles of corpses, most not uniformed, corpses shot and starved and murdered and gassed, corpses rotting in trenches or rendered into unrecognizable pulp by mortar or artillery fire, corpses mangled and burned and crushed by aerial bombardment (and we are told the bombs are much smarter now, but how intelligence is measured by mangled corpses I do not know), corpses still locked in their tin cans under the sea, corpses in their dress uniforms and in neat rows.
Remember the maimed, the limbless, the blind, the ones whose souls not bodies were rent and torn, but mostly just remember the tens of millions of corpses, and 'remember' a horror of war that you have never experienced, and want never to experience, and vow to never support it.
The rest is propaganda: don't think it, don't say it, don't hear it.
Lest we forget, we mark the armistice of what was then the Great War but is now only World War One to remember the horror of war. This Remembrance Day think only of the corpses, the piles and piles of corpses, most not uniformed, corpses shot and starved and murdered and gassed, corpses rotting in trenches or rendered into unrecognizable pulp by mortar or artillery fire, corpses mangled and burned and crushed by aerial bombardment (and we are told the bombs are much smarter now, but how intelligence is measured by mangled corpses I do not know), corpses still locked in their tin cans under the sea, corpses in their dress uniforms and in neat rows.
Remember the maimed, the limbless, the blind, the ones whose souls not bodies were rent and torn, but mostly just remember the tens of millions of corpses, and 'remember' a horror of war that you have never experienced, and want never to experience, and vow to never support it.
The rest is propaganda: don't think it, don't say it, don't hear it.
posted by Gavin Magrath at 11/08/2010 12:26:00 PM
6 Comments:
Yes.. soldiers are unworthy of our appreciation and thanks.
Much better that we just allowed places like Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor, and Treblinka to flourish and continue.
And south of the border, much better that we should ahve allowed slavery to flourish in the U.S., than for Lincoln and others to have stood up and give their lives for some silly concept like "freedom".
"...and vow to never support it."
And a sentiment no end of dictators and rogue governments will thank you for. As an ex-soldier I would like to correct your pacifist pap and remind you that Remembrance day is a day to remember sacrifice, not death. We remember soldiers, volunteers because certain pacifist Canadians couldn't stomach conscription, who decided that there ARE things worth fighting for and specifically things worth dying for.
Not support it, or, sit back and let it happen?
@RG Harvie: "soldiers are unworthy of our appreciation and thanks."
That's not the message. Actually, the real message is that the best way to thank and appreciate them is to not expose them to battle in the first place.
@The Rat: There may be things worth dying for. No one's dying for them right now. They're dying for war profiteers, who more surely thank you for your sentiment than dictators do for mine. As long a we can count on people like you to take an attack on war as an attack on soldiers there will be no shortage of shitholes in which young men can test expensive and fatal new toys. Dick Cheney thanks you.
An attack on war? Wow, that's deep. All we need to do is forget the soldiers, forget their sacrifice and remember that war sucks and all will be good in the world! Well, that's pure bullshit and a hijacking of Remembrance Day for your particular brand of political crap. If you want to spout about the political aspects of war today, or the past, or the future please pick any other day of the year. This one day belongs to those who chose to fight, to die even, for what they believed was right, no matter how history judges their political masters.
@ The Rat: "bullshit hijacking"? "Wow, that's deep." Some strawman argument about how you have to forget or hate soldiers to remember the horror of war? And a claim to moral superiority - ad hominem of course - because you're "an ex-soldier."
Thanks for reminding me that there will be a loud-mouthed blowhard there to vent their anger and ignorance in public no matter how solemn the occasion.
I'll remember the millions of dead. You do what you want. How the hell did you wind up here?
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