The Day after the Memorial Day
"We are, meanwhile, going to erect befitting memorial tombs with
beautiful flowers on them for our fallen soldiers. And inscribe
their names on their tombstones in letters of gold, with our
national flag flying overhead. For they did not die in vain.
They fought and died for the empire. And we hope that many more
will volunteer to fight and die for our Great Fatherland. May
God bless the Empire!"
That was not the voice of the president of the United States,
addressing fellow Americans on Memorial Day. Rather, it was the
speech of Sunrise and Sunset, two kings who had led
expeditionary forces throughout the earth in a vain search for
Inferno, the terrorist. They had returned home without their
soldiers, and had to explain to their countrymen and women why
it was necessary for the soldiers to die. The book's title from
which the quotation was taken is my controversial work, CHASING
SHADOWS! : A Dream.
According to Jonathan Glover in his book, Humanity—A Moral
History of the Twentieth Century, "Death in twentieth-century
war has been on a scale which is hard to grasp. . . . But, if
these deaths had been spread evenly over a period, war would
have killed around 2,500 people every day. That is over 100
people an hour, around the clock, for ninety years." Hardly
something to cheer about. People are either being slaughtered in
political, racial, or religious wars. And members of the armed
forces are dying in large numbers.
It is for this reason that nations all over the word have set
aside a date to remember its fallen soldiers. Americans have
two—the Memorial Day, which is marked on the last Monday
of May, and Remembrance Sunday or Veterans Day celebrated on
November 11. On these occasions, seasoned speech writers
ensconced in the serenity of well guarded offices, craft
Demosthenian and Ciceronian speeches and hand them over to draft
dodging heads of states, who intone the virtues of sacrifice and
the reward of patriotism in the mellifluous voice of angels.
There will be somber religious services in churches on Memorial
Day in the United States. The pastors will specifically petition
God to accept the ‘souls' of the departed soldiers and
give them special seats in heaven; wives would weep over their
dead husbands; tombs of the ‘gallant' heroes would be
whitewashed and beautiful flowers would be laid on them; war
veterans who had been forgotten would instantly be remembered;
there would be reports of sighted soldiers in far away lands who
had been missing in action; and most important—there would
be a one minute silence in memory of the dead.
This year's Memorial Day promises to be interesting. Because one
presidential candidate is a decorated war veteran while the
other is said to have played safe. But they are both honorable
men. One thing which men of honor do on Memorial days is to
recount their daring escapades in war. One presidential
candidate may script the appearance of the man he saved from
drowning in a river during the war in Vietnam. I don't know what
the other would do. However, he too, is an honorable man. But
what happens after the Memorial Day?
The high point of presidents' speeches on Memorial days is
usually a determination to make America and the world safer as a
tribute to the fallen soldiers. But that statement has been made
over and over again. It was made four months before 9/11. Yet
peace continues to elude America and the world.
As regards this, French playwright Moliere said: "Of all follies
there is none greater than wanting to make the world a better
place." Was he right? Let UN scribe Kofi Annan answer. "I think
the most frustrating part is that we all know what's wrong and
what needs to be done, but we often can't act upon it," he says.
That is an admission of failure supreme. The secretary-general
and Bill Clinton for example, saw the impending genocide in
Rwanda. (80,000 slaughtered in 100 days—worse than what
Adolph Hitler did to the Jews.) Yet they refused to act. (I have
said elsewhere that that world body should be scrapped.)
But is the past any guide? According to William Shakespeare,
"What is past is prologue." The cause of past world pogrom
should have provided an insight to our leaders not to repeat
history. However, it is not so. Kofi Annan again agrees: "At
times, when incredible things are happening and we want to
awaken the conscience of the world, no one wants to move because
of bad experiences in the past." See what's happening in Iraq
now. See what Israel is doing to Hamas' leaders in
Palestine—murder in broad daylight. Yet the hands of the
members of the world body are tied. One authority said that
history is a tale of unfulfilled expectations and failed dreams.
This is because we are searching for peace with the wrong tools.
When the two kings quoted earlier in CHASING SHADOWS! did not
see Inferno, the terrorist, they decided to shoot and bomb his
spirit parents: Hatred, Oppression, Frustration, Injustice,
Mistrust, Fear, and Enmity. But these spirits are immune to the
guns and bombs of these men. The assault fails and Inferno is
free to set the world on fire. The book is therefore a pure
allegory alluding to the ineffectual results of violence to
thwart violence.
If we do not eradicate these monsters that breed war and terror,
the killings would continue, and the veterans would have fought
and died in vain. And Memorial days would continue to come and
go. Presidents would give Demosthenian and Ciceronian speeches
and exit. But death and gravedom—the ultimate
winners—would forever dog our heels, the heels of our
wives, and that of our children.
ARTHUR ‘ZULU is an editor, book reviewer, and published
author. BOOKS PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR
http://www.1stbooks.com/bookview/21013 CHASING SHADOWS!: A Dream
http://www.1stbooks.com/bookview/10975 HOW TO WRITE A BEST-SELLER