Volunteers, including veterans, first responders, and military service members, gather at the Southern Nevada Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Boulder City on Wednesday Nov. 10, 2021, to place flags on the gravestones ahead of Veteran’s Day.
Monday, May 29, 2023 | 2 a.m.
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In addition to marking the cultural beginning of summer, Memorial Day is a day to remember the more than 1 million Americans killed in defense of the United States.
Originally known as Decoration Day, the holiday dates to 1868 when, three years after the conclusion of the Civil War, Army commander Maj. Gen. John A. Logan ordered soldiers to clean and decorate the graves of their fallen brethren. “Let no neglect, no ravages of time, testify to the present or to the coming generations that we have forgotten as a people the cost of a free and undivided republic,” the general wrote.
Those words have perhaps never been more necessary than they are today.
The history and politics of slavery, the Civil War and the caste system born of Reconstruction are being silenced and rewritten by “anti-woke” Republican policymakers. The memory, lessons and purpose of the soldiers who gave their lives in defense of a unified and free nation are being systematically erased by revisionists who lack the courage or moral fortitude to face the disturbing parts of our nation’s history. And the rights and institutions that generations of soldiers have died defending are under near constant assault.
In other words, the free and undivided republic Logan revered and defended is once again under threat.
So too are the memory and purpose of those soldiers who gave their lives in defense of freedom and democracy during World War II. While U.S. domestic policy toward people of Asian descent was deplorable, our failures at home do not erase the noble sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of American soldiers who died defending innocent Jews, Roma, LGBTQ+ and other non-Christian and non-Aryan civilians abroad. Those members of the greatest generation gave their lives defending the ideals of freedom, democracy and self-determination from the same assault of fascist authoritarianism that now threatens countries around the world, including the United States.
When Vladimir Putin chose to invade a sovereign nation and engage in a campaign of targeted attacks on civilians, he didn’t just attack one sovereign country. Rather, he attacked Western ideals of freedom and self-determination. It’s no surprise that Putin’s friends and sympathizers in that invasion include Iran, China and violent white nationalists right here in the United States.
Of course, this isn’t the first time the United States has celebrated Memorial Day while at odds with an anti-democratic coalition that includes Russia and China. In 1950, with much of the world still cleaning up the rubble of WWII, Congress passed and President Harry Truman signed a resolution recognizing Memorial Day and calling on Americans to remember the fallen and pray for “permanent peace.”
Unfortunately, Truman’s prayers were not answered. By the end of June 1950, following the invasion of South Korea by North Korean forces being supported by the Soviet Union and China, the United States was supporting a full-blown conflict on the Korean Peninsula. Sound familiar?
Two years later we had boots on the ground in yet another proxy war with the Soviet Union and China, this time in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. That war would take more than 50,000 American lives and marked the transition of the U.S. military to an all-volunteer force.
Since then, those brave volunteers, many of whom knowingly signed up during times of conflict, have continued to fight and sometimes die for their country in conflicts around the world. Nearly 10,000 U.S. soldiers were killed in the post-9/11 conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Yet with an all-volunteer military that is largely made up of those whose social, economic and political capital limits their opportunities for upward mobility, less than 1% of the U.S. population is in military service and just 7% of the current living population has served. The result is that many Americans don’t know a veteran or active-duty service-member.
Moreover, civilians are rarely asked to sacrifice in support of a war effort in any meaningful way today. Civilians are no longer asked or expected to buy war bonds, pay war taxes or engage in wartime rationing in support of our troops.
This has created a growing division between our men and women in uniform and those of us who have the privilege of living our lives as civilians. Memorial Day is an opportunity to bridge that divide and remember those who have made the ultimate sacrifice in defense of our nation.
In 2000, President Bill Clinton signed a measure that calls on Americans to take a moment at 3 p.m. local time Memorial Day to remember the men and women who have given their lives for their country and to offer a prayer for peace.
That is the least a grateful nation could do, but it should not be all that we do.
If we truly want to honor the men and women who died defending this country, we should learn about the rights, freedoms and institutions they died defending. We should learn the history of our country, both the good and noble moments of leadership as well as the ugly moments of moral failure. We should learn about the social and economic realities that force low-income people to “volunteer” to become fodder for the American war machine. And we should learn about the ways in which we can join our men and women in uniform and sacrifice for the collective betterment of all Americans while celebrating our shared national identity.
Happy Memorial Day.
