Stu Bykofsky | Are you willing to pay the price to 'practice war no more'?
THE SONGS of peace - from Pete Seeger's "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" to John Lennon's "Imagine" - oppose war and violence to achieve our ambitions, whether national or personal.
THE SONGS of peace - from Pete Seeger's "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" to John Lennon's "Imagine" - oppose war and violence to achieve our ambitions, whether national or personal.
Memorial Day is a time to reflect on the nature of sacrifice, and the larger issue of war.
We sing, "We want to practice war no more." That's true for most of us, but what happens when someone bombs Pearl Harbor or drives jetliners into skyscrapers or threatens us with atomic weapons? Sometimes we have war forced upon us, as with Japan, and sometimes we force war on others, as with Iraq.
Twice.
We had our reasons.
The first time, it was to liberate an (oil-rich) ally, Kuwait. The second time rested on a flimsy foundation.
Japan and Iraq had their reasons, too.
Japan accused the U.S. of cutting off oil to the energy-poor nation. We did, but the Japanese don't say that was the U.S. response to Japanese aggression in Asia. A half-century later, Iraq used force to "repossess" what it called the "13th province of Iraq."
Fifty years apart - oil, the common denominator.
Will we ever learn? What's more important - your security or your SUV?
If you want to "imagine" something, imagine a world with no need for oil. In His infinite wisdom, God gave the oil - pardon the value judgment - to some of the most brutal, backward and repressive states on earth. What was He thinking?
Death does its dance on Memorial Day.
I honor those who paid the greatest price, made the greatest sacrifice, even if that was not their intent. In the militaries of the West, with rare exception, no soldier plans to die.
In some armies of the East, soldiers hunger to die, to achieve martyrdom, and maybe 72 virgins.
The lust for death, as a deliberate policy, came to the modern world with the kamikaze. Japan launched a Divine Wind to slow the U.S. Navy's advance toward the homeland of the Empire of the Rising Sun.
In the West, we differentiate between those who fight for a hopeless cause - King Leonidas and his Spartans at Thermopylae in 480 B.C., or William B. Travis and self-styled Texans at the Alamo in 1836 - and those who fight solely to die for their cause.
We call our side heroes. We call their side fanatics.
Many of America's recent dead enlisted after 9/11, to protect America.
Most of those who died in steamy Pacific jungles and frozen European forests in World War II were draftees.
Who deserves the greater honor - the willing volunteer or the draftee who reports for duty?
The loss is immeasurable in each case.
I listen to the music of Pete Seeger and I listen to the music of John Lennon. They want us "to practice war no more."
I listen to the mournful simplicity of Taps.
Then I listen to the cries of Muslims massacred by Serbs. I listen to the screams of the forgotten in Darfur as they are hunted down and slaughtered by the janjaweed. I listen to the howls of mothers whose babies have been blown apart by suicide bombers, whether in Baghdad or Tel Aviv. Evil will always walk the world.
If war is immoral, what is standing by and watching civilians slaughtered, as in Cambodia and Rwanda?
We can have war no more.
Are we willing to pay the price? *
E-mail stubyko@phillynews.com or call 215-854-5977. For recent columns: