The other part of Memorial Day

Many of us spent our Monday morning at parades or ceremonies in our respective towns. We watched marching bands, we held our hands over our hearts and we stood in moments of silence, either out of respect for those who lost their lives fighting for the United States of America, or for loved ones whom we have personally lost as a result of violent conflict.
Some of us went to Bar-B-Qs, grilled a couple of hamburgers, sipped on a refreshing beverage among friends, and ushered in the summer vacation.
Some of us did neither of those things, and treated the day like an extra day off, capitalizing on much needed sleep, or neglected upkeep of our homes.
Whatever it is that you did on this past Memorial Day, remember this: there is more to Memorial Day than any of us typically pay attention to. Whether we are in a cemetery, on a porch or on our couch, Memorial Day is a lot more than “honoring those who fought for our freedom.”
In this day and age, we might think we live in more dangerous times than we’ve ever seen. Turn on the TV or pick up some national newspaper, or surf the internet, and you’re bound to find information regarding an attack somewhere, or heated tensions between two countries, or shots fired or bombs dropped in some place. But the truth of the matter is, in the year 2017, we live in some of the safest periods of history ever.
However, according to the Peace Research Institute, deaths as a result of war and human conflict are reaching all time lows. The death rate in war was 22 persons per 100,000 in the years of the Korean War; it was nine persons per 100,000 during the Vietnam War; it was five per 100,000 in the Iraq War in the 1980s, and now we are at 1.4 persons per 100,000. These figures are important because they’re not just from the American perspective. When we think Memorial Day, we think stars and stripes, freedom, The United States, the constitution and for some, God. What we miss from Memorial Day is that a war does not determine a winner or a loser; it determines who is left. While we remember our fallen soldiers, who fought in the Civil War, World War I, and World War II, and later fought in Korea and Vietnam, and Iraq, we had opponents. There was other human life on those bloodied battlefields besides our own. We may be quick to judge, but what we say about our fallen troops, they say about theirs as well.
Memorial Day should be about remembering the troops who died so that we can sit on our front porch, or so that we could visit a cemetery, so that we could enjoy a day off. But let Memorial Day also be a reminder that no matter the skin tone, the language, the religion or the uniform, bloodshed is bloodshed. War is the killing in the name of whichever patriotism a person prefers.
Let Memorial Day be a reminder of the atrocities of man on display during war. We do live in a time of extremely low war death, but let that not be something we brag about and justify for more war. Let it be a guide for us to make that number reach zero. So that we may sit in our cemeteries and know that our troops didn’t die for more troops to die, for more troops to die, but that they fought and died so that no one else had to.