War and Remembrance
It's funny to think now, but I grew up with nary a mention of the World Wars. Significantly, or not, my father (who was older than my mother by several years) was in the Second World War, in the army, fighting overseas for King and country.
He died when we were young - 9, 7, 4 and 1 - and although we had lots of pictures of him around the house (luckily, it was a time of picture taking, everybody took pictures in those days - and when my parents knew he was dying, they took MORE pictures), the house soon left him behind, otherwise. My mother went back to teaching, my grandmother came to live with us, the 60s played out, the 70s came on full steam. His WWII uniform hung down the basement with the winter coats, his helmet lay in the toybox, his guns stood in the corner of the playroom - also down the basement.
I know, I know. You're probably thinking now, "Guns?! Playroom?!" What can I say? We didn't wear helmets riding our bikes on the highway, either. The only kid who wore a helmet when I was growing up was a kid who'd already been knocked off his bike by a car and HAD to wear a helmet. Doctor's orders. And when you stop and think about it - what the hell kind of medicine is that? "Yeah, kid. You've got a brain injury. Wear a helmet so it doesn't get any worse."
Yeah. And your life doesn't get any better, either. BECAUSE YOU'RE WEARING A FRIGGIN' HELMET!!!!!!!
But back to the future. A few years ago, cleaning out her den closets, my mother pulled out a couple of boxes of slides, which she had shoved to the back after my father died. They were of his down time overseas, pictures of his regiment, pictures of Holland - they documented a whole life that had happened before he met my mother, married, had kids, a brief career as a lawyer, then died. We looked at the slides, then put the boxes back in the den closet. A while later, we mentioned the slides to an in-law and he suggested they should go to some sort of official body for archiving - which they probably should. My mother was more of the opinion, "Who the hell would want to look at a bunch of old war slides?" But she didn't care one way or the other, so, we gave HIM the slides. Off loading "stuff" is something my family has down to a fine art.
What I find interesting now, in the current climate, is that I grew up with a parent actually in a World War and yet the only time it was ever discussed that I can recall was during grade five or six when we covered The Holocaust in school. That was it. And World War II was left behind again. At no time, do I ever recall ANY instruction about World War I. Clearly, WWI was so over, so yesterday, it may as well have been horn-rimmed glasses.
Fast forward to now and I feel like war and world war and living up to war legacies and comparing current world leaders to long dead wartime leaders is all the rage all the time forever and ever amen. It's as if we're in a chronic military nostalgia mode. To compensate for... what?... exactly... Because it sure seems to me we're compensating for something with all this great war, grand ideals, churchillian leaders talk 24/7. Indeed, it seems to me there is more war remembrance now than there was actual war time - ever.
Why is that, do you think? Because I think it's to compensate for the obvious lack of private support for the War on Terror, to make the War on Terror feel like something noble and not something base, to lend stature to leaders who otherwise would just be temporary flings at power. When World War II was over, it was over. People didn't just move on, they hurtled themselves forward. Whereas, we seem stuck in some sort of official solemn remembrance of something that the previous generation left behind in 1945.
Oh. 1946, you say? Okay. And who was the second Vulcan on the right in that scene with Scotty and the sexy green alien?
You get my point. That's how I feel about war afficiandos. Not hostile, or anything. Just, superior.
That's how I read most commentary on the War on Terror, too - with a sense of superiority. I believe so thoroughly in the wrongness of the War on Terror, that I can't help but think little of those pundits who don't. It's a full stop with me. But I have to admit, even I, so used to despising the lesser minds who argue for something Satan himself couldn't defend anymore, felt a slight nausea at something Ezra Levant wrote in regards to the British soldiers who were held hostage in Iran until their release the other day. He, and there were many others like him saying the same thing, complained (and I hear a high nasally whine as I write this) that the hostages didn't behave enough like soldiers. I'd get the exact quote, but I don't want to give him any more publicity. Is it wrong to wish upon him and others like him - something akin to the terror I know I would have felt if I were any one of those British soldiers? Not knowing if your own government or the Americans or the kidnappers would pull the rug out and you'd end up executed on live television, the video splashed all over the Internet within seconds, your deaths political war fodder, the excuse needed to launch a nuclear strike - your family's last image of you having your throat slit?
I don't really. I'm not that mean. And what purpose would it serve? These stupid, stupid people - Ezra, Mark, David - are living in the glory days that never were and everybody else, the sane among us, know it. All the propaganda in the world can't erase actual memories of how life really is and was. But certainly people have a knack for believing their own press. Maybe Ezra et al will be seized with a heroic impulse and guns blazing take out the President of Iran and make it all right in the world again. Just like it used to be. In the good old days.
Meanwhile, catching up with today's youth, the lucky kids who scored a trip to France for the Vimy Remembrance (plus $3,000/person and NO FREE LUNCHES) seemed pretty up to speed on the War on Terror - as in: "Why are we in it?"
Good question. An especially good question to be asking now, in the here and now - even if it's just so we can celebrate/remember World Wars I and II even harder in 60 more years.
But that's it for me. I'm going forward to the past and ignoring the World Wars. Again.
