Monday, May 28, 2007

Decoration Day and the Truth                  courtesy arlingtonvirginiausa.com A pause from women's issues to reflect on Memorial Day. Adam Cohen in the NYTimes reminds us that, traditionally, as originated after the Civil War as Decoration Day, it was a day for commemorating the war dead and the war's moral cause. And that for this current war, there is no grand cause to commemorate, as the rationale for war was trumped up and the ongoing descriptions of the cause a series of fictions. Adam Cohen: When Memorial Day began, the war dead were placed front and center. The holiday’s original name, Decoration Day, came from the day’s main activity: leaving flowers at cemeteries. Today, though, we are fighting a war in which great pains have been taken to hide the nearly 3,500 Americans who have died from sight. The Defense Department has banned the photographing of returning caskets, and the president refuses to attend soldiers’ funerals. Memorial Day also began with the conviction that to properly honor the war dead, it is necessary to honestly contemplate the cause for which they fought. Today we are fighting a war sold on false pretenses, and the Bush administration stands by its false stories. Memorial Day’s history, and its devolution, demonstrates that the instinct to prettify war and create myths about it is hardly new. But as the founders of the original Memorial Day understood, the only honorable way to remember those who have lost their lives is to commemorate them out in the open, and to insist on a true account. 11:03:26 AM    comment []

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