Remembering the Fallen

Today, the last Monday in May, is Memorial Day here in the United States. It's a day set aside to remember those Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice. As we remember them, we should also pause to remember the devastating toll that war has taken on all the peoples of the world - military and civilian alike.

The numbers are staggering. In what is described as an "incomplete" list of the approximately 3000 wars in recorded human history, a Wikipedia article puts the minimum figure for deaths due to war at more than 340 million. The totals for each war in the list "usually include both the deaths of military personnel which are the direct results of battle or other military wartime actions, as well as the wartime/ war-related deaths of civilians, which are the results of war induced epidemics, diseases, famines, atrocities etc."

Besides the deaths from war, tens of millions of civilians have become refugees - either fleeing to another country or "internally displaced". Currently, according to the World Refugee Day website,  there are 43.7 million of them.  Were they a country, refugees would rank about 30th in population amongst the nations of the world.
UPDATE: A report released in June 2014 by the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, shows that the number of refugees, asylum-seekers, and internally displaced people worldwide has, for the first time in the post-World War II era, exceeded 50 million people. [The Guardian, June 20]

Greed, hatred, nationalism, perceived wrongs, balance of power, economic systems, religious beliefs, quest for power, bloodlust - mankind has found many reasons to go to war. They are all wrong. They all basically stem from the perception of "the Other", someone you can dehumanize because he is different from you.

Will it ever change? One would hope so. John Kennedy once said "War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today."   Fifty years after Kennedy's death, that day remains distant. 

Still we got to start somewhere. So I'll close with a few quotes and a few songs that look to that brighter distant day when men will no longer take up arms against their brothers and sisters.  Here's a link to blues guitarist Lead Belly singing "Ain't Gonna Study War No More".   (Apropos of nothing in particular: George Harrison has been quoted as saying "No Lead Belly, no Beatles.")

Albert Camus: "There are causes worth dying for but none worth killing for."  

Here's a link to Original Caste's "One Tin Soldier". 

"Peace on Earth" was all it said.

 

Joan Baez: "If people have to put labels on me, I'd prefer the first label to be human being, the second label to be pacifist, and the third to be folk singer."  Here's a link to Joan Baez singing Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind".    (In spite of the actual title Dylan gave his song, Joan Baez pronounces the "g" at the end of Blowin'.) The linked video also has some great shots of the young Joan Baez and Bob Dylan.  Dylan just turned 72 this past Friday and does that ever make me feel old!  Happy Birthday, Bobby. 

How many deaths will it take 'til he knows

that too many people have died? 

  

Mahatma Gandhi: "What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?"



 

Finally, here's a link to Pete Seeger's rendition of "Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream"

Last night I had the strangest dream I never dreamed before.

I dreamed the world had all agreed to put an end to war.

Photos

Normandy Cemetery from American Battle Monuments Commission photo on britannica.com

Leadbelly from womex.com (adapted from Lead Belly Publicity Shot on Wikipedia Commons)

Albert Camus from wikispaces.com 

Joan Baez and Bob Dylan from Wikipedia Commons

Gandhi from myincrediblewebsite.com

Pete Seeger from The Guardian

Masters of War

[Click here for a Pearl Jam rendition of Bob Dylan's "Masters of War". ]

[Sorry, folks, I couldn't find a video of Dylan performing the song.]

Come you masters of war

You that build all the guns

You that build the death planes

You that build all the bombs

You that hide behind walls

You that hide behind desks

I just want you to know

I can see through your masks.

You that never done nothin'

But build to destroy

You play with my world

Like it's your little toy

You put a gun in my hand

And you hide from my eyes

And you turn and run farther

When the fast bullets fly.

I've been a Bob Dylan fan for many years. The places he went with his music spoke to me from the time of his earliest recordings. I especially appreciated his sense of outrage at the injustices in society in those early years. I did however think that his anti-war song "Masters of War", the first two verses of which are given above and that is now 50 years old, was a bit naive. It seemed to lay blame more at the feet of the arms manufacturers than at the feet of the politicians that lead us into wars. Well, I no longer feel that way. To varying degrees, both are to blame.

Look at armed conflicts in Africa, military interventions in the Middle East, US gun homicides, international arms trade, terrorist attacks ...what do these have in common? Two things: the resort to violence as a means to an end and the availability of weapons to carry out this violence.

We may be unable to change a predilection to violence but we sure can do things to decrease the availability of weapons. Okay, maybe not anything as dramatic as the Overlords in Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End, who made a nuclear missile already in flight simply disappear..but surely something more than the machinations of those US Senators who blocked a background check bill designed to keep guns out of the hands of felons, the mentally ill and, yes, terrorists.

The human toll due to war and war's after-effects are enormous. Not all wars make non-stop headlines in the United States. The Second Congo War (1998-2003), also known as the Great African War, is one example. Besides the deaths of tens of thousands of combatants, it has been estimated that the war has caused betweeen 2.7 and 5.4 million excess civilian deaths (through the present). This includes more than 350,000 violent civilian deaths (through 2001) with the remainder dying from hunger and disease unleashed by the war. [Wikipedia]

As the worst of the hostilities of the Second Congo War were coming to an end, the United States was beginning to gear up for the war with Iraq. That totally unnecessary invasion against a country that was no threat to us, that had zero WMD's and no connection to the 9/11 attacks resulted in more than 600,000 excess deaths according to a 2006 Lancet study. [Washington Post] During the time it was waged, the Iraq War became one of the biggest Al-Qaeda recruiting tools of all time. 

The ongoing gun slaughter on our streets is appalling. There is an undeniable correlation between gun ownership, gun laws and gun deaths. 10 times the number of people who died in the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001 die each year in the US from guns. By 2015, annual gun deaths in the United States are expected to exceed deaths caused by automobiles. We license and test people before they can drive cars, which is, after all, just a means of transportation. How much more so should we demand background checks on people who want to own guns, the purpose of which is to kill? Sadly we are treated to a spectacle of the NRA contributing to Congressional campaigns and lobbying against not only an assault weapons ban but also against universal background checks and for cutting funding to research gun violence.

Like Judas of old

You lie and deceive

In this January article, Mother Jones destroys 10 gun myths perpetrated by gun-rights groups and lobbyists. Here's one myth: "Guns don't kill people, people kill people. " Fact: "The states with the highest gun ownership rates have a gun murder rate 114% higher than those with the lowest gun ownership rates."

Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could

The arms lobby's money may not buy forgiveness but it sure can influence votes...at least in the United States. Fortunately, not so in the United Nations. On April 2, 2013, delegates from 154 nations, including the US,the largest arms exporter in the world, voted to adopt the first-ever international Arms Trade Treaty (ATT). Per the UN ATT Conference webpage, the ATT will regulate "the international trade in conventional arms, from small arms to battle tanks, combat aircraft and warships. The treaty will foster peace and security by putting a stop to destabilising arms flows to conflict regions. It will prevent human rights abusers and violators of the law of war from being supplied with arms. And it will help keep warlords, pirates, and gangs from acquiring these deadly tools." Let's hope the US Senate will approve this treaty when Obama presents it...else the Senators join North Korea, Syria, and Iran in voting no to the ATT. [See Oxfam America and UN ATT Conference webpages.]