Today (May 28 2012) is Memorial Day in the United States. According to the (American) Department of Veteran Affairs website: Memorial Day, which is observed on the last Monday of May, commemorates the men and women who died while in the military service.
In the Netherlands Dodenherdenking is a day of official remembrance of those that have died in the service of The Netherlands, from the outbreak of World War II and in conflicts since, both civilian and military.
On the Australian War Memorial website Remembrance Day is described as follows: marks the anniversary of the armistice which ended the First World War (1914–18). Each year Australians observe one minute silence at 11 am on 11 November, in memory of those who died or suffered in all wars and armed conflicts.
Questions:
1) Do you think that we should separately remember/mourn the deaths of civilians in war?
2) How do we honour the service of those who fought for their countries/peoples without mythologizing/demonizing those involved?
--mmy
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I think we should mourn civilians *alongside* veterans, according them honor as well. Unlike soldiers, they didn't 'sign up' for any of it. Somehow, they're still dead.
I think civilian deaths tend to be higher than veteran deaths, but often people are surprised by that. Not outraged though, as I think should be the case.
Then again, I'm a pacifist, so I have an uneasy relationship with how the warrior archetype is mythologized but people like me are seen as weak and cowardly.
Posted by: Laiima | May 28, 2012 at 05:05 PM
I'm a pacifist, too, Laiima, which doesn't go over well in a family with as many career military as mine. (Military and MDs. Sometimes both...)
However, I will honestly say that most of the military I know are as AT LEAST interested in keeping the peace as most civilians, and much more than many. People eager for a fight rarely makes the best warriors.
And I do honor them for that.
Posted by: hapax | May 28, 2012 at 09:37 PM
@hapax, I too had a mix of military family members. The ones who eagerly recounted slaughter scared me; I did honor and admire the ones interested in keeping the peace.
Posted by: Laiima | May 29, 2012 at 12:04 AM
These questions have kept me awake quite a bit this year.
I'm not sure if it's just me finally learning the 'true' definition of Dodenherdenking, but a few things happened I didn't like at all.
My mother always told me that Dodenherdenking was to commemorate those fallen in wars. For little pacifist child me, this meant 'people who died because of any war, anywhere.' So civilians and military of all countries. Seemed like the one day everyone came to their senses for a little while and remembered that war is awful, no matter what side you're on, and no matter if you've actively chosen to be involved.
Of course, the start of the tradition was the end of World War II, and Dodenherdenking is celebrated the day before the Netherlands were officially liberated, so there's always been a large emphasis on honouring WWII vets and remembering the Holocaust. Which are subjects that need honouring and remembering.
(The official memorandum doesn't specify 'in service of the Netherlands' but the official explanation of the memorandum does. This is odd.)
This year, however, two things happened:
- The national high school poetry contest was won by a boy who wrote about his great-uncle, who joined the Waffen SS as a young man, got shipped off to the Russian front and died there. He was not allowed to read this poem at the national service, because people felt the day should be more about the 'victims' and not the 'perpetratots.'
- The city of Bronckhorst wanted to include some German graves in the memorial route across the WWII cemetery. The National Jewish Federation sued for (and won) the right to prohibit this. Next year, they want to sue for the right to prohibit honouring of German dead in other places in the Netherlands, even places where these people have been honoured for years.
I'm having a hard time sorting out all this. I know the Holocaust especially is a terrible subject, so please be gentle with me and remember that I'm NOT trying to downplay it.
My thoughts are roughly like this:
- The Holocaust was pure, unadulterated evil. I think remembering that and educating future generations about that is paramount.
- Still, I don't agree with these decisions. War is terrible, too. And I think remembering that is important as well. I have a hard time seeing a starving Dutch guy fighting on the Russian front as 'perpetrator,' nor some German conscripts sent into the Netherlands to die. They were just cogs in the war machine, and the war machine grinds everyone up. My in-laws recently visited a WWII cemetery in France where they found graves of 15, 16 year old boys from Guinée and South Africa and all over the world, and they learned that these kids were basically press-ganged into service and sent onto the beaches on D-Day to die for a country they'd never even heard of. Sure, they were Allied. And they deserve to be honoured! But the people who press-ganged them and lured them with false promises are honoured in the same breath, and I think they have much less of a right to remembrance than some German kid who had the choice between joining the military and being shot.
Boy, it's all just a muddle.
I don't have a clue how to solve this, either.
Some people suggest limiting Dodenherdenking to just WWII (but this doesn't solve the problem of Allied atrocities and war crimes and German conscripts, nor the problem of ignoring all other casualties of war).
Some people suggest having a separate Holocaust remembrance (but this feels like it's being pushed into a corner somewhere; other fights against genocide like UN peacekeeping missions WOULD be remembered on Dodenherdenking, but the biggest genocide on our own shores wouldn't?)
Remembering soldiers and civilians on different days wouldn't help either, because much of the Resistance, f'rex, was helping Allied forces and supplying them with information and so on. Besides, you get this ugly whiplash movement between honouring Germand fallen on one day and focusing on them as perpetrators another day.
I think the day should be able to support two messages: "Holocaust, never again" AND "We remember and mourn all those who died because of war." But organisations who are much more personally involved with remembering the Holocaust don't agree, so I don't see it happening any time soon. I don't want to tell them how to feel, but at the same time I just don't like any of the options at the moment.
Posted by: Maartje | May 29, 2012 at 03:19 AM
I think remembering the deaths of civilians in war is an excellent idea. It would be highly politically charged here in the US, unfortunately. Whether it was given its own day or combined with Memorial Day, some would claim that it would somehow lessen the honor being done to the soldiers, or tarnish their glory by "blaming" them for civilian deaths.
Nevertheless, those who died should be remembered, civilians and soldiers both, whether they sacrificed their lives that others might live or simply hid in the wrong basement when the bombs fell.
It would also be an important reminder that war is a dirty business that should not be entered into lightly, especially for those of us who have not had a war on our soil for generations and can't truly understand what it means. Partly for this reason I agree with Laiima; honor them both together.
As for how to avoid mythologizing and demonizing, that's a hard question. I was raised Mennonite (mostly) and our heroes were conscientious objectors rather than soldiers, so I come at this from a different perspective than the average person in the US. I've never been entirely comfortable with the reverence and awe most people in my country seem* to feel for soldiers (and sailors, marines, etc.) On the other hand, some people do demonize soldiers, or at least look down on them. It seems to me that either extreme does a disservice to the actual people who, for a wide variety of reasons, joined up but didn't come back alive.
It's all too easy to view soldiers (and war itself) in the abstract, all the more so when looking through a political lens. I don't really know how we can get around that as a society. We need more reminders that soldiers are simply people, much like ourselves except that they're caught in a nasty and sometimes horrible situation. Remembering civilian deaths should not mean blaming them on soldiers as a group.
Remembering the deaths of both together should remind us that war is inherently messy and, yes, evil. Sometimes the lesser evil, and maybe necessary in certain cases, but never a good thing. If there's any blame worth giving, it's to the people who start wars, and to the press-gang types Maartje mentioned, and all those who tell the old, old lie to the next generation just to perpetuate the cycle.
* It's hard to tell for certain in the US, because anything less than full-throated agreement prompts funny looks, if not worse, depending on who you're with. (Of course, this is totally not Political Correctness, because... um... shut up.) I'm sure I'm not the only one who just plays along in public.
Posted by: J. Random Scribbler | May 29, 2012 at 06:22 AM
One of the big differences in how Americans view war, and how Europeans view it, is that for USians, civilian deaths *aren't us*. They're not our neighbors, our classmates, our co-workers. They're people we never met, never would have met, they're abstractions.
Our experience of war isn't about what happens in air raids, or artillery battles through town, or when occupying armies do the things that occupying armies do. The American experience of war is that our soldiers go someplace far away, the rest of us read about it or look at pictures of it, most of the soldiers come back changed, some of them don't come back at all.
Remembrance of civilian victims just can't be as visceral for us as it would be for people in most other places. They're not our neighbors.
(some day when I'm feeling more articulate I'll do a spiel on how this is why 9/11 fucked with our heads so bad, the shattering realization that "not here" isn't one of the eternal laws of physics).
Posted by: wendy, last of the Eisenhower republicans | May 29, 2012 at 11:04 AM
I think it is right to have a separate day honoring those who joined military service.
That is not to say there shouldn't be a day honoring the civilians who have died. However, those who joined military service did so knowing they could be in shot and killed, knowing what would happen, and still choosing to face that danger. That takes a type of courage.
The civilians are people who are caught up in a situation beyond their control. Something they didn't choose to happen. Civilians don't want to die in a war. They don't expect to. There's just a nearby war, and they can't escape it. To deal with that takes a very different type of courage.
Of course, these aren't to say one is 'greater' and one is 'lesser.' But rather, to say that they are different situations, and I believe, they should be honored separately. Not that the civilians should not be honored at all.
There have been so few home-front wars in American history, and all of them more than a hundred years ago (a long time to an American.) I can think of our Civil War, the Mexican-American war, the Revolution... And that's about it.
The Netherlands' "Dodenherdenking" is about those civilians who died in the service of the Netherlands in armed conflicts. Not many (but some) American civilians died in armed conflicts... But most did not. So, to have a national celebration would strike many Americans as odd.
However, it is right, I think, to honor ALL those who have died in wars. Civilians and military personnel. I would say, however, that they should be honored separately. Putting them together seems wrong to me. The military personnel often chose to go to war. The civilians did not. The military personnel knew what was happening and what they were going to deal with. The civilians often do not.
They are both heroic. But to conflate them to me seems wrong. Because that would seems to me like saying the civilians could have avoided it, that they chose it and if they'd just done it differently, this wouldn't have happened. To the soldiers, I feel like it would be saying that this was completely beyond their control, and it took no extraordinary effort, or thought to enlist. It's just what happens when there's a war.
I want to honor both, but I feel like doing it together honors neither.
Posted by: Steele | May 29, 2012 at 01:28 PM
I do not regard courage or honor as virtues. Too often they result in causing harm, and only rarely preventing or healing it.
I do not see it as my place to judge other people or their decisions; I wasn't there, wasn't in their heads, and therefore cannot know how it looked to them or what they thought. I generally run on the assumption that everybody always does whatever seemed like a good idea at the time.
I think dead civilians and soldiers alike should be mourned, not celebrated. Death should never be celebrated. I think soldiers who survived should have their sacrifice mourned, too: They committed a (hopefully, because what a waste if it was not) necessary evil so the rest of us could stay safe and comfortable and keep our hands clean.
I am a pacifist, too, I suppose; I personally will not engage in violence or advocate violence, but if other people believe their unique situations (about which I necessarily know nothing) require violence as a necessary evil I have no interest in judging them, and it's not like I can do anything to stop them.
Posted by: Froborr | May 29, 2012 at 01:52 PM
I do not regard courage or honor as virtues.
Huh. Because I think 'getting past fear to do what needs to be done' and 'having personal integrity, keeping one's word, etc' are virtues, and I don't know what words to use for those other than 'courage' and 'honor'. Misapplying those two concepts can easily cause harm, of course, I'm thinking in particular of honor killings, but the concepts themselves are sound.
Posted by: MercuryBlue | May 29, 2012 at 02:12 PM
Samuel Johnson. (I must check a proper source for this. I think I have it in a dictionary of quotations at home somewhere.)
Posted by: Timothy (TRiG) | May 29, 2012 at 04:44 PM
Maartje: Some people suggest having a separate Holocaust remembrance
The Netherlands doesn't observe Yom HaShoah (April 19 this year)? Huh. I thought everybody observed that. Maybe it's just like me thinking "everybody eats apples dipped in honey on Rosh Hoshanah!"
Posted by: hapax | May 29, 2012 at 04:57 PM
@hapax: Um, the U.S. doesn't observe Yom haShoah, and it has a much bigger Jewish population than the Netherlands AFAIK. In fact, I think Israel is the only country that officially observes Yom haShoah, though I could be very wrong about that.
Is courage if you succeed, foolhardiness if you fail. If the only difference between a virtue and a flaw is external circumstances, they're really neither.
Can easily turn into a trap, where you can't do the obvious right thing to do because you promised not to. Not to mention the moral duty to sacrifice one's personal integrity if needed to help or protect others.
For something to be truly a virtue, it must be a virtue in *all* circumstances (empathy is a good example). If it ever ceases to be a virtue, it never was one to begin with; just a personality trait.
(Of course, the concept of virtue is of little use anyway. Morality is about right and wrong action; what matters is what you do, not who you are.)
Posted by: Froborr | May 29, 2012 at 07:26 PM
Um, the U.S. doesn't observe Yom haShoah
Really?
/duckduckgoes/
Huh. Apparently many local communities do, and many public officials (such as the President and various governors) "mark" the day, but you're dead right, the U.S. doesn't officially "observe" it.
Of course, my state doesn't "officially observe" Robert E Lee Day either, but you'd never know it by the speeches and the parades and the newspaper coverage and...
Posted by: hapax | May 29, 2012 at 08:18 PM
Is courage if you succeed, foolhardiness if you fail. If the only difference between a virtue and a flaw is external circumstances, they're really neither.
There are many circumstances in which people failed for a good long time, but they were still very courageous. The earliest civil rights activists come to mind. Eventually the long arc of justice came around (and still is, very slowly), but it certainly didn't look like it at the time. I would never deny them their courage though. Similarly, even if the Nazis had won, I wouldn't deny those who worked in the Resistance against them of their courage.
Morality is about right and wrong action; what matters is what you do, not who you are.
That's only one philosophical stance, even if it's the one you think is right. Not everyone is a consequentialist.
Posted by: storiteller | May 29, 2012 at 09:06 PM
I never said courage was never a good thing, just that it's not an unalloyed virtue. And I suppose I misspoke; it's not necessarily whether you succeed or fail so much as whether the POV observer thinks you are doing the right thing.
True, but we're talking about morality. I would think it's assumed everything anyone says on the topic is opinion.
Anyway, what I said about pacifism applies to all moral questions, really: since I cannot know what another person's unique circumstance looks like to them, nor what their values are and how they balance them against one another, I cannot ever know enough about anyone else's choices or beliefs to be in a position to judge them.
By the by, I'm not a consequentialist either, at least not a pure one. It's what you do that matters, not why you do it and not necessarily what the outcomes are, but what choices you actually make.
Posted by: Froborr | May 29, 2012 at 09:46 PM
@hapax,
No, we don't. Had never even heard of it, actually. (I bet individual Jewish families and communities observe it, but I only have a few Jewish acquaintances and am not close enough to them to talk about important traditions.)
One of the criticisms against the Dutch, though, is that over 75% of all Jewish Dutch citizens were deported and killed in WWII. One big reason for that was that the Netherlands has a strong tradition of 'pillars' in society - parallel societies that hardly ever come into contact with each other and don't support each other. (Catholics go to Catholic schools and work Catholic jobs, read Catholic newspapers, shop at Catholic grocers and tailors, and the same for Protestants and 'socialists'.) Small minorities either got 'adopted' by one of the big pillars or had to basically fend for themselves. This didn't work out great when the Nazis started targeting those minorities - people in unrelated pillars were sad about what was happening but considered it the problem of the relevant pillar, not of the entire society.
I prefer to keep the Holocaust memorial (at least in the Netherlands; other countries have other considerations) part of the war memorial because we need to remember it's a DUTCH tragedy (Jews and persecuted minorities suffered more than they should have because the rest of society dropped the ball on our own citizens) that we all need to guard against, not just a Jewish tragedy that we can just be sad about for a bit and then shrug and say 'it's their problem.'
Posted by: Maartje | May 30, 2012 at 02:30 AM
There have been so few home-front wars in American history, and all of them more than a hundred years ago (a long time to an American.) I can think of our Civil War, the Mexican-American war, the Revolution... And that's about it.
War of 1812. And I think I would not include Mexican-American War, on the grounds that the cause of the war was what constituted "home front". Also, most of the fighting was done in territory which, after the war, remained Mexican.
I might include the Spanish-American War (1898-99) on the grounds that there was considerable fear that the Spanish might land troops or bombard coastal cities, such that a coast guard was assembled to prevent such. On that grounds, WWII would also count - Hawaii, of course, but also the bombardment, both real (if extremely limited) and potential, of both coasts.
Posted by: Mike Timonin | May 30, 2012 at 09:23 AM
Of course, the concept of virtue is of little use anyway. Morality is about right and wrong action; what matters is what you do, not who you are.
I think we're using such wildly divergent definitions of 'virtue' that a conversation using the term may not be possible. Virtue is action. One is not courageous, one is not honorable; one instead consistently acts in a courageous manner, one consistently behaves with honor. A courageous act being wrongheaded or ultimately futile doesn't take away from the courage of the act, either—throwing oneself on a grenade to save one's team is still brave as hell even if the next grenade takes one's team with it.
Can easily turn into a trap, where you can't do the obvious right thing to do because you promised not to. Not to mention the moral duty to sacrifice one's personal integrity if needed to help or protect others.
Gaaah storybait. I do not have time to work up characters and a scenario to resolve this to my satisfaction; I have a lesbian romance epic to write!
Posted by: MercuryBlue | May 30, 2012 at 10:48 AM
Strangely enough, I had a similar conversation about heroism with friends the other day. The general consensus was that one is not a hero in general; one becomes a hero in a specific place and time by doing something heroic--e.g., Corey Booker running into a burning building.
Posted by: sarah | May 30, 2012 at 11:15 AM
@sarah: I think it depends whether you are using the traditional definition of hero (person who is highly skilled at slaughtering our enemies) or the modern definition (which I think is, roughly, person who does something good but not mandatory, and either risks or experiences great personal cost in the process).
Posted by: Froborr | May 30, 2012 at 03:11 PM
@MercuryBlue: I think that's quite possible. As I said, it's not a concept I've ever had much use for or thought a great deal about. I guess the way you have it constructed I don't have an issue with it, but I also don't see how you can see it as a trait of a person, since they could behave courageously for a while and then suddenly start behaving cowardly. (Cowardlily? I hate trying to figure out adverbial forms of adjectives that end in -ly, it always looks wrong no matter what I do.)
Tell me about it, if I let myself I will storyspin over that kind of thing for *hours*--good people doing bad things for good reasons, bad people doing good things for bad reasons, and every possible permutation thereof. Not that there actually are good people and bad people, but it's a useful shorthand for fictitious purposes as long as you don't take it too far or make it too simplistic.
Posted by: Froborr | May 30, 2012 at 03:28 PM
I also don't see how you can see it as a trait of a person, since they could behave courageously for a while and then suddenly start behaving cowardly.
People are not inherently virtuous, any more than people are inherently vicious.
Posted by: MercuryBlue | May 31, 2012 at 12:36 AM
I do not regard courage or honor as virtues. Too often they result in causing harm, and only rarely preventing or healing it.
I really would have to disagree on that. It's not courage if it succeeds, but foolishness if it fails The feminist movement of the 19th century wasn't 'not courageous' because women didn't get a right to vote until later.
For something to be truly a virtue, it must be a virtue in *all* circumstances (empathy is a good example).
I feel that I'm burdened with an excess of empathy and I can disagree on that. Look, I know it's right to care about people, to try to help them. I'm not arguing that my empathy makes me bad because of that. I am saying that my empathy can keep me from acting on my empathy.
I spend a lot of time helping people. But I need to temper my empathy with judgement. Because if I spend too much time helping people, I'll be unable to help anyone. I am only capable of so much effort, and there are only so many hours in a day.
And in some of those, I need to indulge myself. That's not selfishness. It's an awareness of my own needs. If I spend all my time working, I will get too stressed to be able to think reasonably when I need to help someone. So, sometimes I'll go to a movie, or play videogames, or in fact read blogs like this one. Even though, I suppose, I could be working to help someone out at this moment. There is a hell of a lot of horrible things in the world, and someone always needs help.
If I act on empathy, and only on empathy (like your examples of acting on courage only or honor only being harmful) then I won't spend any time relaxing. And that downtime allows me to better help those I do help.
Additionally, if I constantly think about one thing, I'm not helping people.
So, judgement is an important part of empathy. Also of courage (Discretion is the better part of valor, as they say)
but I also don't see how you can see it as a trait of a person, since they could behave courageously for a while and then suddenly start behaving cowardly.
Because you can notice a pattern in someone. Someone who tends towards courage is described as courageous, because that is a good way of describing someone who more often than not behaves courageously.
If we can't describe courage, honor, etc. as traits, then what can we call a trait that isn't physiological or factual?
Can I say that a guy I know on Facebook is passive-aggressive because of his near-constant passive-aggressive behavior? Can I describe my sister as irresponsible? She's failing out of college because she doesn't go to class even when she knows the subject.
Posted by: Steele | Jun 01, 2012 at 05:43 PM
I'd say no. No matter how well you know a person, you still only know a tiny fraction of that person's behavior and none of their inner life, so any pattern you think you've found is based on an inadequate sample. All you can do is describe the fraction of their behavior you've witnessed as being passive-aggressive or irresponsible, not the total person.
Posted by: Froborr | Jun 01, 2012 at 05:54 PM
Edit: To clarify, I don't think that empathy is BAD. I don't want to be not empathic. I'm just saying there are cases where it's harmful. To me, and to the people I want to help.
Posted by: Steele | Jun 01, 2012 at 05:55 PM
@Steele: You make a good point about empathy, by the way. I withdraw it as an example, and now can't think of any at all, and am leaning strongly toward "There is no such thing as virtue." Which is another way of saying nobody's better than anyone else, which I happen to think is true--people are too complex to be linearly ranked.
Posted by: Froborr | Jun 01, 2012 at 06:11 PM