After a year that saw 914 more U.S. servicemen and women make the “ultimate sacrifice,” how would America’s editorial pages mark this Memorial Day? Heartfelt tributes to the fallen? Thoughts on honoring the dead while remembering the living? Mindless cheerleading? Yes, yes, and yes. And one whose Memorial Day message seems to be, don’t dwell in the past.
From Raleigh, North Carolina, The News & Observer brings us these thoughts:
Life is a string of pearls, each day alike to the casual observer, but no two quite the same. There is a time to dream, and a time to remember. […]
Memorial Day, a pause in the rush of days, brings a flooding of memories — recollections of distant but unforgettable passings, of blood-red poppies, green grass, white gravestones standing row on row, of fluttering flags and the lonesome call of a distant bugle sounding Taps.
If only the passings were distant
The Houston Chronicle offers what is the best editorial of the day. It speaks of the importance of remembering and honoring the dead, but more importantly:
…it should also be an occasion to remember and reach out to the American veterans whose lives have been forever changed by their service.
Remembering the dead, but helping the living is a message for today. Called, “Invisible War,” this editorial speaks honestly about the deaths, the injuries and the fact that for the vast majority of Americans, supporting the troops means “putting yellow ribbon decals on cars.”
Taking a completely different stance is The Pueblo Chiefton. They begin with Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and the implication seems to be that:
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.
The civil war being those that oppose this war versus…what? The real patriots? Says the editorial:
Let there be no doubt about the valor of veterans…
An editorial that blindly ignores that the doubt was never with the veterans.
The Washington Times, perhaps finding it more and more difficult to cheerlead for this administration, falls back on the tried and true, September 11th:
On that day, Americans were targeted for what we believe. Dedication to those same principles put Americans in the sights of British Redcoats at Breed’s Hill; in the crosshairs of German artillery at Bastogne; on a plane over a field in Pennsylvania, where Todd Beamer said, “Let’s roll.” Rolling, Todd, rolling.
And what can we as Americans do?
…commit to taking not just a single minute of one day, but several moments each day to renew our duty to this republic. To recite the Pledge of Allegiance, hand over heart. To bow our head or doff a cap when passing by the weathered markers and newly dug graves at Arlington. To remain still for a few seconds after the last note of the national anthem, taking the brief space before the game starts to remember those in danger while others are at play.
Yes, and if you slap a magnet on your car, your duty to the republic and the troops are fulfilled.
I read perhaps 15 different editorials from around the country…but none were as odd as the New York Times entry:
But if this is a day devoted to remembering, it’s also a day that has to acknowledge forgetting. […]
The day is too bright, the sun too warm, the shadows too deep and green. Memorial Day may be hazy with memory, but it is also drowsy with life. Summer is in the next block, just around the corner, and summer is a season almost completely lacking in gravity. It is meant for living in the oblivion of the present.
A Memorial Day message that says, don’t remember? Well, one can appreciate that the New York Times doesn’t want to remind America about their own responsibility for 2464 of the people that we are memorializing today.
In the end, what is there to say on this Memorial Day except; Bring our troops home so that next year we aren’t remembering 914 more ultimate sacrifices for the ultimate lie.
