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What Are You Doing On Memorial Day?

By Jane Bright

Memorial Day weekend is a 3-day weekend so there will be backyard barbecues, memorial parades and a lot of flag waving. That's how the average American, untouched by war and its devastation, will celebrate the holiday that launches summer.

Memorial Day, originally Decoration Day, is a day of remembrance for those who have died in our nation's service. Who, besides the families and friends of the fallen, really remember our war dead? Most Americans know little of the two declared wars occurring in Iraq and Afghanistan, the covert, undeclared war in Pakistan and the soon-to-be war in Yemen. Roughly a 1/2 percent of our population has fought in OEF/OIF since they began with the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan.

President Obama lifted the ban on press coverage of returning war dead early in 2009 yet very little attention is paid to those returning home in transport tubes. Even less attention is paid to our war wounded. The Department of Defense admits to 6,346 war dead, but we know that the number is significantly higher. At least 30% of the military personnel who have served in a combat zone under OIF/OEF are suffering from PTSD and/or traumatic brain injuries. The DOD conservatively estimates 41,100 physically wounded.

I am of the Vietnam era. My brother was a medic in Vietnam, the father of my children completed two tours in Vietnam. Both suffer continually from their experiences. Shattered and re-made lives are all around me, but nothing prepared me for the devastation of losing my oldest son, KIA on July 24, 2003 in an ambush while guarding an oil refinery. Nothing prepares a parent for this kind of loss. Multiply that by the 3 1/2 million Americans for whom war has come home: the veterans and their families, by the million plus dead and 2 million plus displaced Iraqis and the untold number of dead and displaced Afghans. Why do we continue to wage war and then memorialize the war and its victims? What is it about war the gets our juices flowing?

Given all the dead and wounded on the American side alone, I ask the question — what will you be doing on Memorial Day? Will you be hanging out with your friends and family, having a few beers with the guys and gals in the neighborhood? Or will you be taking action on that long weekend to continue to raise consciousness and wake up the American people to the devastation that is happening on our behalf and in our names by our government. Ask yourself if you are doing all you can do to end the wars and the suffering that the US has rained down on the citizens of other nations.

There is a great deal of money associated with wars of aggression as we've witnessed in our wars for profit and resources in Iraq and Afghanistan. The American people cannot sustain the psychic damage and the economic debt associated with our wars. We must take the lead in bringing them to an end so that we may celebrate life rather than memorialize death. When peace becomes a way of life Memorial Day will be worth celebrating. Failure to achieve protracted peace is not an option. What will you be doing on Memorial Day?

Jane Bright is a peace activist and lecturer who, together with her husband Jim, co-founded the Evan Ashcraft Foundation after her son, SGT Evan Ashcraft was killed in combat in Al Hawd, Iraq in July 2003. Jane can be reached through her foundation email at www.evanashcraft.org.

Chuck "Mutt" Winant of VVAW riding his hog in the San Diego Veterans Day parade, 2009