Hitchens on Memorial Day

Christopher Hitchens elevates our National Day of Mourning, which has devolved into a Three-Day holiday, for those who "gave their lives," or as Christopher aptly notes, had their lives taken, in our country's wars into a memoriam on all victims of warfare.

Hitchens never does explain why the village of Lower Slaughter in the Cotswolds has no war memorial, nor why the two villages bear such gruesome names. But he does mention Ataturk's Gallipoli memorial was for the "Tommies and Johnnies along with the Alis and Mehmets." Then Chris nails a couple of recent demagogues:

Since all efforts at commemoration are bound to fall short, one must be on guard against any attempt at overstatement. In particular, one must resist efforts to ventriloquize the dead. To me, Cindy Sheehan's posthumous conscription of her son is as objectionable as Billy Graham's claim, at the National Cathedral, that all the dead of Sept. 11, 2001 were now in paradise. In the first instance, we have no reason to believe that young Casey Sheehan would ever have supported MoveOn.org, and in the second instance we cannot be expected to believe that almost 3,000 New Yorkers all died in a state of grace. Nothing is more tasteless, when set against the reality of death, than the hollow note of demagogy and false sentiment.

Then Hitchens goes on with a denoument worthy of a great orator:

"Always think of it: never speak of it." That was the stoic French injunction during the time when the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine had been lost. This resolution might serve us well at the present time, when we are in midconflict with a hideous foe, and when it is too soon to be thinking of memorials to a war not yet won. This Memorial Day, one might think particularly of those of our fallen who also guarded polling-places, opened schools and clinics, and excavated mass graves. They represent the highest form of the citizen, and every man and woman among them was a volunteer. This plain statement requires no further rhetoric.

Amen!