Last night I was on the 401, driving past those signs that now declare it the "Highway of Heroes". I have never liked that designation. I object to it for a number of reasons. First of all, I don't care for the intrusion of militarism into our casual, everyday lives. I think it sends the wrong message. We're living in the nuclear age. The military is necessary evil that I feel is put to its best uses when it's at home, looking after our interests here, or perhaps maintaining a presence on the soil of our legal treaty allies, where we are completely welcome, as a show of solidarity and support. But mostly, I object to it because I feel it cheapens the word "hero". I'm sorry, but I don't consider someone a hero just because he died in a uniform overseas. That's unfortunate, but not necessarily heroic. That idea would anger a lot of people, but it's just because their patriotism blinds them to the actualities of it. To illustrate the point, I would remark that people knowingly take risks doing their jobs every day, but we don't think of them as heroes. Millions of people risk their lives daily on our highways, getting to and from work to do the things that, in the own small ways, contribute to the functioning of our society. And every day, a handful of them don't make it. Accidents happen, and they never get to go home again. But we don't call them heroes.
Likewise, a young man who puts on the uniform is extremely unlikely to face combat, much less die in it, and we all know that. The odds are vastly greater that he (or she, forgive me) will spend a few years fixing equipment, learning to shoot, marching, taking a turn peeling spuds, and maybe helping out when a natural disaster occurs somewhere in the country, or another country. The odds against any particular person in uniform ending up in combat or dying in it are extremely high. But even when it happens, is that necessarily the making of hero? Part of the job of a soldier, should it come to that, is to engage in combat at the risk of life and limb. But likewise, part of the job of just about any of the rest of us is to risk smashing into a bridge abutment or being t-boned by someone running a red light. It happens. It's part of the job. And let's be honest... an awful lot of the time, we're talking about guys who were in jeeps that overturned, or helicopters that crashed, or who stepped on a land mine or set off a booby trap (just as hundreds of kids do every year in the countries we "helped" in the past, but no one calls them heroes... no, they're at best "victims", and at worst, "collateral damages"). As unfortunate as that is, is it right to water down the word "hero" to apply to that?
My idea of a hero tends to focus on fire fighters. Every time they answer the call, they're at risk. And every time, it's about saving lives and property. It's not occasional, it's not a couple of times in the course of a career as it typically is for soldiers or police, it's pretty much every day. That's more in keeping with the idea of a hero to me.
I thought about it last night... what is a hero? To me, a hero is someone who, at clear and obvious risk to him or herself, does something far above and beyond what would ordinarily be expected of a person in that situation. We know what a hero really is; a hero is someone so bold and brave that he wins the Victoria Cross, or the Legion of Honour. A hero is someone who braves a burning car to save people, especially strangers, for example. I once read about a German pilot in World War II whose stricken plane was about to hit a school in France. Rather than bail out and save himself, he rode the stick down to avoid the school, and perished rather than sacrifice all those children. I look at myself and as much as I'd like to think I'd be that brave and that selfless, I strongly suspect I'd hit the silk and just hope really hard my plane missed the school. I'm not a hero. At best, I'm ordinary. And, frankly, I think so are most of the soldiers who come home to us in boxes from overseas. Unfortunate, ordinary men and women — admittedly doing a tough job, but not necessarily heroes.
No, we need to reserve that word for the truly exceptional. This... this is a hero. This is a tale of real heroism in my book.
Showing posts with label militarism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label militarism. Show all posts
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
Why I'm not wearing the poppy this year
It occurred to me a few weeks ago, and it was a disquieting thought. It still is. But it would be meaningless if it weren't. This year, I won't be wearing a poppy.
It really does go against the grain for me. My dad served in the Royal Canadian Navy for two decades. His father was a volunteer in the Second World War and served in campaigns in Italy and France. On my mother's side, one of my great grandfathers died in the Battle of the Somme. All of that means something to me. I don't take it lightly. I myself have never served in uniform, and so I approach the memory of all that with, I think, due reverence.
But they key word there is "due". Respect should come from the heart, and it should be spontaneous and sincere. That's been the experience of it for me, in my lifetime. Just lately, I've begun seeing lines crossed I am not comfortable to see crossed. Not in this country.
Things are different from when I was younger, and in ways I don't agree with. When I was young, we weren't involved in imperial wars. NATO troops were about holding the line in Europe and defending us from invasion: collective security, we called it. When Canadians did go abroad outside the alliance, it was as peacekeepers, their presence mutually-requested by belligerents, working under the UN flag. Wherever we went, we were invited. Respected. People believed in peace and our actions backed up our words.
I'm disturbed by the trends today. Now, at least since the Balkans War, NATO troops go gallivanting off under the flag of that supposedly-defensive alliance to invade other people's homes: collective projection of force. We've perverted the idea of "peacekeeping" to include invasions where we spoon feed other people our cultures and values, insisting we know what's best because we're wealthy and stronger than they are. Millions of Canadians drive around our cities and towns with "Support Our Troops" magnetic ribbons cynically slapped on the backs of their gas-guzzling SUVs and pickup trucks, little more than the modern version of slavery advocates who waxed eloquent about bringing the word of God to the heathen masses.
When I was a boy, Remembrance Day was a big occasion. We would spend days in class reading about it, preparing for it, creating decorations and writing poems about the fallen and the horrors of war. We would have assemblies. It was even a day off where I lived. In short, it was about highlighting the strangeness of war, how foreign it was to our lives and experience, how unthinkable and deadly it was, and how grateful we needed to be for that and to those who answered the call when there was no choice.
But today, we choose wars. We don't remember the fallen with bitterness and sorrow, ordinary people lost needlessly to human failings, but instead we glorify the loss itself, elevating those who die, or even just serve, to something higher, sometimes hinting at the sort of post-facto deification of great men in the Roman Empire. I find this an unsettling change in the nature of our society.
I spent most of my childhood in a city that was effectively a huge military base with its collateral industries and services. But even there, there was a dividing line between the military and the civilian aspects of life. Highways and buildings and parks had bland, ordinary names, having to do with their function or geography or in memory of politicians who shaped our lives. But now, even here in Ontario, in just the past year I've seen the stretch of the 401 between Trenton and Toronto redubbed "The Highway of Heroes", and an ongoing attempt to rename the Don Valley Parkway "The Veterans Memorial Parkway". This need to retroactively rebrand the casual things of ordinary life with a military stamp, to force a kind of automatic salute from everyday people, to inject a military note into the melody of civilian life... it alarms me. This was not the way of things even during the Cold War; in fact, it seems to have effectively been brought about by its end. It's as though once the real consequences of taking military action were gone, the restraints came off, and suddenly this ugly blossom was free to open. Those darker, ancient urges at the base of our brainstems could speak their names again in daylight.
I respect our veterans for the things they did, particularly those who really did fight in war and those who suffered and died. But we have so many appropriate venues to express that respect. Remembrance Day (if only we would give it its due again). The cenotaphs to be found in every Canadian village and town. The National War Memorial on Parliament Hill; indeed, the National War Museum in Ottawa. Vimy Ridge in France: a memorial to a country's sacrifice on par with anything else the world has to offer — I might go so far as to say, in some eyes, unparalleled. But to force it into our consciousness and subconsciousness on a normal level, to cause us to wade through it on our way to work and school and in our entertainments and diversions, these are dangerous inclinations that ought to be resisted. They're actually a violation of the things for which those long ago sacrifices were made, the very things that gave rise to the Geneva Conventions and the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that we now disregard, scoff at, or circumvent while paying them lip service only. There were reasons people came together to create them, and we are in danger of forgetting all that, and replacing it with a casual, blasé acceptance of the permanence and even desirability of violence. This is what we're telling young people today... it's very different from what I was told, no matter how subtle the change might seem.
I'm not wearing the poppy this year. It's because I hope to recover the Canada the poppy made. We're losing it, if it isn't lost already.
It really does go against the grain for me. My dad served in the Royal Canadian Navy for two decades. His father was a volunteer in the Second World War and served in campaigns in Italy and France. On my mother's side, one of my great grandfathers died in the Battle of the Somme. All of that means something to me. I don't take it lightly. I myself have never served in uniform, and so I approach the memory of all that with, I think, due reverence.
But they key word there is "due". Respect should come from the heart, and it should be spontaneous and sincere. That's been the experience of it for me, in my lifetime. Just lately, I've begun seeing lines crossed I am not comfortable to see crossed. Not in this country.
Things are different from when I was younger, and in ways I don't agree with. When I was young, we weren't involved in imperial wars. NATO troops were about holding the line in Europe and defending us from invasion: collective security, we called it. When Canadians did go abroad outside the alliance, it was as peacekeepers, their presence mutually-requested by belligerents, working under the UN flag. Wherever we went, we were invited. Respected. People believed in peace and our actions backed up our words.
I'm disturbed by the trends today. Now, at least since the Balkans War, NATO troops go gallivanting off under the flag of that supposedly-defensive alliance to invade other people's homes: collective projection of force. We've perverted the idea of "peacekeeping" to include invasions where we spoon feed other people our cultures and values, insisting we know what's best because we're wealthy and stronger than they are. Millions of Canadians drive around our cities and towns with "Support Our Troops" magnetic ribbons cynically slapped on the backs of their gas-guzzling SUVs and pickup trucks, little more than the modern version of slavery advocates who waxed eloquent about bringing the word of God to the heathen masses.
When I was a boy, Remembrance Day was a big occasion. We would spend days in class reading about it, preparing for it, creating decorations and writing poems about the fallen and the horrors of war. We would have assemblies. It was even a day off where I lived. In short, it was about highlighting the strangeness of war, how foreign it was to our lives and experience, how unthinkable and deadly it was, and how grateful we needed to be for that and to those who answered the call when there was no choice.
But today, we choose wars. We don't remember the fallen with bitterness and sorrow, ordinary people lost needlessly to human failings, but instead we glorify the loss itself, elevating those who die, or even just serve, to something higher, sometimes hinting at the sort of post-facto deification of great men in the Roman Empire. I find this an unsettling change in the nature of our society.
I spent most of my childhood in a city that was effectively a huge military base with its collateral industries and services. But even there, there was a dividing line between the military and the civilian aspects of life. Highways and buildings and parks had bland, ordinary names, having to do with their function or geography or in memory of politicians who shaped our lives. But now, even here in Ontario, in just the past year I've seen the stretch of the 401 between Trenton and Toronto redubbed "The Highway of Heroes", and an ongoing attempt to rename the Don Valley Parkway "The Veterans Memorial Parkway". This need to retroactively rebrand the casual things of ordinary life with a military stamp, to force a kind of automatic salute from everyday people, to inject a military note into the melody of civilian life... it alarms me. This was not the way of things even during the Cold War; in fact, it seems to have effectively been brought about by its end. It's as though once the real consequences of taking military action were gone, the restraints came off, and suddenly this ugly blossom was free to open. Those darker, ancient urges at the base of our brainstems could speak their names again in daylight.
I respect our veterans for the things they did, particularly those who really did fight in war and those who suffered and died. But we have so many appropriate venues to express that respect. Remembrance Day (if only we would give it its due again). The cenotaphs to be found in every Canadian village and town. The National War Memorial on Parliament Hill; indeed, the National War Museum in Ottawa. Vimy Ridge in France: a memorial to a country's sacrifice on par with anything else the world has to offer — I might go so far as to say, in some eyes, unparalleled. But to force it into our consciousness and subconsciousness on a normal level, to cause us to wade through it on our way to work and school and in our entertainments and diversions, these are dangerous inclinations that ought to be resisted. They're actually a violation of the things for which those long ago sacrifices were made, the very things that gave rise to the Geneva Conventions and the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that we now disregard, scoff at, or circumvent while paying them lip service only. There were reasons people came together to create them, and we are in danger of forgetting all that, and replacing it with a casual, blasé acceptance of the permanence and even desirability of violence. This is what we're telling young people today... it's very different from what I was told, no matter how subtle the change might seem.
I'm not wearing the poppy this year. It's because I hope to recover the Canada the poppy made. We're losing it, if it isn't lost already.
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