Remember, Remember. But what to remember?

(A thought for the day from the Reverend Gadflyista)

Why do we stand in silent remembrance of the war-dead? Is it for the tragic waste of life? Is it because they did their duty for their country? No. And if we do we do remember them merely as objects of our humanitarian pity, or still worse, as nodding dogs who shot whoever the government of their day told them to shoot at, then we grossly dishonour their memory. How? Because what is lost in the ambiguity of standing in silent remembrance of the deceased just as deceased is the grounds that truly makes their loss worthy of our respect. Namely, in the heroism that is staking their life for some cause. It is this we ought to remember them for today- what we need to remember them for today more than ever. To remember the heroism of every soldier who fought in fascist Europe not because he did what he was told to do, nor even for some notion of king and country, but to rid the world of the scourge of genocide, of barbarism. That we ought to remember every Union soldier of the American civil who fought, not because he was from the north, but because he was for the abolition of slavery.

But if such fidelity to a cause is indeed the ground that makes those brave men and women worthy of our respect, then we need to remember that not everyone is so fortunate as those allied or union soldiers, in finding themselves ordered to fight for the good cause. And in fact, it requires a still greater heroism, one yet more worthy of our adulation, to go to the limit for a cause when one is ordered to do otherwise; when one risks terrible punishment for so acting. It is therefore even more important then to remember all those who deserted when what they were ordered to do went against what they thought they ought to do. To remember every soldier of World War One who was shot because he refused any longer to participate in such senseless butchery of his fellow man. Every Syrian soldier who today refuses to be the mere lackey of a discredited regime; who has deserted rather than fire on their fellow countrymen who've set their faces against tyranny. People like Bradley Manning, who chose to expose the atrocities in Iraq rather than propagate them, in spite of the consequences.

It is these men and women who have earned not a gloomy two-minute silence in commemoration of their death, but a two-minute riotous cheer for the heroism of their life. Because when today, doing one's duty means, more and more often, standing on the side of the bad cause- whether in the police, the army, the bureaucracy or the corporation- then it is these men and women we need to be held up as examples to emulate. That in our own defiance we might do much better in honouring their heroism.