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Remembrance day.  A ‘be honest’ donation and a little plastic flower on the lapel to show due respect for those who died to protect our ‘freedom’ … whatever that means.  Seems a bit of a farce, doesn’t it?  A sea of little plastic flowers, filling trash cans across the country on November 12, but nobody can say we didn’t remember, right?  Most people don’t even get the day off work.  So much for paying respect.

I wonder what is worse, not paying any respect at all, or doing so as shamefully as we do?  Generations of Canadians learning to honor and respect our fallen heroes by going about business as usual with a little red flower on, and maybe catching a couple snippets of the ceremony on the news.  What’s for dinner?

I would like to place a vote in the ‘forgetting is better’ column.

Don’t get me wrong.  What our veterans did was great.  Great!  Full stop!  The world was different then.  They were needed.  They went at great personal cost.  None came back as he/she left.  Our great nation was founded on their backs and the strength of their character is something, I think, we can all take pride in.  Destroyed lives, torn families and decades of anguish and pain deserve more, however, than a ****ing plastic flower.

But, since there are far more important things to distract our attention, paying due deference to our greatest generation is not a possibility.  In the absence of a real choice, I choose to forget entirely.  I would rather promote the reality that a) doesn’t provide the Canadian forces with another opportunity to recruit, b) doesn’t subconsciously entrench the idea of Canada as a war nation, c) doesn’t perpetuate the idea that war is a justifiable solution to problems and d) doesn’t teach kids that the path to glory and heroism is a path strewn with guns and blood.  (“You see, war is not the answer, for only love can conquer hate”)

We really have never been good at respecting our heroes though.  The nurse who grants quiet dignity to a person at their very weakest.  A teacher who gives up their spare time to do what they can to best prepare their student for the big bad world.  Police officers working in remote locations, under difficult circumstances, to maintain the ideals of Canada’s democracy.  Why don’t we have days with crappy plastic flowers for the heroes who continue to make a profound difference in our lives?  Why no 2 minutes of silence to remember a teacher who made a difference in your life, or even the stranger who helped you by the side of the road?  Wayne Gretzky though.  That guy could hit a little disc with a stick.  Isn’t there some way we can name the whole country after him.   

On another topic entirely, I wonder how many times the parallel was drawn between the modern war in Afghanistan and the glories of the past century?  The same dusty, decades old rhetoric about ‘men and women making the ultimate sacrifice in the name of freedom.’  This, perhaps, is the greatest crime of all. 

Hitler invaded Europe.  We kill the invaders to liberate it.  Thus, we are heroes. 

We invaded Afghanistan.  Taliban fighters kill the Canadians invaders to liberate it.  Who are the heroes again? 

You say, ‘come on Brandon, the world isn’t black and white like that.’  You, of course, are right.  In a black and white world, we would be properly condemned as murdering thugs, pursuing an imperialist agenda on behalf of the princes and earls of our corporate elite.  In our world of grey … well … Winston Churchill said ‘I know history will be kind to me as I intend to write it.’  War, they say, does not answer the question of who is right.  It only answers the question of who is left. 

At what point does kicking down the doors of poor peasants who have never done anything but fight off the foreign invaders become heroic?  How does the fact that not one of them has ever made anything resembling a hostile act towards our country justify us mocking their religion, humiliating them in front of their families and taking their lives?  And let me just abandon all the sarcasm and say the fact that we are supporting our allies who use torture to satiate their greed makes me want to smash my face agasint the wall and then put a gun to my head.  True patriot love, in all thy sons command.  Lest we forget.

It’s Remembrance day in Afghanistan.  I wonder how many Afghanis are left to remember a happier time, before their country became a ping-pong ball in regional geo-politics because we allow war after war to be fought in our name.  I hear heroin production is up a few hundred percent since we invaded (underline: INVADED).  At least their poppies are real.  I hear they can give you a real kick if you know how to use them properly too.  Now that’s a happy remembrance day!

Peace and Love