Black revolutionary H. Rap Brown famously declared that “violence is as American as cherry pie.” While Brown is serving a life sentence for murder for the shooting of two Georgia sheriffs, he was still onto something if you look at our country’s long and bloody history.
War has been an integral part of American culture since its foundation. From breaking free of the British empire in the 18th Century to our current and seemingly never-ending battles in Iraq and Afghanistan, there are usually American soldiers with their finger on a trigger somewhere.
While brick-and-mortar war memorials fill our landscapes, we often forget the actual flesh-and-blood price paid by tens of thousands of young Americans who have been shipped away to a foreign land where they may kill a stranger or perhaps be killed by one. We salute the ones who made it back during the seventh inning stretch at Yankee Stadium but there are thousands more who never hear the cheers; 20 veterans kill themselves every day in America.
In my neighborhood of Rockaway, there’s a small Memorial Day parade every year where a group of veterans and elected officials march down our main street and then read off the long list of names of the dead, starting with World War One.
It’s hard to imagine some young kid growing up in the middle of Jamaica Bay suddenly being sent to the battlefields of France where he's killed in a gas attack. The names flow on through World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan. Each name is a person who didn’t come home; it’s staggering to think this is the case with almost every community across the country.
So on this Memorial Day, take a minute to realize the enormity of the sacrifice made by hundreds of thousands of Americans and their families throughout our history. But I’d also ask anyone who’s gung-ho about sending our troops somewhere to think very hard about the price that’s about to be paid – and the one that has been paid for the last 250 years.
We'll be back on Tuesday.
Bob Hardt