It was unfortunate that a few points of sale of Poppies were in the short term denied in my west end Montreal area. I say this because we should get past the debate about the use of recent military areas of combat to remember that returning, mostly young, members of our current troops need a lot of support, both physical and psychological as they try to get back to some normalcy of life. According to recent media stories there are all too little resources for them in the current military and medical facilities. With the nearby Ste Anne de Bellevue Veterans Hospital not fully in use at this time, and in apparent transition to long term care under the Quebec Government adminisration (not that there isn’t a great need for more beds in that domain also), let us not lose sight of the ongoing need for care for our returning troops, regardless of one’s views on the relavance of recent military campaigns.

“I dream of giving birth to a child who will ask, ‘Mother, what was war?’”
Eve Merriam. Poet. A few years back, in her papers at the Kerlan Collection in Minnesota, I read from her notebooks. There, in her own handwriting, I saw how she wrote and rewrote and rewrote and rewrote to get this simple heart-stopping line. A dream worth passing along.

Simple does not equal easy, eh? But yes, let us remember but not ever glorify any war.

In the US you are smothered by a wave of the stuff. Lots of talk about “defending us.” Very little talk about entering the 8th year of a war that was started for dubious purposes in Iraq or the thousands of innocent Iraqis who died while they have been “defending us.” Or how our policies, and sometimes the actions of our soldiers, have increasingly alienated the populations of the very countries we are supposedly trying to save from terrorists.

I live in a community where there a lot of people who have relatives who serve in the military, way more than in Canada. I have friends who are soldiers, who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan. It has given me a new appreciation for the sacrifices that they and their families make for a cause they often truly believe in.

My problem is with the cause, not with the soldiers. The cause needs to be questioned a lot more often and a lot harder. A large segment of the population just follows it like sheep, without ever really thinking about it. Unfortunately, at least in the US, that’s not going to happen very easily.

Finally, here are the words of a one of American’s greatest anti-war advocates — Mark Twain. The War Prayer was the only Twain piece that Harpers wouldn’t publish, because it was so controversial. But Twain had it published after his death. It says it all.