Why I wear a poppy

“We all fight on two fronts, the one facing the enemy and the one facing what we do to the enemy.”

–Joseph Boyden, Three Day Road, p. 301

I wish I could find a more coherent way to talk about this, about the complex set of emotions I feel in wearing a poppy and believing in peace.   Joseph Boyden’s quote reminds me about the humanity that is at war.   Whenever humans are involved in something, it’s never simple, so bear with me.   I am trying to write about something that lives strongly in my heart, and heart language and word language are different beasts…

Rememberance Day is coming and I choose to remember the men and women that I am paying to fight in Afghanistan. I am not a friend of war, and especially not a friend of this one, and I desperately wish for these men and women that if they have to confront these two fronts that it be rather in the service of a better story than the one we are being told about terror.

Every year at this time I have a deep remembering of the First World War, the Great War, in which Canadian boys – officially children – signed up to fight for honour and die insanely on the fields of France and Belgium. The 20th century produced a brief period where war went from professional skirmishes, to massive conflicts between amateurs and willing volunteers to its current shape – the slaughter of civilians by professional armies. Soldiers die in these conflicts but not in anything like the proportion of civilians that die. It is innocents who are mostly killed now in Iraq and Sudan and Colombia and Afgahnistan.
And why?

The sooner we can bring our young men and women home from central Asia, the better. I have no doubt that they feel like their mission is noble and important. My wish for them is that we as a country find a better use for that willingness to do the dirty work of doing good. They are willing to kill and die for us. They are willing to suffer the inflictions of fighting on these deeply personal fronts to be of service.   It is a screwy way to be in the world, but what higher calling can there be than be prepared to offer your life to an ideal?

What else could we ask them to do? What do we wish for them when they come home to their families full of the residue of those killing fields? Even those of us who oppose this war must remember them.

My call for us to leave Afghanistan is not a call to run scared from a foe. It is rather a call for a reasoned use of our troops. There is no exit strategy for this war (and I doubt whether we even have a foe there that we wouldn’t have if we weren’t there).   Our political   leadership has refused to ever contemnplate negotiating with the enemy. Even at the end of World War ii we negotiated with the enemy. If you refuse to talk to the enemy, you are committing yourself to fight until either of you are dead. We will never kill every Taliban soldier. For thousands of years, Afghans have fought and defended their lands. Are we going to “win?” And what does “win” mean? And anyway, just what are the conditions under which we will leave Afghanistan?

Committing the lives of young people to a mission so vague and hopeless as this, without supporting the troops by telling them what set of conditions they are fighting for borders on criminal in my opinion. And so I wear a poppy today to remember the soldiers that we have sent there to fight a hopeless war with no prospect of victory. They will not return having vanquished a foe, decorated and lauded for using force to defend a true threat to our country and way of life. You will not see scenes like we saw at the end of the last century’s wars when our troops came back having won, having liberated people who were forced beneath the jackboots of facism. We will be bringing home brave and promising Canadians who have fought for a political cause and have suffered life long scars for poll points, opinions and home front glory for those too scared to go themselves.

This is also not to doubt the work that our soldiers are doing. There is no doubt in my mind that it is possible to be in Afghanistan and do good work, and we are also doing that. But we could do it anywhere, and with much more effect. Why are we there?

I wear a poppy today to remember those that are caught in these conflicts – the innocents and those we pay – and to remember that when they come home we owe them wholeness and a responsibility to help them heal themselves from the wars that they fight, on both fronts.

More on the war:

• Previously argued on Parking Lot
• Afghanistan: Wrong Mission for Canada
• Canada’s Mission in Afghanistan

[tags]war, peace, rememberance day, poppy[/tags]

Photo by   striatic