We hear it all the time; the argument that Remembrance Day promotes violence and war.
I am not going to disputes anyone’s beliefs to the contrary, but I think there are some things that need to be discussed.
Bad people exist.
I am not going to start defining bad people because everyone’s definition is different of what constitute bad people.
World War 2 was started by bad people.
I am sure most people can agree on that.
British MP Edmund Burke said, “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
There is always going to be someone who thinks they are right and everyone else is wrong.
In the world of novels, the reader never really understands the antagonist until they realize the antagonist’s belief that they are the good guy.
And there will always be people who agree with them.
But we do not live in a world where everything is as black and white as movies and books.
There are never clear good guys and bad guys.
There are always going to be two sides of every story. Every argument. Every conflict.
We are becoming a better world when people are willing to understand that about humans.
Understand about the way we peacefully disagree.
But that is not always the case.
We are only human and we are free to make our own decisions.
There it becomes a balancing act of how to solve conflict with people other than yourself whether it comes to violent or nonviolent conflict solutions.
We do live in a world where, for the most part, violence is not the automatic conclusion of conflict resolution.
We are sharing the planet of what can be considered limited resources.
We can be selfish in our views towards others.
We can be greedy for things like power, food, and land.
We are not perfect.
Reading the Nahlah Ayed memoir about covering the Middle East post 9/11, even growing up in a concentration camp in Jordan did not prepare her for the complex and century old conflicts that made up the Middle East.
The relationships that caused and resulted in 9/11 cannot even be easily explained and those who think otherwise need to take a deeper look.
You cannot change others behaviour. In this context, simply put: the survivor cannot change the behaviour of the abuser, and no one can change the behaviour of the survivor.
The same can be said in context of global violence.
Soldiers defended themselves against the axis in the Second World War and looking at the wartime propaganda, war was glorified through movies, posters, radio programs, soldier tours, and advertisements.
Soldiers themselves do not promote war as the best possible solution to a conflict.
For anyone who think war is glorified or promoted via Remembrance Day, I’d say to them sit down and talk with a soldier about their experience.
The hell they went through, the friends they lost, the things they have seen, the things they have even done; anyone would be hard pressed to find a soldier who would wish all that on their worst enemies.
The soldiers I have talked to through Remembrance Day services and the Walk to Remember that took place last July were not ones to glorify their own heroism. They were quick to quash the word hero from describing them.
We are not celebrating war when we gather to remember. We are remember how we have been shaped by war.
We cannot deny our history as a military force during the First and Second World Wars. We forged our identity at Vimy Ridge. We claimed our identity by signing the Peace Treaty on Nov. 11, 1918 as a nation separate from Great Britain.
We cannot forget the 66,000 Canadians and Newfoundlanders who gave their lives and more than 172,000 wounded during the First World War.
Newfoundland and Labrador forged their identity in the Second World War.
We have claimed our identity as peacekeepers through the Gulf War and Bosnia.
We cannot deny these defining moments of our history and these are not the only moments to define us but that does not mean we promote violence either.
