On Memorial Day, let’s honor the dead by standing for peace

"Thank you for your service," we say to our veterans, and the statement is not large or deep enough. They volunteered to risk life and limb in order to protect the country, and that courage should be lauded. On Memorial Day, that gratitude takes a deeper turn, posthumously extending to those who not only served, but who "gave the last full measure of devotion."

The words are not enough. The parades, speeches and monuments are an appropriate, valiant effort; but how can we truly show proportional thanks for so great a sacrifice?

How do we thank veterans for their service? How do we honor the dead?

We should thank veterans for their service by caring for them when they return. Veterans frequently return from deployment with extensive physical and mental health care needs that lead to costly medical bills, and it is our duty to to ensure that they are provided with excellent, affordable care. This is not something that can be provided by individuals or by small organizations. Veterans served the whole nation, and so the whole nation must come together to provide proper care. That means we must support and extend programs like Medicaid and other health care programs that keep our veterans cared for. Just as they stood for our country by risking their lives, we must stand for them by treating their physical wounds, their emotional wounds and their natural aging in ways that honor their service without driving them into bankruptcy.

This ought to be a nonpartisan issue. And yet we have seen repeated attempts to cut Medicaid, to repeal programs that make health care accessible, and to replace it with policies that put more money in the hands of insurance companies and less in the hands of veterans and others in need. Any elected official that says they support the troops, but then casts votes that cut health care for veterans, is behaving hypocritically and should not receive another vote.

And how do we honor the dead? How do we take Memorial Day beyond picnics and parades?

It will take more than a day. If we truly wish to honor our war dead, we need to learn from their sacrifice that war is always tragedy, even wars entered with the noblest of intentions and the most righteous of causes. Our religious traditions proclaim that God stands always with the victimized, and far more than it creates heroes and villains, war creates victims. Our war memorials depict soldiers in grand poses of strength and glory, and surely those moments existed, but most of the people who have died in our nation's history have been young boys, terrified children, crying to God or their mothers to deliver them home.

For them, the answer never came. But it can come for the future generations. We can honor the war dead by making a true memorial, constructed in our shared national memory, that war is hell, and that it can be prevented. True remembrance of their sacrifice can be expressed in dollars and cents. We can't say that we can't afford to care for our veterans while we continue to fund the wars that create them.

Do we want to be a nation that can afford to build billions of bombs, but can't afford to give veterans counseling for the post-traumatic stress disorder caused by the very wars we sent them to? Do we want to define ourselves as the country with the most warlike budget in history? As Bishop William J. Barber II describes our unending war economy, "Out of each discretionary federal dollar spent, 54 cents goes to the military. This is money that is not spent on health care, education, affordable housing, or infrastructure. We've paid more than $4 trillion since 2001 to fight the War on Terror while claiming that we lack the resources to furnish decent medical care for every American."

Patriotism is not shown by flying a flag on your porch or by standing for the national anthem during the football game. Patriotism is shown by caring for the men and women who gave their blood for the nation, by preventing the death of more and by refusing to make war a perpetual and prepaid option, at the expense of our nation's other priorities, such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

We honor the dead by doing away with the failed strategy of saber-rattling. We honor the dead by preventing the next war. We honor the dead by making peace. We honor the dead by creating no more.

The views expressed here are the writer's and are not necessarily endorsed by the Anchorage Daily News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary@adn.com. Send submissions shorter than 200 words to letters@adn.com or click here to submit via any web browser.