Memorials for and by other means

On Canada Day, a few individuals were reprimanded for pissing on a war memorial in Ottawa. The news received national coverage, appearing twice on the nationally syndicated news program, The National. Some called it: “an atrocity of immeasurable proportions,” others petitioned politicians to insure the sanctity of the memorial by securing the surrounding premises with vigilant Mounties. Ottawa South MP, David McGuinty, was perhaps the most damning in his contempt of the perpetrators calling them “the worst of the worst that society has to offer.” It is presumed that the group in which these offenders are a part, as claimed by McGuinty, includes rapists and murderers. Not only am I disinclined to see the drunk adolescents as card carriers of this particular group, I am baffled that McGuinty suggests they constitute the “worst” of this group. It is an egregious error in political judgment tantamount to the very lack of general judgment for which the subjects of his condemnation are guilty.

In political terms, the solution is clear and risk-free: the perpetrators are young, usually overly apathetic when it comes to voting, the victim is the very ideal for which any nation exists – patriotism - and the solution, a simple, yet firm statement expressing the punishment for any indiscretions in the future. One needs only a morsel of political acumen to hit the ‘ball out of the park’. Yet, by being overly critical of the youths and issuing incorrect analogies, McGuinty’s gauche handling of the situation is as exposed and foul smelling as the urine which now coats the steps of the war memorial.

The furor, articulated mostly by retired generals and self-serving politicals –typified by McGuinty - all seemed a bit vacuous. It was ignorance, fury and self-righteousness dressed up as patriotism by an ever obliging media, who - having recognized the symbolism of the story rather than the substance of it - were all too happy to pander to the special interests of some entrenched former pugilists and contemporary mugwamps looking for some quick political capital. There is, however, a more puzzling element within this topical discussion, one that is characterized not necessarily by the self-serving antics of various politicals but rather by the unquestioned presence, purpose and relevance of the “war memorial” in general to society.

In the early 19th century, Carl Von Clausewitz, a Prussian general and military theorist, wrote: “War is merely a continuation of politics by other means.” While the quote is itself a trite, somewhat hackneyed synthesis of a much larger theoretical treatise: On War, for which Clausewitz is best known, its general resonance today, and within this particular story, begs some further consideration.
Our country, and indeed most countries, recognizes fallen soldiers by way of erecting what is invariably a phallic monument situated in some public sphere. While I have no problem with the act of erecting monuments to those ‘that have fallen’ - apart from the unjustified lionizing of ‘those that fall’ (from 1990 to 2003 an American service men was six times more likely to be murdered by one of his comrades, nineteen times more likely to kill himself and fifty times more like to die in an accident than to be killed in combat– N. Ferguson, Colossus, Penguin; 2003) - it seems necessary to infuse a bit of logic, by way of Clausewitzian theory, into the debate.

If war is diplomacy by other means; that is, if they are essentially the same, why then do we have only 'war memorials' and no 'diplomacy memorials'. Pacts, alliances, treaties and accords kill just as many people, if not more than wars do - and they do it in a much more insidious fashion: by constructing themselves as for the ‘greater good’. I don’t see diplomacy memorials for those that died obscure deaths in a hospital in Scarborough or Moncton because the government decided to spend his or her Medicare on improving NAFTA or softwood lumber. I encourage war over diplomacy: it doesn't get one wrapped into malevolent pacts with illusory friends and imaginative evils like treaties, alliances and 'general agreements'.

While I do not necessarily condone the actions of those that pissed on the war memorials, those public figures that hastily vilified the perpetrators of the act would themselves benefit from a healthier, more rigorous sense of judgment when publicly excoriating the acts of their fellow citizens.