Honoring the Fallen? Exactly who are you respecting?

[MA-Caver]

I bow my head in memory and respect for those that fall in service of their country.

Respectfully I ask... does this include the enemy? -- That was my first thought reading those words and hopefully my tone is received as it was given with the intent to create a peaceful and thoughtful discussion.

We honor and mourn the loss of our own (country's) dead that died in wartime service yet the "enemy" whomever they may be at the time also died in service for their country.
The motion picture "We Were Soldiers" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0277434/ brings up this point. In fact I think I posted it somewhere before... *brb*.... grr.. can't find it but basically Gibson's character was speaking to General Westmoreland about the prospect of sending more troops into Vietnam after the first major battle the Americans had faced against the NVA.
He mentioned about finding a letter on a dead NVA soldier and pointed out that the man also died for his country.

So now in Afganistan and in Iraq and probably soon in other places (we all know where) soldiers from both sides of the pond are fighting and dying in one of the most inhospitiable places on earth. Yet they are fighting an enemy who is dying for what they believe in. But we do not honor them because it is not what WE believe in.

Is it me or is it the way of things and that way is sad??

 

[Archangel M]

I may be able to "respect' my enemy, but that wouldn't change the necessity of killing him when it becomes necessary.

 

[Bob Hubbard]

There are some I don't respect nor honor (SS camp guards for example), but most of them I do.

 

[stone_dragone]

There is an intersting dynamic here that this discussion raises. In pre-modern warfare (before firearms) and first, second and third generation warfare (post-firearms), a war was generally fought between soldiers employed by opposing nations. Sometimes they spoke the same language, other times they didn't. Sometimes the combatants looked the same, sometimes they were vastly different. When swords clashed and rifles fired, there had to be a certain dehumanizing of the opposing force in order to effeciently kill them.

Although the person on the other side was trying to kill you, there was often a respect there knowing that the he was a member of the same fraternity as you. Someone who follows orders to win for their side. In many of the great leaders (Generals on down to Squad leaders) eyes, a brave soldier is a brave soldier, no matter what the uniform.

In fourth generation modern warfare, insurgency is the flavor. It isn't a paid soldier who is fighting an open war. It is a shopkeeper who is more afraid of the home team than the visiting team. It is the mentally challenged woman who doesn't know she has a bomb strapped to her back walking though the marketplace. Those people are victims, not combatants. The combatants are the planners and the thinkers behind mosque bombings and the like.

This new generation warfare doesn't so much break the rules as writes new ones. Those new rules make it very difficult for someone from previous generations to honor the enemy. As one of those folks, let the bastards die, burried alive in unmarked tombs filled with pigs blood. I'll save my tears for my brothers and those who fought honorably, no matter what their flag.

 

[Big Don]

I gotta quote Patton here:

No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.

 

[Andy Moynihan]

Yesterday's enemies may be tomorrows allies and vice versa.

Enemies are only "enemies" in relative terms where military matters are concerned.

It used to be that back in the Napoleonic era, soldiers simply viewed each other as fellow professionals doing their jobs. It was rare, but not unheard of , for them to get along fine off-duty or off the battlefield.

I think that gradually, after the trend over the last 2 centuries of progressively dehumanizing the enemy for propaganda purposes that we are coming back to that way of thinking.

Well, at least as professional or national armies are concerned. These "noncombatant combatants" stone dragone mentions.....I do not expect we will see any break for them.

 

[Archangel M]

"The true warrior often understands his enemy better than he understands his friends. A dangerous pitfall if you let understanding lead to sympathy as it will naturally do when left unguided."

-Frank Herbert

 

[MA-Caver]

I gotta quote Patton here:

No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.

Yeah I knew that would come up sooner than later... but while I understand that... it still not my point.
Like Bob I also have an aversion to honoring and respecting any of the Wehrmacht or SS soldiers who policed the concentration camps. The SS get most of the blame because they had the more sinister reputation. But a concentration camp guard (to me) isn't a combatant... they're just a prison guard.
Yet you take the Luftwaffe pilots and the armored division and the infantry soldiers who fought and died defending the German borders as the allies closed in on Berlin in defense of the city and country (yes of the fuhrer as well but in their minds they were defending Germany... their homeland). They were soldiers conscripts etc. fighting and dying for their country, just as bravely as the Allied soldiers.
Insurgents yes are rewriting the rules by using innocent civilians but remember they were not the first to do so... and will not be the last. Remember the vietcong who used children holding live grenades and walking up to American soldiers only to let go at the last moment... and so forth. Yet why were/are they doing that. To fight off a superior force by any means necessary.

Again I'm not going to try to honor or give hero status to the (present) enemy. They are a threat to our country because of the hidden cells in this (and across the pond) waiting to be activated. They are none-the-less trying to repel invaders... fighting and dying for their country.

Should we honor only our own and let theirs honor their own?

 

[Archangel M]

Their country or their religion?

People fight and kill for MANY different reasons.

 

[Ken Morgan]

We should honour our own countries dead. If our allies are present, honour then as well. At no time should you being honouring the enemy killed that is up to their own country to do. I think it almost demeans the sacrifice of our men and women to honour those that tried to kill them.

In western Canada a few years back during Remembrance Day ceremonies some ex-German soldiers showed up in uniform with the intent of laying a wreath at the cenotaph. It was almost a riot between 80 year old men. Even after 50 years the emotions still ran high.

I’ve been to Remembrance Day ceremonies where the Union Jack and the American flag are flown, in fact I can’t think of one I’ve been to where it hasn’t happened. Why? Because you honour your own and you honour your friends.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

The dead are no one's enemy.

 

[Tez3]

The dead are no one's enemy.

They are when they are used as martyrs for the cause and used as an example to induce others to follow their lead.

 

[girlbug2]

They are when they are used as martyrs for the cause and used as an example to induce others to follow their lead.

A good point Tez, martyrs are not exactly the same kind of enemy, historically, as soldiers. It would be foolish to honor the enemy's martyrs.

 

[arnisador]

In a lot of cases I can have respect for those who fought for their country on either side. As noted, there are exceptions--though for many regular soldiers of the German military, it was patriotism that motivated them and I can respect that.

To only respect my side amounts to believing that only my side could ever be right. Certainly I respect the Native Americans who fell in the various Indian Wars against "my" side.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

They are when they are used as martyrs for the cause and used as an example to induce others to follow their lead.

True. Let me put it another way.

The dead are incapable of being honored or respected - or dishonored or disrespected. They are no longer capable of anything. They're dead. You can pray over their graves or urinate on them, it doesn't matter.

The dead are gone. What we the living do and say about them affects them not at all.

Ultimately, how we choose to honor the dead is not about the dead. It's about the living.

 

[geezer]

As one of those folks, let the bastards die, burried alive in unmarked tombs filled with pigs blood.

I get that you are fed up with cowards who plot bombings and beheadings of innocents, while hiding behind others and taking no risk themselves. But is it really helpful to make such an obvious and inflamatory reference to the religion shared by both our enemies and those we are trying to help, not to mention that it is the religion of many of our own soldiers and citizens as well?

 

[Tez3]

I get that you are fed up with cowards who plot bombings and beheadings of innocents, while hiding behind others and taking no risk themselves. But is it really helpful to make such an obvious and inflamatory reference to the religion shared by both our enemies and those we are trying to help, not to mention that it is the religion of many of our own soldiers and citizens as well?

I think he probably has very good reason to feel the way he does, I have to say it's a view shared by many soldiers I know. May not make it right but losing mates will do that to you.

 

[Sukerkin]

SD made some good points in his post and whilst the strong phrasing could be interpreted as anti-religious in isolation, I think, in context, what he meant to show was the depth and strength of his feelings about those that orchestrate 'warfare' in the way described.

Personally, I think locking them in a room with the mothers of those of their own people they've slain whilst using them as 'tools' would work well as a punishment.

 

[MA-Caver]

SD made some good points in his post and whilst the strong phrasing could be interpreted as anti-religious in isolation, I think, in context, what he meant to show was the depth and strength of his feelings about those that orchestrate 'warfare' in the way described.

Personally, I think locking them in a room with the mothers of those of their own people they've slain whilst using them as 'tools' would work well as a punishment.

Well that may be but I was hoping that the thread would examine the concept of how while two countries are at war each has their honored dead who gave their all for their country. Yet each country has only honored those who died for THEIR own country and the ones killed by said country can just rot in a unmarked grave... it's the same in reverse that they would honor their own and hope that "ours" would rot in unmarked graves.
Where is the mutual respect that war sometimes brings? Understanding that each are fighting and dying for what they believe in. Or does war bring mutual respect. Essentially hatred is what brings us to kill our fellow man. Yet does the hate have to survive from one generation to the next?
Towards the end of WWII both the Germans and Japanese troops fought and died defending their respective homelands. True they were the instigators of the war and many had committed atrocities but thousands of others were merely soldiers just like the ones that killed them.
Fast forward to today there is a new enemy and while their war-time tactics are radically different they are still fighting and dying for their countries. They don't want collation troops in their country just the same way that we didn't want the Japanese to hop from Hawaii over to the U.S. mainland, (eventually Germany would've worked their way across the Atlantic to the States after taking over Britain and established bases there... had things gone differently, it probably would've ended up that way)...
Either way both countries lost fathers, sons and brothers who are honored by their own.
War is no less costly or terrible to either side.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

Well that may be but I was hoping that the thread would examine the concept of how while two countries are at war each has their honored dead who gave their all for their country. Yet each country has only honored those who died for THEIR own country and the ones killed by said country can just rot in a unmarked grave... it's the same in reverse that they would honor their own and hope that "ours" would rot in unmarked graves.
Where is the mutual respect that war sometimes brings? Understanding that each are fighting and dying for what they believe in. Or does war bring mutual respect. Essentially hatred is what brings us to kill our fellow man. Yet does the hate have to survive from one generation to the next?
Towards the end of WWII both the Germans and Japanese troops fought and died defending their respective homelands. True they were the instigators of the war and many had committed atrocities but thousands of others were merely soldiers just like the ones that killed them.
Fast forward to today there is a new enemy and while their war-time tactics are radically different they are still fighting and dying for their countries. They don't want collation troops in their country just the same way that we didn't want the Japanese to hop from Hawaii over to the U.S. mainland, (eventually Germany would've worked their way across the Atlantic to the States after taking over Britain and established bases there... had things gone differently, it probably would've ended up that way)...
Either way both countries lost fathers, sons and brothers who are honored by their own.
War is no less costly or terrible to either side.

Gettysburg. The well-known battleground of the US Civil War (or War Between the States if you prefer, or War of Norther Aggression - whatever).

The dead are buried there with honor. I would have thought that the cemetery contained both the bodies of Union and Confederate troops, until I visited.

It turns out that the Union soldiers were buried with dignity, the Confederates were left on the battlefield where they lay, until after several days, they were shoveled in to slit trenches, unidentified, trenches dug wherever they fell.

It was not until decades later that the Confederate dead were disinterred and their remains sent 'home' to southern states. How they identified which states to send which remains to, I do not know.

If we had no respect for the fallen dead of our own nation as it was in rebellion, I can hardly expect us to have any respect for those of other lands in other wars.

Sad though it may be.