For Love of Country

Still digging through the archives.  This one goes back to September 2006.  These early notes contributed to the general sentiment of what ultimately became the first complete draft of "Enough to Pray".

FOR LOVE OF COUNTRY



Tony plays Croatian songs in his car at full blast. He knows all the words, and he knows all the stories. When I don’t understand a song, he translates it for me. When I go to his house, he offers me Croatian food and his grandmother’s brandy. As I spent the last year studying various civil wars in the twentieth century, he readily told me all about what happened in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina in the early 90’s. He tells me about his family back home, and shows me videos of his cousins’ weddings. I was always impressed by his pride.

Then Tony told me he wants to move back home. I wasn’t sure I liked the idea, but his life is his own. Then Tony told me that if another war breaks out in that region, he wants to fight. Something funny happened to me in that moment. I don’t know whether it was anger or fear, but I believe that was the moment that I saw nationalism as a manifested evil. I was upset, if only because I saw that one day I would need to worry about my friend. We had been talking about war all year: about the nature of war, the horrors of families torn apart and devastated, the irony that Britain never seems to suffer at Hague, etc. But in all of our conversations, war was never glorified. I couldn’t believe that Tony would want to fight for nationalist causes if ever necessary.

I do see some value in fighting for country. The case could very well be one of aggressors who would force people to change their lives. That seems like a good time to fight. But there is none the less something shameful in it. For starters, if the cause is worth fighting for, then why is there a need for national songs and national artwork and national poetry? Sure, people will say that all the glitz is just to remind people who they are and where they come from. Is this to say that proud people easily forget these things? Or that an entire nation is too stupid to know what makes them great? It’s so easy to laugh at Canada as a country with a questionable culture, but the fact remains that every true Canadian knows what it means to be a Canadian (health care and tax jokes go here), knows why he or she is proud to be a Canadian, and has a special idea of what makes Canada so great. And to date, I have never heard a Canadian army song, telling Canadians everywhere that they should fight. I am not calling Eastern Europeans idiots. My family is Ukrainian, and I grew up singing all of the old Ukrainian army songs, myself. I remember them to this day, still sing them to myself. They are catchy. They are meant to rouse a crowd (the only reason I can imagine throwing ‘hey’ into the lyrics so many times). They are meant to drive home the fact that we were, are, and will be great, strong, resilient, etc. And they are meant to remind us to fight when the time comes. If only the reminders to vote every couple of years could be as entertaining!

There is no question that there is money in propaganda here in North America. It’s the only possible explanation for Michael Moore’s success (it certainly isn’t honest journalism). I particularly like the television commercial for the Marines on American television: the one where a diamond is being cut as young men are running and jumping and climbing. But there are no clips of fighting or dying. On the same note, has anyone determined the actual cause of World War One yet? No, no, not the trigger. I’m talking about something in the amalgam of arms races and suspicion and tension and whatnot. Why couldn’t anybody trust anybody else back then? Could it be that deep down at the heart of the matter, the war was caused by fear? Something so simple? I don’t see why not. Because when people are afraid, they need to be encouraged. They respond to suggestion. They need someone to tell them the answers and think for them. They need guidance. When it looks like house, home and family are threatened, and there is either no time to leave or no money to leave, it seems natural to take in all of the posters and commercials and songs that suggest the right thing to do is fight.

Fighting should be the work of soldiers. Once that gun is being aimed, and the moment becomes one’s last, does he or she think at that second about country? About freedom? About pride? About national history? I could only guess not, but then I’ve never stared death in the face. What will his or her family think? When will they find out that they’ve lost a loved one? What about friends left behind? Or children? It seems to me that one’s last moment on the earth is not a brave one, or a proud one, but more likely rather a fearful one. I could be wrong, but we’ve seen this all before. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, right?

Solutions? Don’t look to me for answers, I have none. It’s happened before, it’ll happen still, we are only human and we do what we can. We can say that land isn’t worth fighting over, but we’d be lying. We can pretend to be proud of our sons and daughters known to the country as fallen soldiers, as heroes. We can make our own martyrs and justify away every act of violence we have been involved in. Or, we can scream and cry and plea for changes, for a better humanity, for an end to the madness, for someone to recognize all of the stupidity. The madness will not end. Perhaps it’s in our blood. Perhaps we aren’t the nice, civilized, cultured, peace-loving people we would all like to think we are, but rather the Hobbesian antithesis we’d like to think we’re not. The problems will not end. But it doesn’t hurt to ask: if it turns out this is the only life we get, is it really worth risking it for something as trivial as nation? Is there really nothing more important to live for?

As for Tony, nobody can tell him what to believe. Nobody can tell him what to value, or what to do with his life. If the world is my oyster, it is also his and everyone else’s. I can care about my friends, and I can worry about them (though I’d prefer not to need to). It’s only natural to want the comfort of knowing one’s loved ones are safe. It’s a tangled mess of emotions, but then that’s human, too. All I can do is make it clear that in friends and loved ones there is always a safe place to come home to. And no song can ever change that.