Axar.az presents an article, “Children’s Memorial Day” by John Samuel Tieman.

In the “Tao Te Ching”, a victorious warrior is advised to dress for mourning. Perhaps that’s extreme. But it is to the point, for it makes the warrior and his neighbors consider what has been done. War is no parade. It's a choice, one for which, regardless of who wins and who loses, there will be mourning.

I saw for the first time last week the Ken Burns documentary on the Vietnam War. “The Vietnam War” is a ten-part series, 18 hours total. For most of it, I was the dispassionate historian. But I'm also a Vietnam veteran. In the last hour or so, they showed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D. C., “The Wall”. Even after all these decades, I cried. I thought of a friend who died in the war, and I just said, “I'm so sorry this happened to you.”

As I write, the specter of war looms over my nation. I'm no strategist. I'm just a war veteran. And a historian. But this much I have learned. The participants never know how a war will end. You only know how it begins. But there is one predictable thing, and that's there will be death, there will be wounds. There will be mourning.

A war buddy recently found a bunch of old photos in a trunk he hadn't opened in decades. I was in some. In one, I'm sitting with two South Vietnamese soldiers. I think I remember one. He was a corporal. I was a Specialist Fourth Class, so we shared more or less the same rank. Most of the time, I couldn't understand a word he said he said in his heavily accented English. I liked him all the same. One day, he went out on a patrol. Hunting “the little evil people” we used to say. Except he got hunted. A month or so later, he shows up without a left leg. Nobody talks to him. I mean me too. All I could do was for a second just stare and leave. I was 20. My culture taught me how to be triumphant. It took me decades to learn how to mourn.

I don't know how to make people feel for the people who die in war, the people who suffer the wounds. People don't seem to care much about Memorial Day, the day we're supposed to mourn the dead. People shout slogans and fly flags. Then they barbecue.

Perhaps we need to expand the concept of Memorial Day. Perhaps we should create an entirely separate day of mourning. Perhaps we should mourn for the children. A Children’s Memorial Day. According to UNICEF, the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund, an average of at least 16 children are killed or injured in the Ukraine every week. Over half of all civilians killed by landmines are children. Verified attacks on children have tripled since 2010. Whole generations have lost years of schooling. Millions are vulnerable to famine, illness and disability. UNICEF admits that it cannot measure the number of orphans or the psychological traumas brought on by war.

A Children’s Memorial Day could have a civilizing effect on us, for, in addition to mourning for these, the littlest victims of war, it would allow us to mourn what we have become. And to love ourselves for what we can become.

Being civilized is not something we are just given. In many ways, civilization is a constant series of choices and assents. Granted that from the cradle we are given language, culture and so forth. To be peaceful, however, this we choose. To be peaceful in our language, actions, prayers, to this do we assent. And assent and assent again and again, for in each instance when we feel threatened are we required to assent anew to peace.

I once heard another veteran, a North Vietnamese poet, say that every time he shot an American, he first aimed at the heart of that soldier’s mother. And for that soldier, and for that woman, did he mourn.

Let me be clear. I don't want to abolish Memorial Day. I want to expand it. I don't begrudge our veterans their parades. I’ve marched in a few myself. I ask my neighbors to join us old vets, to mourn for all soldiers and all civilians, to mourn for all victims of militarism. And to mourn those people by name. Yes, to mourn for Robert, my childhood companion, a 20-year-old who died in Vietnam in 1968. But to also mourn for Polina, a 10-year-old stranger, who died in Kyiv. Polina, who colored her hair pink. And to mourn for her mother, her father, family, relatives, neighbors, her friends. To mourn. And so to love.