It’s time to ditch the poppy

The turning of the leaves and the ubiquity of the gourd declare that November is almost upon us.  In this light, today I saw my first poppy on the breast of a passerby.  This during a week where both Canadian and American soldiers were sent home in military caskets from a place most people in North American couldn’t find on a map.

As we as a nation take the time to mourn the loss of another of our young men and women in uniform, it’s time to not only radically rethink the war, but the very symbol we have attached to war in general: the poppy.

Symbols are amazing things and they are asked to carry a lot of baggage.  We’ve asked no less of our little red poppy, which we have all been trained to conceptually linked up with the verb to remember.  But what exactly are we remembering when we pin the poppy to our winter coats?

We remember that Great War: the war to end all war.  We remember all those who died over tiny strips of land no bigger than most of our modern cities.  We remember not to send millions of able-bodied men into essentially the Maginot slaughtering house to defend one dying empire against another.

We then remember the Second World War, a direct result of the poor planning of the victors of the first.  We remember that when you finally win an absurd-yet-still-Great-war, you’d best not make the loser pay for it, else they might get mad, elect their most lunatic fascist leaders, and slaughter millions of their own population in the process.  If we try really hard we might even remember that we shouldn’t drop bombs that can instantly vapourize entire cities to show our communist ‘allies’ that we mean business.

Then, once we’ve ditched communism as our BFF, we remember that the only way to fight it is through proxy wars in the Orient, the subject matter of which will eventually become a vehicle to launch Alan Alda into stardom.

So it’s been a good symbol, carrying all of these disparate meanings for so many years.  But now, with our ridiculously vague mission in Afghanistan, the camel’s back has finally been broken.

Sorry, but the poppy has become tainted.  It is now the symbol of our ‘enemy’ (even though our enemy is actually supposed to be Al-Qaeda).  The Taliban is funded by the opium trade.  This isn’t news.  But guess where opium comes from?

I’ll give you a hint: it starts with P.

This week the New York Times published charges that have been whispered for years: The Afghani President’s brother, a known trafficker of opium, has been on the dole of the CIA for some time.  Which means that our allies are paying bad guys to broker deals with other bad guys, all while turning a blind eye to the drug trade.

Yes, today’s Afghanistan is a narco-state, and Canada and its allies continue to give blood and treasure to prop up a government that is increasingly seen both nationally (if it is indeed possible to speak of the Afghan nation) and internationally as illegitimate and corrupt.

Meaning isn’t eternal; it changes with the times.  Just ask the swastika.  Similarly, the original signification that we have historically attached to the poppy is emptied by our continuing presence in the Middle East.  Poppies don’t just grow in Flanders, friends.

I for one will not wear the poppy again until the soldiers are home from Afghanistan.  I will wear the ribbon you sell me outside of the liquor store; I will donate money to the veterans but I will not wear the poppy. I would sooner wear a syringe, or maybe a copy of Trainspotting, around my neck.

Asking me to wear a poppy today is an insult to not only mine, but everybody’s intelligence.

 

Afghanistan is a narco-state.  Canada and its allies continue to give blood and treasure to prop up a government that is increasingly seen both nationally (if it is indeed possible to speak of the Afghan nation) and internationally as illegitimate and corrupt.

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