I remember the first time I prayed for an enemy. It was just outside An Khe, a village in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. A helicopter gunship rocketed some North Vietnamese regulars who were about to attack us. I prayed for those kids. My top sergeant berated me for my prayer. I realized then that my enemy was not the North Vietnamese, not the Viet Cong, but militarism. As for the first sergeant, he was a good man who was simply unaware, unaware of the fact that loving an enemy means loving specific people, North Vietnamese in this case.

Loving can also involve mourning. We mourn the loss of people loved. If we truly love our enemies, then we truly mourn their loss. For it is we the living who have lost a loved one. In this way can we realize not only the humanity of an enemy, but our own humanity as well.

In the Tao Te Ching, a victorious warrior is advised to dress for mourning. Perhaps that's a bit extreme by Western standards. But it is to the point, for it makes the warrior and his neighbors consider what has been done. War is no victory parade. It must be seen for precisely what it is, a choice. A painful choice. A choice that calls for mourning.

Memorial Day honors soldiers who

died for our country. Since I'm a Vietnam veteran, that's OK by me. I would

expand the memorial's concept, however. I would like a day in which we mourn for all--men, women, children, soldiers, civilians, friends, enemies--who died because of militarism. The Iraqis, for instance.

Greenpeace estimates that at least 120,000 Iraqi soldiers and 76,000 civilians were killed during the war. Since then, the civilian death toll related to the war and its aftermath has reached perhaps a quarter of a million. According to the New England Journal of Medicine, between January and August of 1991, 50,000 children died as a direct result of health problems brought on by the bombing of the Iraqi infrastructure. Total deaths among children are estimated to be 170,000.

Can we mourn for 170,000 dead Iraqi children? I suspect the answer is "Hell No!" That answer is disturbing, because the opposite of mourning is not rejoicing; the opposite of mourning is being numb to suffering.