Divisions over Iraq war delay a soldier's tribute. (USA Today)

[intheflow]

Divisions over Iraq war delay a soldier's tribute.

(snip)

In a town divided by the war, there was a symbolic solution: Name a bridge - a span between opposite sides - for Kyle Charles Gilbert (1983-2003).

It seemed an idea everyone could embrace. But not, as it turned out, if Kyle's marker bore the likeness of an American eagle. Or the slogan "Freedom isn't free." Or the name "Operation Iraqi Freedom."

In the end, it took a year to honor Kyle Gilbert. "We just wanted to remember Kyle," his mother says. "But things got politicized."

(snip)

Gilbert joined a peacetime military with no intention of killing or dying. When he enlisted shortly after graduation from high school in 2001, he wanted to develop his interest in electronics, earn money for college and learn to jump out of airplanes as his father had in Army Special Forces a quarter-century earlier.

He was in jump school at Fort Benning, Ga., with the Army's 82nd Airborne Division on Sept. 11, 2001. "Kyle knew what that meant," his mother says. "He knew there was going to be a war."

(snip)
In Brattleboro, which has been called a college town without the college, the war was more complicated. The community has two cultures: One traces its origins to communes that sprouted here in the 1960s; the other is rooted in traditional, conservative, rural Vermont. The first group was most concerned with opposing the war, the second with supporting the troops.

The town commons was the site of many anti-war demonstrations. One attracted about 1,000 people. Given Brattleboro's population of 12,000, it was one of the nation's largest demonstrations per capita.

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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=676&ncid=676&e=3&u=/usatoday/20041213/ts_usatoday/divisionsoveriraqwardelayasoldierstribute

[phantom power]

1. A couple helpful observations

1) If you don't want to "politicize" your memorial, then don't make it on a public structure. Decisions about public resources are exactly where politics comes into play, like it or not.

A family is free to remember their son in all sorts of private ways, that are guaranteed to not be political.

2) Anybody who joins the military, with "no intention of killing or dying", isn't being realistic.