My dear sister and brother DU'ers, I worked at the American Friends Service Committee exhibit called "Eyes Wide Open" today, hosted by my alma mater. For those of you unfamiliar with EWO-- it is a graphic display of the human cost of this insane, illegal, unjust and immoral war, for both Americans and Iraqis. It consists of a daily-increasing number of pairs of boots, symbolizing the American military dead, each with the name of a military member. Today there were 2759 pairs of boots on the ground (although I am sure that by the end of the day, that number should have been higher.) The second part of the exhibit consisted of many, many hundreds of pairs of shoes, sandals, boots, baby booties, etc., symbolizing a few of the Iraqi dead (not quite the 655,000 of the johns-hopkins study, but still. . .) Just like with the military display, there were pictures, stories, memorabilia.
Even though we here at DU are all too aware of the numbers, and the names, and the faces, in many cases, through various websites, even though we have seen the crosses at Camp Casey, there is something haunting and even more painful in seeing all those boots, all those shoes. Quite a number of vets went through in the last two days, and some said it was as painful, had as much of an impact, as the Wall. I saw one soldier there, and was told by one of the organizers that he had been there all morning, carefully looking at each and every pair, each name. There were flowers, flags, pictures, at so many of them. And, at a separate table, there were boots and other items actually worn and used by some of the fallen, donated by their families, including the boots of Casey Sheehan, and the uniform and other memorabilia of one young man who made it back from Iraq, but hung himself a year later, unable to cope, or to get the help he needed. And I thought about how many more casualties like him there are going to be, the ones the military won't acknowledge as part of the casualty lists, won't even provide care for, in many cases, because the budgets have been so drastically cut, and because, just like in every other war, they refuse to acknowledge the mental problems, much less the obvious physical damage.
I didn't cry--but I wanted to scream in rage and frustration and horror and outrage that this carnage is being committed in our name, with no end in sight. Not just the cost in money, but the cost in destroyed lives, not just of the dead on both sides, but their families, their friends. The loss of a country whose culture goes back 7,000 years. The needles and heedless destruction of lives and loves and countries. And I am just furious because I had hoped, had prayed, had worked and fought, so that other families would not have to endure and live with what those of us who live with and deal with the survivors of our other conflicts live with. I worked for years with vets, helping to restore minds and hearts and souls, and didn't want to have to do it again. I didn't want other spouses, other loved ones, to live with learning to sleep with one eye and part of one's consciousness always on the alert, didn't want them to learn what it was like to wake up with hands around your throat, because your partner doesn't know you, is back in some hell in his mind, and thinks you are the enemy. I didn't want other families to watch their loved one live his or hel life, not at home, but in a VA nursing home, paralyzed, and unable to care for themselves. I didn't want others to watch a loved one slowly disintegrate, finally becoming one of the untold thousands of homeless vets we see all around us. I didn't want to see another generation of children born with strange, never-before-seen birth defects, and I didn't want to see the carnage of whatever hellish weapons we are using, and their effects on our own people. From what I am seeing, agent orange is going to look like a picnic compared to depleted uranium and whatever else they are using. And I didn't want this for the people in Iraq, either, who are suffering the same losses, the same agonies, compounded by watching their country pounded into rubble.
What I DO want, however, is to see the day when our people come home, and when those lying, murderous, chickenhawk, war-mongering, power-hungry, greedy, rapacious, hate-filled thugs of this maladministration are sentenced to life in prison for their war crimes, their crimes against humanity. And I want to see them, each and every day, be forced to watch, to listen, to the sights and sounds of the dead and dying, so that they never, EVER know a moment of rest, or silence, or peace. May the gods grant them exactly what they deserve--them, and each and every person who bought the lies, even when it was proven they were lies, and all those who went along with it, knowing from the beginning that this was wrong, wrong, wrong.
for those who want to know more, check out
http://eyes.afsc.org --you can check on the schedule for your area.
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