Our local memorial will be up for two days, Sunday and Monday, this Memorial Day weekend.
Bereaved families are still making pilgrimages, driving an hour or more just to place flowers at a cross with their loved one's name on it for a day. Active duty servicemembers have come by to witness this memorial to their comrades.
Despite the lie about families not wanting to see photos of the coffins coming home, the survivors want some public acknowledgment of their sacrifice, they want to be seen, and they want their loved one to not be ignored as though s/he had never existed. They don't want jingoistic talk of revenge, and they don't want anti-war rhetoric that demeans military men and women who are only doing what our government sent them to do.
We can witness for them. The almost-800 who have died (who have been acknowledged to have died) did so because they joined military service with the best of intentions -- and (as I and other DUers believe) were betrayed by their own government.
We can work like hell to bring the rest of them home, and welcome them when they get here.
Hekate
Arlington West, Santa Barbara, California
http://www.veteransforpeace.org/Default.htmclick on the large photo of AW to go here and scroll down:
http://www.veteransforpeace.org/Arlington_west_121003.htm"Death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war." ~Donald Rumsfeld
"But why should we hear about body bags and deaths and how many,
what day it's going to happen, and how many this or what do you
suppose? Oh, I mean, it's not relevant. So why should I waste my
beautiful mind on something like that?" ~Barbara Bush
"Do these people live on another planet?" ~Hekate