Comments Sought: A Memorial to Those Killed and Wounded in Our Wars

[MannyGoldstein]

Like most people, I am tremendously saddened by the many thousands of young Americans who’ve been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Whether we are for or against their efforts, these men and women faced death and gave unselfishly of themselves in the belief that their efforts would make the world a better place.

For some time I’ve been thinking about how we can honor these good people – and to honor them as people, not as a number or an anonymous name carved into a memorial. Last night, looking at the pictures of the dead on the NY Times site, I thought of an idea that I wanted to share.

LCD picture frames such as these are cheap and readily available – just put in a standard camera memory card and they cycle through the photos on the card.

A standard package could be built of digital photos and info on all of the dead and/or grievously wounded. Perhaps two or three photos of each person, with a slide containing vital statistics (where they were born, where they died, how old they were…) would be included. The package could be made available on the Internet for free download.

Download to a computer, copy to a memory card, insert memory card in frame, and we have an instant living memorial in a few minutes for $150 or so.

These living memorials could be placed anywhere – schools, libraries, town halls, homes – and would serve to honor those who gave to us, but also a reminder that wars kill and maim real people – people who look and feel just like we do.

Would this be a fitting memorial? Too trivial? Too macabre? Your thoughts are sought.

[Peace Patriot]

1. I think it's a very good idea, and I would add pictures of the

100,000 Iraqis who died in the initial bombing alone, and the several hundred thousand who have died since at Bush's direction. This war has been the worst in our history, save perhaps the Indian Wars, for outright mass murder and genocide, with zero justification. It is arguably worse than Vietnam (which had higher casualties*) because of its clear malice of forethought--a pre-planned, deliberately undertaken slaughter and invasion.* Photos of the Iraqi dead may be hard to obtain, but the Bush Junta has been so callous about their deaths, it would be an act of justice to make the effort to obtain as many as possible, and do a combined memorial. All--US soldiers and Iraqis--are victims of the Bush Junta. It is especially appalling that the Bush Junta has used the loyalty and patriotism of US soldiers for a corporate predator resource war. But entirely innocent victims--including all civilians and Iraqi soldiers--deserve honor as well. These victims did not invite us to overthrow their government. Their deaths were completely unfair and unjust, and have been particularly ignored and marginalised by Bush Junta policy.

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*(In comparing the two, Vietnam and Iraq, Vietnam was more of a quagmire that many in the US government were sucked into over a long period of time, starting way back in 1954, when Eisenhower nixed the US sponsored elections in Vietnam (which everyone understood Ho Chi Minh would have won--he was the revolutionary war hero who led the fight to expel the French colonialists at the end of WW II), and the CIA began setting up a puppet government in the south. Most Americans didn't even realize that we were at war until starting around 1966, and many in government and in the military did not realize what we were getting into, in terms of casualties and cost. This doesn't excuse the lies of the "Gulf of Tonkin" resolution (1964), or what happened as a result of it, and there are certainly some parallels with Iraq, but Iraq was a far clearer decision to commit genocide. By the time 1964 rolled around, there was, in truth, a large contingent of Vietnamese in the south who wanted the US there, and invited us in. Their leaders were largely scumbags and US/CIA assets, but they did have a following. With Iraq, there was no such confusion. Furthermore, in Feb. '03, prior to the invasion of Iraq, FIFTY-SIX PERCENT of the American people OPPOSED the Iraq War. Half of that 56% opposed it outright (because of the lessons of Vietnam) and the other half would only support it if it were a UN peacekeeping mission--that is, the result of international consensus that action was needed (also, I think, due to the lessons of Vietnam). 56%! (That would be a landslide in a presidential election.) There was no such majority against the war on Vietnam, until far into the quagmire (circa 1968-70). So neither the Bush Junta nor the Anthrax Congress had any justification for the Iraq War. A large majority of Americans opposed it. There was no world consensus--indeed, the world consensus was very much opposed. There was no large contingent of the population in Iraq that consented to our presence and to our violence. The Iraq War is much more comparable to Hitler's invasions of Poland, Czechoslovakia and France--outright, unforgivable, illegal aggression--than to the disaster in Vietnam, which occurred in the "Cold War" context, began as a "slow boil" and was a confusing mess from beginning to end, over a 20 year period. I'm not saying that the 2 million Southeast Asians who were slaughtered during the Vietnam war (which LBJ and Nixon spread into Cambodia and Laos) should not be memorialized. I think they should be. But it was 40 years ago. It's bit late to honor those dead. The innocent dead in Iraq, however, are fresh in our minds--and in the minds of their loved ones, and in the minds of billions of people and leaders around the world--and the slaughter is on-going. By one count, a total of 600,000 Iraqis have been killed--combining those killed in our name, and those killed in the civil chaos that has been created in our name. One way to heal the horror that the Bush Junta has inflicted, in violation of international law, and with zero justification, is to recognize and honor the Junta's victims.)