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It was a very cold and cloudy day today in Washington DC. My Classes ended at 4:30ish and I decided I needed to remember all those wonderful people who have sacrificed their time, their effort and in some cases their lives for me to live in a (well what was a) free country.
I walked down to the mall and first went to the Korean War Memorial. I walked the circle and thought those poor men and women, their faces haggard. For those who don't know it it is several sttues of soldiers and the way it is set up is that you advance around it so that it seems as though the statues are advancing and then retreating, just as the war progressed. I wondered at the sacrifice these men and women put forth in a war so largely forgotten by msot of their nation.
I then walked down through the drained reflecting pool to the uncompleted WWII memorial. While I think its ugly and misplaced I looked at the big white stone columns and the construction going on and thought what must it have been like for these people to put their lives on hold for three years and slog their way through tropical jungles, facing walls of metal and through the most historic lands of Europe in cold and heat. I thought could I do that? Would I survive the way those people did? I found chillingly that I don't think i could, and my already immense respect and awe at the actions of these brave men and women grew tenfold.
Then to the last stop...Vietnam. I was already tearing as the obsidian wall came into view. I ran my fingers across those names...all those names. Each one a son, a friend, a brother, a husband, a father, they had christmases and thanksgivings, first teeth, skinned knees and dreams, they had hopes and loves and pains, they fought for something, but 30 years later we as a nation can't decide what. I was crying in full force by the time I reached the end. A woman looked over at my tears and said did you know someone who died? I said no, the war was over 10 years before I was born, but all those lost lives touch me so much, and the thought of losing more everyday for another war we don't know the cause of is killing me. She said "I know" and wandered off.
Why do we have more soldiers fighting and dying this day? TO what purpose? The security of America? Never. There was no threat from Iraq. The humanitarian/democracy issue? Well why didn't you pitch that originally? Why didn't you do something that would have helped the people of Iraq (like removing sanctions and supporting opposition instead of looking on while "he gassed his own people" and doing nothing)
Why are they there?
Why are more young Americans losing limbs
Why are more young Americans dying
Why are more American families losing loved ones
Why are more American lives being shattered?
Why are you doing this George Bush?
Why?
Remember these brave people today and every day. They fight for something they don't know for the aggrandizement of the oligarchy of this nation. They fight under our flag for the desires of the few.
Please end this war.
No more deaths
No more names
No more war memorials
Please.
I cry for peace tonight
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