The Eyes Wide Open exhibit is in Denver. The 2,700 boots span the green between City Hall and the State Capitol Building. The news reports that the memorial was not as welcomed in Colorado Springs.
 
A friend of mine reacted to the Colorado Springs City Council deciding to have nothing to do with the EWO Iraq War Memorial exhibit. She called it a “damn shame.” I related her words to the council today.
 
“It’s a damn shame, she said, that the city is unwilling to support our troops in a reverential fashion, it’s a shame the boys see only the city’s seedy tributes.”

“The city offers pawn shops to the troops, conveniently located across from the base on B-street, to prey on the financial plight of those young men. Check cashing services and furniture rental joints offer similar rip-offs. The city is happy to collect the sales tax from those activities.

“Likewise the city pays tribute with strip bars and sex shops along B-Street to prey on the soldier’s other vices. The city is pleased to collect those sales taxes.

“The soldiers are offered dealership lots filled with cars they cannot afford, but do purchase, on bad credit terms, with high insurance rates, to drive around the few months they are here between assignments.

“So it’s a damn shame the city can live off the soldiers, can tout the patriotic benefit even from their sacrifices overseas, but cannot see itself rising to the occasion of honoring the soldiers killed in the line of duty.”

I’ll admit it’s too bad that only the antiwar activists are coming forward with memorials to the fallen soldiers. I don’t see why it should be our responsibility at all. If we had our choice there would be no young men and women being sent to fight these dirty mercenary wars.

If you don’t like our memorial, do your own. But don’t sit back and pay lip service to the men and women dying in Iraq, meanwhile running a city off their government paychecks, disability checks and survivor benefits.