This Memorial Day the number of US soldier casualties in Iraq nears 3,500.
At 1,000 we held a vigil in Acacia Park. We did the same at the 1,500 and 2,000 marks. The numbered-cross memorial we mounted at Camp Casey COS commemorated near 2,000 deaths. The “Eyes Wide Open” boot collection came to town as the number exceeded 2,500. Colorado Springs was its last stop because the figures began to require too many boots to unpack at each stop. We met again in the park for the 3,000th, but I’m not going to eulogize any more boots until the number reaches 50,000.
That’s well into Vietnam War casualty territory and that’s where we’re going. The war got its funding, the military has revealed its plans to double the troop levels, the President is warning us to expect US casualties to surge, and sure enough we’re seeing the body count rise. Eight, fifteen a day. Not counting mercenaries. And still no one’s tallying the Iraqi dead.
I’m okay not to count the mercenaries. But what of our volunteer army, signing ever-increasing re-enlistment bonuses? I don’t want to count them either. Our soldiers keep shipping themselves off to Iraq to serve well-enough-documented evil illegal deeds. What’s to commemorate, really? They’re not jumping off cliffs, they’re driving armored vehicles into Iraqi children on the way.
Our soldier’s souls are already lost to us. That’s 150,000 active in Iraq. 300,000 counting the mercenaries. Plus who ever’s being held back with PTSD. Cry about that.
On this date in 1973, the military had counted 44 deaths for El Paso County. It was not enough even then.
I heard from one of the Greens who post to an Anarchist site we both blog to, that Our Cindy is quitting the Democratic Party in disgust.
It’s getting really bad out there.
There’s no Standard to rally around anymore, except the Black Flag.
I sometimes wonder, what would it have been like to grow old and die peacefully without ever having undergone war in our lifetime?
It’s like (the same people, coincidentally) when we’re told that “redistribution of wealth is Marxist and would never work” and “universal peace is Idealist and would never work”….
When neither have actually ever been tried….
…and that the same people are the richest ones in the world….