Dubya’s Legacy
We loved this sign. Tonight’s vigil really raised my hopes for people in this nation. Even in our little enclave of conservatism, many came out to make their statement about ending this war at tonight’s Five Years Vigil, and many more gestured their support by honking horns, giving thumbs-up, and sending us peace signs.
What we learned:
1) Public protest is not just for young people.
2) There is hope.
3) There is power in community.
One of the women there told the story of her son, a medic and a Buddhist. He believed that he should serve our country and felt that serving as a medic would not violate his religious beliefs. Last fall, she received a letter advising that her son’s effects were being shipped via Germany.
To a parent, this message could only mean her son had died in Iraq. For two long agonizing months, she had no idea whether her son was dead or alive. In November, she was finally advised that he had been arrested for assaulting an out-of-uniform lieutenant who was ridiculing him in the dining hall after a 48-hour shift tagging dead Iraqis. He is a vegetarian, and this officer felt it appropriate to call him names and publicly ridicule him for what he chose to eat.
That he could eat at all after 2 straight days of managing bodies is testimony to his character, but even the strongest pacifist can be pushed too far, and he was. For two months he was jailed, and ultimately acquitted of all charges and given a full honorable discharge.
Unfortunately, with his discharge came the news that his best friend and fellow medic had had his face blown off the day before.
Upon his arrival back in the States, he received the news that his father was dying. He told his mother that as heartbroken as he was over his father, the one thing he’d hoped never to see again was another body.
Such are the stories our young men and women who survive will tell. Such are the horrors they’ve seen, participated in, bear witness to, in the name of the “war on terror”, which as far as I can tell, has done very little to alleviate terror of any kind, whether American or Iraqi.
Technorati Tags: moveon.org, five years vigil, community, protest, iraq war, anniversary