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War "memorials"...
May. 31st, 2005 07:17 amI'm a little of two minds on demonstrations like "Arlington West" in Santa Barbara which this USA Today article references. AWest is a makeshift collection of crosses on the beach at Santa Barbara, one for every U.S. soldier killed in Iraq.
We do need to remember those who died. And it is appropriate and right to do so - that's the whole point of having places like Arlington Cemetery.
But, as Chris Muir's Day by Day cartoon says today, I do have to wonder if the motivation behind some of these Iraq-specific memorials is to demoralize as well, by emphasizing the message of death-death-death without any other context. That most of them are by activists and organizations who were, and are, distinctly against the Iraqi deployment doesn't reassure.
Will these same folks be putting up crosses after the Iraqi operation is over? And, why concentrate on Iraq, unless the message is meant to be political? Where's the field of crosses for deaths in Afghanistan, for example?
We do need to remember those who died. And it is appropriate and right to do so - that's the whole point of having places like Arlington Cemetery.
But, as Chris Muir's Day by Day cartoon says today, I do have to wonder if the motivation behind some of these Iraq-specific memorials is to demoralize as well, by emphasizing the message of death-death-death without any other context. That most of them are by activists and organizations who were, and are, distinctly against the Iraqi deployment doesn't reassure.
Will these same folks be putting up crosses after the Iraqi operation is over? And, why concentrate on Iraq, unless the message is meant to be political? Where's the field of crosses for deaths in Afghanistan, for example?
