'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

A very sad anniversary

Sorry I haven't been posting much recently... I was really busy last week, and then today got hit by exhaustion.

Yesterday, I took part in our hometown commemoration of the first anniversary of the start of the US-Iraq war. It was a march along a busy part of Route 29, preceded at one end by a one-hour vigil at a busy intersection, and followed at the other by a silent vigil on "the Lawn" of Thomas Jefferson's famous University of Virginia.

The events were organized by the Charlottesville Center for Peace and Justice, which has a great new website.

So in the morning, I was thinking, "What kind of sign shall I carry?" I mulled over a few slogans I could write. Then I opened the WaPo, and there were two whole pages of small ID pictures of US servicemen and women who had been killed over the past two-and-a-half months, with bare biographic details.

There was my sign!

I tore out the two pages, got two large pieces of poster board and wrote at the top of each: "Mourning ALL the victims of this war, including... " and then I taped one of the WaPo pages onto the rest of the board. It seemed to say just what I wanted it to. I looked quickly online for some "symbolic" photos of the vastly greater numbers of Iraqi war dead, but couldn't find anything satisfactory. Anyway, I thought the wording indicated my concern for their deaths, too.

So I was standing aat the first vigil holding up one of these signs, and a woman I didn't know came up to me, looked at it carefully, then pointed to one of the pictures and said, "That's my brother-in-law."

It was very moving. We talked a bit. She had come up to Charlottesville from Durham, NC, to take part in the march-- a multi-hour drive. I urged her to carry the sign with her brother-in-law's picture on it, since I had another one I could carry, anyway; and she did.

For the first vigil, and then as we walked south down Route 29, some of the placards invited passing motorists to "Honk for peace". We got a significantly higher proportion of honks than I have ever heard before.

I think the unpopularity of this war has been increasing fairly rapidly since the beginning of this year. I consider that to be cautiously good news.

But at what a cost, what a tragic cost!

Also, I'd like to see a big increase not just in the unpopularity of this war, but also in the unpopularity of the whole idea of using force and coercion in international relations. Let's hope that that happens, too.