Eyes Wide Open
By Uncle
Bill Warner
On
March 22 and 23, the American Friends Service Committee's traveling
exhibit, "Eyes Wide
Open" came to Fresno. Stated quite simply, it is the most
powerful exhibit in the US today. Why? Because it causes us to start
thinking and feeling the human cost of the war.
Normally, the
display includes over 1500 pairs of combat boots representing each
American soldier killed in Iraq set out on the ground. Many of these
boots have been donated by the families of the dead soldiers, often
with a memento or pictures of their loved ones. Each pair has the
name of the soldier it represents tagged on it, save for a few where
the parents wished to withhold their permission. Another 1,000 pairs
of civilian shoes represent the 10,000
to 100,000+
Iraqi civilians who have been killed. In addition, there are panels
with the names and ages of the known Iraqi civilian dead... thousands
and thousands of names... many of them children who had never even
heard of Saddam Hussein of George Bush.
Displays also
about the financial side of the war; about the way our military
budget dwarfs our expenditures for education, health care, or public
safety. Many Americans don't even know that this war is being fought
totally on BORROWED money, 300
billion so far, which will have to be paid back some day. China
and Japan alone own 40% of this debt. We have become the world's
leading debtor nation. That has to do with only the nuts and bolts
of the war. The human cost is something else.
The night we
went to the Eyes Wide Open exhibit, it was pouring rain, so it was
held in a church auditorium rather than in the park where it was
slated to be. Consequently, only 200 or so pairs of combat boots
could be exhibited, just the soldiers from California who have died.
That does not sound like much... nor does it look like much in a
tiny photo. But to be there was to be in a room filled with ghosts...our
troops and the Iraqi dead. It was on a very personal level, and
a profoundly moving experience.
It did not
take much imagination to see all of the young men standing there
in their footgear and wonder if they knew why they died. To see
the tiny shoes of children was even harder, as they were killed
playing in their own back yards in a war in which they played no
part. Our government has tried to sanitized this war by not allowing
the media to show the flag-draped coffins of our dead being brought
back to America. All flights carrying the dead and wounded are unloaded
in the middle of the night. From the point of view of the political
leaders who took us into this conflict, the less we think about
it, the better. Is that honoring the dead?
A cross in
the Arlington Cemetery or a name carved into marble are not the
same as being surrounded by the empty boots. I called this exhibit
dangerous, and so it is. By making you feel closer to those who
were sacrificed, the less likely you will be to blindly support
the war. You feel a kinship with the dead, and the human cost of
the whole thing comes home to you. Washington does not want people
to think about the costs of the war, either financial or human.
The true reasons for the war, we now know, have nothing to do with
the reasons our leaders have given us. The fantasy WMD's, the giving
of "freedom" to a people who did not invite us to do so,
the nonexistent connection between Iraq and the Saudi terrorists
that were responsible for the 9-11 disaster, the faked connection
between the African nuclear material and the Iraqi nuclear establishment
have all made Americans begin to wonder. Even the ruse of hiding
the cost of the war by not including it in our national budget is
not playing well in Des Moines. We have sacrificed our moral position
in the world, mortgaged the future of our grandchildren, caused
the brutal deaths and maiming of countless thousands of human beings
like ourselves, and created a new generation of America-hating terrorists.
Whatever the
sidebars to the story of our battle to control the Middle East,
the bottom line is still oil. Important as this may be to maintaining
our 15 MPG American Way of Life, I suspect many Americans would
not have wanted their son or daughter to march off and kill for
it. One can only hope that the ghosts of the dead represented by
the boots and the shoes in the Eyes Wide Open Exhibit help us to
open our eyes to what we are doing to the world and to ourselves,
and point out the uphill path that leads to compassion, justice,
and a lasting peace.
Visit us at
progressivewritersbloc.com.



|