Commemorating Those Killed in Afghanistan: A Cry for Peace

This past Saturday, starting at 6 a.m., I began placing pairs of empty
combat boots on the Ellipse within sight of the White House. I worked
alongside members of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC),
Military Families Speak Out (MFSO), Veterans for Peace, and Iraq Veterans
Against the War to install one set of boots for each US soldier killed in
Afghanistan. By the time we finished, six hours after we began, we learned
that we had to add three more. The names of three additional US soldiers
killed in Afghanistan had been announced while we worked.

Next to this improvised cemetery of loss and mournful rage, of
commemoration and protest, we set up another: a small spiral of civilian
shoes to recognize the untold thousands of Afghan civilians killed in the
ongoing cycle of violence that has engulfed the country for the last 30
years, and in particular, the last eight.

Laying out the boots and shoes was a contemplative, sad, slow process. As
we unpacked each pair of boots and positioned them into the grid, flecks
of the bootblack rubbed off on our hands, leaving them indelibly stained
with the ashes of unknown memories. Some boots were dried and twisted.
Some were still spit-polished, gleaming in the sun, evoking the lost
soldier so sharply I imagined passing my hand in the heat-shimmering air
over the boots, trying to re-conjure the vibrancy of a human life severed
by the terror of politics.

I met people who were taken aback by the field of grief. One Marine
dropped by as we were still setting up, and told me, almost inaudibly,
“Some of my buddies are out in that field.” They had fought in Helmand
Province, and he was scheduled to redeploy there in March. I told him
about www.girightshotline.org if he had second thoughts or needed
information about his rights in the military. I told him we wanted to
mobilize enough political protest to convince the politicians not to send
him and his unit back. He looked at me skeptically. I acknowledged that it
would be tough; too many politicians seemed fixated on continued military
escalation. He nodded, said, “I’m grateful that you guys are doing this,”
and left.

In the afternoon, two soldiers from Fort Carson dropped by. One was a
military intelligence interrogator in Iraq; the other’s military
occupational specialty was in maintenance. They eagerly took down
information about the GI Rights Hotline and told us about buddies who had
been killed in Iraq. One said that while her mother wouldn’t be the
“speaking out” type, she might want the emotional support of other
families opposed to the war. She took down contact information for MFSO.

Offering leaflets to hundreds of tourists and DC residents who chanced
across our protest, I met only one person who voiced anger at us for
mounting the display. He said to me, “I think it’s shameful what you’re
doing, shameful.” “I asked, “What do you think is shameful?” but he had
turned away. I’m not sure he even heard me. If he did, I hope he considers
where the shame should lie. I do.

Part of my guilt lies in not doing more to resist the wars being waged by
the government that claims to represent me. I think the exhibit is an
effective challenge, asking us, asking Congress, asking the President, to
confront our guilt as a country, demanding that we stop piling reasons for
guilt on top of the still-growing piles of the dead. A Presidential
motorcade roared by the Ellipse at 5:45 on Saturday. Did the President, or
the President’s advisors, see the boots, a visual counterpoint to General
McChrystal’s lobbying Obama, earlier that day, for 45,000 more US troops?
We don’t know, but we do know a White House cook stopped by. His brother
was killed in Iraq. He, too, thanked us for commemorating the dead.

The exhibit seems to open many people’s eyes to the horror of war, and
it’s a way of reaching far beyond the peace movement’s usual
constituencies. Additionally, Peter Lems from AFSC told me that Aziz, an
Afgan who works for AFSC in Kabul, was surprised and pleased we were
focusing this protest on ending the killing in his land. We don’t know
precisely how many Afghan civilians have been killed during this war, but
if the exhibit contained a pair of shoes for each of them, it would no
longer fit on the Ellipse.

We owe it to the people of Afghanistan, to the military personnel already
deployed and waiting to be deployed, and to all those who love them, to
speak out for an end to the bloodshed.

As dusk loomed, we lit hundreds of candles amid the shoes and boots. The
candles glowed red in the deepening twilight, flickering memories of lives
snuffed out. They’re crying out to us, “Remember us. Stop the killing.”

Saturday was Sam Diener’s first day on the job as the National Organizer
for Military Families Speak Out (www.mfso.org). He is the outgoing
co-editor of Peacework Magazine (www.peaceworkmagazine.org).