Taupe Hat Systems

Perhaps it's the time of year, but as I sit here, eating Santa's cookies and drinking Santa's milk while my daughter dreams of dancing sugar plums or whatever it is children actually dream of on Christmas Eve these days, I wonder how we're going to commemorate the tragedy that continues to unfold in a country called Iraq.

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We've been told time and again that we're about to "turn the corner," although finally our political leadership has admitted that turning the corner is not really in play anymore. We're dug in, and are fighting because that's all we know to do in situations like this. Many have died, many are dying as I write these words, and doubtless many more will die as we move forward in this. Right now, the only corner I can see us "turning" is a tick of the morbid odometer of death called "US Soldiers KIA" which, according to globalsecurity.org, is currently at 2,979. I heard on the news today that another four marines were killed, so I guess that number is really 2,983. Before the end of the year, this figure will probably tick over and begin with a 3.

I'm opposed to this war, and have been from the start, but by now that doesn't really matter much anymore. As I said, we really don't know what else to do, so from where I sit we're doomed to keep sending young men and women over with the mission of trying to get some kind of handle on a situation that nobody but Iraqis can really do anything about, and truth be told, once the people living in Iraq finally do take control of their own country, we aren't going to like what it looks like. The only question that remains is how long this will take, and how many more human beings will find their lives snuffed out by bombs, bullets, beheadings, and general intransigence.

Out of curiosity, I went over to the National Archives website to compare the numerical representation of the tragedy going on now to that tragedy that it is so often compared to. If you look at that link, it sure seems like we're at the end of 1965 here... things have tapered up to a sharp increase in carnage, people are very concerned, and the people in charge of decision-making are preparing to respond to these concerns by what is euphemistically being called a "surge" which is no more or less than another way of saying "more troops." More troops on the ground will only mean more bodies shipped home, more tearful widows, more children who will never know a parent, more parents burying the people who should have ended up burying them instead. The same tragedy for the citizens of Iraq, who really want nothing more than to be able to go about their daily lives, will be multiplied tenfold.

I'm not one to cry often - it really takes the sort of personal horror that our society typically allows men to cry over to bring the tears out of me. Yet for some reason when I look at a table full of numbers representing soldiers killed in action, my eyes water right up. It makes little sense to me. Maybe some part of my psyche understands the sheer magnitude of this tragedy in a way that my consciousness doesn't.

For the war, or opposed to the war, it seems inevitable that at some point, we're going to look back on this and want to erect some kind of memorial to honor those who went to Iraq and never returned, and to pay respect to those who did return to a world that probably looks very different to them than it did when they left.

My question to you, the reader, is this: What would your idea of such a memorial look like? It took many years for the Vietnam Wall to come to be - first there was great resistance to creating a memorial for it at all, and then the design as selected was highly controversial. Yet nobody who has stood before that monument, as I have, who has touched the cold dark stone with the names on it, can deny the value and meaning of that memorial. I have no doubt that we will create something equally powerful when that time does come to pass.