War is not top of mind for most

by Bruce Freeman, Tim Braley and Kate Collier, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle

Memorial Day began as a day to remember and honor the soldiers killed in the Civil War. More than 620,000 died. Every community was touched by war deaths. In the words of Yale historian David Blight: "The most immediate legacy of the Civil War was its slaughter and how to remember it."

The spreading of flowers on soldiers' graves, the way Memorial Day was first observed just after the Civil War, was a gesture of healing. Memorial Day began, at least in part, as a solemn ritual to address the profound sense of loss shared by millions of Americans.

Those of us who are old enough remember that the Vietnam War, like the Civil War, was a nation-wide, shared experience. For the baby-boomers, if you weren't in the service during the Vietnam War, you knew someone who was. If you hadn't yet been drafted, you knew you could be. The war was photographed and filmed and in the news every day. The war was in the movies we saw, the music we listened to, and the newspapers and magazines we read.

Things are different now. Our soldiers are at war, and have been for nine years. But, as a nation, we don't seem to be aware of it. More than 5,400 young American soldiers have been killed and over 37,700 wounded. Tens of thousands more have suffered emotional and psychological damage. If you add the soldiers' families, the number of Americans directly affected by these ongoing wars climbs to hundreds of thousands, maybe more. Yet the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are not part of most Americans' daily thoughts.

Unless we have loved ones who are now in Afghanistan or Iraq, or who were there, or who could be sent there at any time, the wars don't intrude much on our lives.

Our soldiers now in Afghanistan and Iraq, all those who served during the last nine years, and their families, should be in our daily thoughts. We all should be concerned about their physical well-being and psychological health. We all should be aware of the relentless, minute-by-minute stress endured by both the soldiers and their loved ones at home. We have concluded that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are not justifiable.

For us, the most effective way we can support our troops is to work to end the wars they have been ordered to fight and bring them home.

Our work to stop these wars is nothing less than a patriotic duty that we, as veterans and military families, owe to the men and women who risk their lives for us.

Bruce Freeman is a member of Veterans for Peace. The letter was also signed by Tim Braley, treasurer of the Rochester Chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War, and Kate Collier, a member of Military Families Speak Out, Upstate New York Chapter, who has a daughter now deployed in Iraq.