When it came time for a Memorial Day toast yesterday at our neighborhood gathering, I noted that 980 American soldiers had died since the last Memorial Day, and God only knows how many Iraqis.
So I proposed a toast to peace and hope: that on Memorial Day 2008, we would not be mourning another casualty list of that magnitude.
But I am not feeling very hopeful, and I don't know anybody who is. The Democrats in Congress have failed to stop the war; they recently gave up against Bush's vetoes and voted to keep funding this mess.
Bush won't listen to anybody, won't listen to reason.
I stayed away from his visit to the U.S. Coast Guard Academy graduation last week. I knew the protests were very worthwhile, but that the demonstrators would be kept far away. I knew he would keep on trying to scare everybody with talk of 9-11 (even though everybody now realizes Iraq had nothing to do with it) and keeping the terrorists away from "our shores." The War in Iraq keeps harvesting new terrorists, but that wasn't part of his speech.
I was busy that morning interviewing Daniel Smith in New Haven. He's getting ready to go back to Iraq for the sixth time, to photograph the casualties of the war. He focuses on Iraqi children.
And last week I heard a radio interview with a father, a professor at Boston University, whose son had been killed in this endless war. The grief-stricken father asked what has happened to us and our democracy. Last November's congressional elections and all recent polls have made it clear the majority of Americans now oppose this war and want us to get moving on getting our troops out of there. Bush just keeps sending more. And our monthly soldiers' death toll for May is the worst in a long time.
How many more? What for?
I don't want to have to ask those questions again next Memorial Day.