Locals dedicate Iraq memorial
Few Yalies attend unveiling of month-by-month commemoration of war’s military, civilian deaths
Against a backdrop of bustling evening traffic and winter darkness, more than 50 members of the New Haven community gathered Monday night to inaugurate a memorial for city residents killed in the Iraq war. But Yale students were mostly M.I.A.
The monument — situated on a traffic island across Elm Street from Ivy Noodle and titled a “Memorial to an Endless War” — consists of a pile of 10-pound stones, each of which represents a month of the war since the conflict began in 2003. As a way of visually illustrating the war’s ongoing costs, memorial planners said they will add a new...
"American Studies professor Alicia Schmidt Camacho said...it is mainly the lower class and minority groups who have shouldered the costs of the war."
As a Yalie--and a veteran of the First Gulf War--comments like that above make me ill, especially coming from someone who has never served.
What I observed in my time in the military was a hard-working, honorable populace, grateful for the opportunity to serve. Military service offers instant entree into the middle class, teaches valuable skills, and fulfills some innate sense of purpose.
In my experiences with soldiers and marines, they generally wanted nothing to do with the can't-do, must-lose attitude of ivory-tower observers. I won't print the indelicacies that my military colleagues would have used to describe their opinion of Ms. Camacho, but let us just say that, in military matters, she doesn't know her azz from her elbow.
not to be mean, but, It looks a lot like a pile of rocks - maybe people who were going walked right past the 'memorial'
Maybe because they are a bit smarter? A bit more open to the nuances of international security? Or maybe it just conflicted with dinner...