Two rows of tiny flags and thousands of beads turned the path from Healy Gates to White Gravenor into a memorial for lives lost in the Iraq War on Tuesday. Students encouraged members of the Georgetown community not to forget the sacrifices that have been made in Iraq or the costs of American leaders’ decisions.
Members of Peace Action, a campus anti-war group, placed the plastic flags in the ground on either side of the walkway and hung the beads on a cord stretching across half the length of the path. The 579 flags represented the number of American casualties in Iraq since the beginning of the war, while the 10,000 beads symbolized the estimated number of Iraqi deaths in the same period of time. The British Broadcasting Company estimates the same number to be 13,000.
Peace Action said that they used beads to represent Iraqi lives lost because of the volume of casualties and limited space. The sheer number of the loss of Iraqi lives prevented a larger symbol,” said Emil Totonchi, a member of Peace Action.
Peace Action said that while it’s important to voice concerns over the decisions of the Bush administration, the primary goal of the display was to show respect for the lives lost in the past year. The Bush administration declared war on Iraq in March 2003 amongst domestic and international protests.
“We believe that most students have basically forgotten about the war already and moved on, even though American soldiers and Iraqi civilians are still being killed every week. Hopefully their long walk past those 579 flags will remind them of the sacrifices our country has made, sacrifices that could have been avoided,” said Matt VanDyke (GRD GM). United States forces are currently occupying the defeated nation, but they plan to turn over power in June.
Despite the chill in the morning air, most of the people that walked the path on Tuesday stopped or slowed down to look at the flags and beads. Many read the signs hung on the lamp posts, which listed the number of American and Iraqi casualties.
The memorial is the first on-campus demonstration regarding the war in Iraq in several months.”It’s definitely surprising that people are making an effort to keep people thinking about the war by making it visible on campus,” said John Kim, a first-year graduate student at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute.
Peace Action planned the tribute to coincide with the first anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq. “We wanted to recognize the year anniversary of the war in a meaningful way that would have an impact on students, faculty and visitors to the campus. We setup the flags and beads to honor those who have been sacrificed in this war,” said VanDyke, who is a member of Peace Action.
Throughout the morning and the late afternoon, members of Peace Action stood along the pathway explaining the meaning of the flags and the beads to people passing by. They handed out small flyers that urged not to forget the lives that have been lost as a result of the decision to go to war.
Peace Action said that they chose to remember the dead in a visible way so that the entire community could participate. “As students walk by flag after flag we hope that they will think about what this war has cost in human lives, no matter what their stance on the war is,” VanDyke said.
