In September of last year at my former school, Claremont McKenna College, a small group of students, including many from neighboring Scripps and Pitzer Colleges, came together to form an organization called Five Colleges for Peace in Iraq and held the first of many candlelight vigils. This was the first major student movement against the war in Iraq at the five Claremont Colleges since military action had started in March 2003. The group held a couple of events over the course of the year, such as organizing a panel where professors and community activists shared their viewpoints on the war and getting a group together to attend a World Can’t Wait protest in Los Angeles. But most important to me were the weekly vigils. Every Tuesday evening, I got together with like-minded people to talk about the week’s events in Iraq and to share my thoughts about what could be done by our government or by our group to help in the peace effort. These friends inspired me with their compassion for the people of Iraq and for the coalition soldiers put in the line of fire.
But sometimes the vigils on the lawn weren’t so inspiring. Most weeks, Annie would report on the latest death toll, a number that never stopped growing. Adam would talk about a veteran of the war he’d spoken with who was dumbfounded by the turmoil in the Middle East. We all felt a little helpless; our group membership had dwindled despite our advertising efforts, and by the end of the year, I felt like our candlelight vigils’ optimism had been extinguished. At our final gathering, we didn’t even light the candles. The war in Iraq was so complicated, and with finals coming up, it seemed that no one had the time or patience to try to sort through the mess of issues without being completely discouraged. Presidents and politicians couldn’t pinpoint the basic problems, much less agree on a solution.
Did a bunch of rag-tag college students in Claremont, California calling for withdrawal of troops and a lasting peace have a place in the debate at all? What was our role?
As of October 17th, 2,759 U.S. troops had been killed in Iraq. It is estimated that between 43,000 and 48,000 Iraqi civilians have died in the war. Millions more from both sides have been negatively affected by the conflict through the deaths of loved ones and the disruption of their everyday lives. In Iraq, water systems and electricity sources are unreliable. People’s safety concerns greatly limit their freedom. The simple truth is that there is a country in turmoil thousands of miles away, and while it may be easy to forget the suffering of our fellow human beings, we must be mindful of their burden and our responsibility to stand in solidarity with them.
In the beginning, the group’s goal was to help maintain some level of consciousness about the war through our vigils on campus. It is a role and responsibility students here at Georgetown should adopt. Even as fairly well-informed citizens, a lot of us probably find ourselves skipping over the latest news from Iraq (more death, more destruction, more disorder) and moving onto more promising information in the newspaper. The monotonous chaos of the war may cause debates amongst us to wander in circles. But instead of giving up on the war and turning our concern to other issues, we should take a moment to remember the victims of the conflict in Iraq for whom the consequences of the war are very clear and very simple.
Regardless of your view on the war, whether it was justified or not, whether we should “stay the course” or pull out, I think we can all agree that we should call on our leaders to find some sort of solution for the sake of the mothers, sons and grandfathers of Iraq and all of the countries in the coalition force. The fighting needs to stop, and it needs to stop soon. Until then, a demonstration of our mindfulness of their grief would be appropriate. Perhaps a circle of students on Copley Lawn on chilly nights this fall, with candles lit and heads bowed, could remind everyone of the reality of the war in Iraq.
