wrote this in response.
In September, I helped set up the Arlington Midwest display in Wyandotte, MI. It's got a marker for each of the US troops killed in Iraq, those killed in Afghanistan, those who died as a result of wounds sustained in either of those countries, and several rows of crosses for those veterans who returned home, and then committed suicide.
I went with several of high school students who are members of the school's Peace Council. We inserted name cards into the holders on each of the wooden markers. Sometimes when people visit the memorial, they add something to one of the markers - sometimes a flag, sometimes a photo, maybe a flower or a card with some words. Each time the display is taken down, the items placed at a marker are saved, their location is noted, and the next time the display goes up, somebody adds those tokens of remembrance to the same markers.
Once the field was set up in Wyandotte, the students walked the length of each row - up and down, up and down, through the entire display. It took them over an hour. While they walked, I sat with Steve, one of the members of my local Veterans for Peace chapter, mostly in silence, trying to comprehend that each one of those markers represented a person lost. The impact doesn't really hit you when you are inserting the cards - the goal there is efficiency. It's like typing papers; I can type entire paragraphs, word after word, without even being aware of the content of what I'm typing. It's not til it's all put together that it begins to have impact.
NBC News reports the following: "At universities across the country, an antiwar group called Veterans for Peace has staged protests by setting up crosses for soldiers killed in Iraq. In New Mexico last year, the local paper described the event as a display of honor.
But a previously secret Pentagon intelligence report labeled that same event a "threat to military installations." The report lists the group's upcoming events and warns that while it's a "peaceful organization," there is potential that "future protest could become violent."
Arlington. The displays Veterans for Peace (and other Peace Organizations) set up are modelled after Arlington National Cemetery. It's a way to bring a piece of that home to those who don't have the time or the money to go to Arlington in DC. The website for Arlington National Cemetery says: "For the almost 4 million people who visit annually, Arlington National Cemetery represents many different things. For some, it is a chance to walk among headstones that chronicle American History; for many, it is an opportunity to remember and honor the nation's war heroes; and for others, it is a place to say a last farewell during funeral services for a family member or friend." Nowhere does their website say that remembering the dead is a threat to military installations.
This display is not a threat.
Everything it represents is a threat.