By E.J. Graff - March 19, 2008, 4:40PM
My office is at Brandeis University. Today as, I walked down the curving path that carries everyone through campus, I noticed that, lining the path, at very short intervals, were small American flags. A sign explained that there was one for every 10 American soldiers who had died in Iraq.
It's a long path. There were hundreds of flags.
By the time I made it across campus, tears were running down my face. It's not the Vietnam Memorial, but I found it profoundly moving nevertheless. I send my admiration to the students who organized it.
Yes, I know that it's just as grievous to think of the tens of thousands of Iraqis who have died. My friend Huda Ahmed, an Iraqi journalist, has personally lost more people than I can bear to consider, and reminds Americans periodically that Iraqi dead are just as important as American dead. And the truth is, Iraqis are the ones I think about most often when I am wrenched by the thought of the war.
And yet we all know that the human animal has a larger imagination for the suffering of those like us, for those closer to us in our various tribal memberships; it just seems to be how we are built. And so I do not apologize for weeping, today, for the American dead....
My office is at Brandeis University. Today as, I walked down the curving path that carries everyone through campus, I noticed that, lining the path, at very short intervals, were small American flags. A sign explained that there was one for every 10 American soldiers who had died in Iraq.
It's a long path. There were hundreds of flags.
By the time I made it across campus, tears were running down my face. It's not the Vietnam Memorial, but I found it profoundly moving nevertheless. I send my admiration to the students who organized it.
Yes, I know that it's just as grievous to think of the tens of thousands of Iraqis who have died. My friend Huda Ahmed, an Iraqi journalist, has personally lost more people than I can bear to consider, and reminds Americans periodically that Iraqi dead are just as important as American dead. And the truth is, Iraqis are the ones I think about most often when I am wrenched by the thought of the war.
And yet we all know that the human animal has a larger imagination for the suffering of those like us, for those closer to us in our various tribal memberships; it just seems to be how we are built. And so I do not apologize for weeping, today, for the American dead....
