Cindy Sheehan - Numbers

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Cindy Sheehan | Numbers

Mon, 06 Feb 2006 16:23:34 -0800

 

 

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/020606R.shtml

 

Numbers

By Cindy Sheehan

CommonDreams.org

 

Monday 06 February 2006

 

The now famous black shirt with white lettering that I was wearing

on January 31st to the State of the Union address originally read:

2000 Dead. How many more? That shirt was made by Veterans for Peace on

the occasion of the 2000th US soldier killed in Iraq. That tragic

number was reached on September 25th, 2005.

 

About four months later, on the morning of January 31st, before my

fellow peace activist and partner in patriotic dissent, Ann Wright,

and I set out for our day's adventures, Ann put masking tape over the

zeroes in the 2000 and wrote: 242. Thus changing the number to 2242,

which was the upsetting casualty total for that day.

 

Before I set out for my fateful trip to the Capitol Building, we

discovered that the number had sorrowfully risen to 2245. While Ann

and I were giving the People's State of the Union address that

afternoon with Congressman John Conyers, courageous Congresswoman Lynn

Woolsey and Katrina rights activist, Malik Rahim, three more American

families were sent into a tailspin of loss, grief and despair from

which they will never fully recover.

 

The number on my shirt was changed to 2245. 2245 Dead. How many more?

 

As of January 31st, at least 2245 North American families had paid

the ultimate price for this administration's stupid and careless

policies in Iraq. Thousands upon thousands of our young men and women

have been wounded, some grievously, for the arrogance of empire.

Innumerable Iraqis have been slaughtered for just going about their

lives that day and for the heartless and supercilious policy of

" fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here. "

 

Today, in the City of Brotherly Love, I attended an awards

ceremony for the Shalom Peace Center where I was given an award for

being a prophetic voice. (It's not an easy job). But, that's not the

important thing. The important thing is that one of my friends and

biggest supporters brought some masking tape and a marker and many of

the attendees were wearing about four inches of tape with the number

2250. That means five more angels were sent to an early grave since

Tuesday, five more Mothers were unjustly and needlessly given a life's

sentence of pain, five more Fathers will be beginning an odyssey of

mostly silent heartache: countless families ruined for our country's

preemptive foreign policy against imaginary enemies.

 

I believe that whether one supports the wars of aggression of the

malicious empire that is taking away our civil liberties as it is

sending our young people off to kill and be killed, or whether one

opposes preemptive murder, we should all be honoring our children who

have given their lives nobly for such an ignoble cause.

 

Numbers frighten people. The number of crosses that the Veterans

for Peace put up each Sunday on some California beaches scares the

living daylights out of the people who support George and his

murderous policies. These people claim that the VFP are making a

political statement and want the numbers to go away and not disturb

them. Being confronted with numbers, faces, and reality is too much

for some people. As a former math teacher, I know that many people

have an unreasonable fear of numbers. The number of our war dead in

Iraq is very fear inducing. I know numbers are very alarming

especially when there is no logical reason for them.

 

We know George Bush went AWOL from his dangerous 'Nam duty in the

Alabama Air National Guard. I suppose he was fighting them in Alabama

so they wouldn't have to fight them in Massachusetts. We know George

Bush did not have the tiniest bit of the courage of our troops when he

wouldn't meet me face to face on his adoptive turf of Crawford, Texas.

Now the world knows that he doesn't even have the fortitude to face a

t-shirt.

 

As humans, we all know that it is very hard to face one's

mistakes, especially when undeserving people have paid a horrible toll

for that foolishness. But what am I talking about? From failures in

his business life to compound, harmful and inexcusable failures in his

public life, George Bush has never even admitted a mistake, let alone

faced one.

 

Well, it's time George faced this mistake and is somehow made to

feel intense shame for the biggest mistake of his miserable mistake

filled life.

 

I call on people that are for peace and justice to wear the number

on their chests every day ... near their hearts. To honor our dead,

but to also confront the ones who are waging this war, and supporting

the wagers of death, but who won't risk their own flesh and blood for

the crimes against humanity that are perpetrated on a daily basis. I

implore everyone in the US to remember that each number in the grisly

count represents a living, breathing, wonderful, loving and

indispensable member of a family, community, and our nation. They are

not just numbers. They were human beings before they were exploited

for oil and greed.

 

Wear the number for our dead. Wear the number for their families.

Wear the number for our wounded. Wear the number for our children

still in harm's way whose confusion about the mission is growing and

who only want to come home. Wear the number for people who will be in

the way of the future wars of aggression that the war criminals in DC

are already planning. Wear it for the people of Iraq who only want us

to go away.

 

Wear the number for peace.

 

To find the number each day go to: www.icasualties.org.

 

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