Arlington West 6yrs.: Nov 3rd 2003 - Nov. 3rd 2009

November 3rd will be the sixth anniversary of the first installation of Arlington West on the beach. Veterans For Peace Chapter 54, the Jim and Shirley Kennedy Chapter will set it up with friends on Sunday, November 1st and mark the sixth year that it has been installed on the first Sunday in November by citizens volunteering their time and talent to this community project to demonstrate the true cost of war.
It was set up weekly for five years but has been once monthly for the last year, being the first Sunday of every month.

Citizens who wish to help the Veterans For Peace and friends with this effort should come between 7am and 9am for set up or at 3pm for takedown. We set up Arlington West in fair weather only to protect the memorabilia left by families of the fallen. Arlington West Santa Barbara was the original but has inspired similar displays across the USA.

The first Sunday of November 2003, a group of local activists erected 340 wooden crosses on the beach immediately west of Stearns Wharf, marking the death of U.S. servicemen and servicewomen in Iraq.

Outraged that the Bush administration had barred U.S. media from photographing returning coffins containing the war dead from Iraq, founder Stephen Sherrill, along with a small group of local activists, erected the first installation of what has become widely known as the Arlington West memorial. “I didn’t feel that the American people were mindful of the terrible price we were paying – and were about to pay – for the invasion and occupation of Iraq,” says Sherrill. “The statistics in the newspapers were just tiny little numbers, too easy to breeze over.” Since the first installation of about 340 crosses in November of 2003, the number of American soldiers killed in Iraq has grown beyond 3,500. Every Sunday morning, members of Veterans for Peace and volunteers from the community, place crosses in the sand by Stearns Wharf in Santa Barbara, CA, in remembrance of those whose lives have been sacrificed in Iraq. Hundreds of observers from across the nation and around the world visit Arlington West every week. To date, there have been approximately twenty duplications of the original Arlington West all across America, including their weekly “sister memorial” in Santa Monica, CA.

In the intervening years since the memorial started, Veterans for Peace members and volunteers have effectively transformed what began as an angry anti-war protest into a genuine memorial — somber, chilling, and irresistibly moving. The memorial has been deliberately de-politicized in an effort to make Arlington West a non-threatening experience for everyone, regardless of their political affiliation. Gone are the placards denouncing George W. Bush that were there in the beginning. In their place are flowers, flags, and the names of the dead attached to the crosses and posted on makeshift bulletin boards. The crosses are planted in straight, tight rows, covering over an acre of beach that every Sunday make a stunning visual statement. In the background, the sound of “Taps” can be heard playing nonstop from a nearby recorder. At sunset, the music ends and the crosses are taken down, packed up, and stored away until the coming week.

Adjacent to one of the most heavily traveled intersections in Santa Barbara, Stearns Wharf has always been a favorite place for tourists to stroll. But now, it has also become a place where friends and relatives of the deceased can pay their last respects. “Until you’ve held a weeping mother in your arms who has lost her child – or worse, her only child – in Iraq, it’s difficult to grasp the enormity of the pain and the sorrow and the grief that has resulted from this war that WE started,” says Sherrill. Everyone involved with Arlington West has a similar story to tell. Nearly a thousand of the crosses have been visited by friends, comrades, or loved ones. “We never realized it would get so gigantic,” says Pat Chamberlin-Calamar. “Every time I place flowers by a cross, I say a little prayer.”

10.29.09


The Commander In Chief of the Military pays Honor and Respect to the Fallen as they are returned to this Country together from the Deadliest Day in the Bloodiest Month for the Military in Afghanistan under this still relatively new Administration.

Washington's Wars

October 30, 2009

A Bill Moyers Essay

Arlington West - March 2008 - Honoring The Fallen

Before dawn every Sunday morning, at the foot of the Santa Monica Pier, volunteers set up crosses in memory of American service members killed in Iraq.

The Video was produced for the New York Times and can be also seen At Their Site

The Times don't include an 'embed' link, so for those who might want to add this to their sites you can get the above embed link at Blip TV, also at Google Video if you prefer or at Live Video as well.

For Vietnam Veterans, Families, Relatives, Friends of, and all those interested but not touched by having a Fallen Loved One Honored on 'The Wall' the Memorial and the National Archives offers a great new service:

WASHINGTON - The National Archives is joining with a Web site to make historical records of tens of thousands of deceased Vietnam War veterans available electronically for the first time.

The interactive site - at Footnote - The Wall - is a Web re-creation of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the National Mall. The site offers access to thousands of pages of casualty records and agency photos. People can search by name, hometown, birthdate, or dozens of other categories.

The site allows people to post photos they may have of a deceased veteran and to make comments. The service is currently free for Vietnam War information; the company is deciding whether to charge fees for some of the 50,000 National Archives photos now digitized.

Note: Interactive Vietnam Veterans Memorial It's Free, leave a tribute, a story or photograph about any of the 58,256 veterans killed or missing in the Vietnam War.

This morning, 3-27-08, the local affiliate of NPR, WFAE had a report on a few of the local family members with sons or daughters serving in the Military and In-Theater either Iraq or Afganistan, and how their neighbors are disconnected from what they are experiancing, after talking to the family members they did an interesting follow, talking to people of the WWII era showing the total Disconnect of this Country, and it's Citizens, Now as to these Occupations to Than.

You can Listen with this Link, brings up windows media player.

Thinking, as I listened, they could have expanded the report to the Occupation myself and thousands of my brothers and sisters served in. Than we didn't have Cable, with so many stations, mostly of uninteresting shows, and with a number of so called News Channels that Rarely show what is happening in Either Theater and flip through reports of those killed or maimed Without a Concious thought as to them or their families. The greater majority of the country were disconnected, carried over from the Korean Conflict, But The Conflict Was In The Living Rooms Almost Nightly on any one of the three stations or all three.

Though because of the Extreme Danger to the Real Journalists, doing war correspondence, they can rarely get out of their safe zones in either Iraq or Afganistan to actually report first hand, as was not the case in 'Nam, but the almost total lack of reporting on the Soldiers this Country sent into these Occupations leaves the Country Totally Disconnected and Unwilling To Sacrifice as these soldiers and Families Carry The Full Burden of the Extreme Failed Policies of Country and Society!

Also on NPR, this morning, but on Morning Edition they had this report Ft. Campbell Soldiers See Kids' Milestones from Afar

Seniors at Fort Campbell High School near Nashville, Tenn., are preparing to graduate. But as the Iraq war enters its fifth year, some of those students have had a parent deployed overseas for a lot of their time in high school.

Soldiers at Fort Campbell are on their third deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan — missing the milestones of watching their kids grow up.

You can listen with this Link

And what's this costing us, much more than those not Sacrificing a thing Think, or rather as we put it all on a Credit Card, our Next Generations Will Be Paying! You can get a taste of the cost with an updated report, aired last night on The News Hour:

Five Years In, Cost of Iraq War Far Exceeds Early Estimates

In a follow-up report to a series on the cost of war, Paul Solman examines the new estimates for short- and long-term expenditures related to the ongoing conflict in Iraq -- including military recruitment, equipment and medical treatment for those injured. You can view The Report with this Link. If you prefer to just listen the audio link is at the site.

And rummy, a clip from back when in the report:

PAUL SOLMAN, The cost of the Iraq war, it's a far cry from the original estimates.

DONALD RUMSFELD, Former U.S. Secretary of Defense: The Office of Management and Budget estimated it would be something under $50 billion.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, Anchor, "This Week": Outside estimates say up to $300 billion.

DONALD RUMSFELD: Baloney.

These returning present day Combat Veterans will face a Country not only Disconnected but in Denial and in Collective Apathy, they will continue what those before them, from Korea to 'Nam to the First Gulf War and all Military Actions in between, Fighting For What This Country Owes Them!!

And their Children, because of the nature of the Hatreds we have Created, will be facing not only the costs of the Failed Policies but the Blowback, Retaliations, from the Deaths and Destruction we have wrought!!

We have lost over 900 dead Americans since the surge. Now if you want to dismiss that as "success" that would be your interpretation.
Chuck Hagel

97 percent of U.S. deaths in Iraq have occurred after George W. Bush declared an end to "major combat."
Mission accomplished!