Evoking the fallen

This week the American Friends Service Committee's Eyes Wide Open exhibit on the human cost of the Iraq war was on display in San Francisco Civic Center. There was not much to say; there was much about which to weep. As of March 26, 2005, 1528 US soldiers had died in Bush's war.









And their relatives have to live on with the pain, anger and grief of this waste of lives.
Nadia McCaffrey's son Patrick was killed June 22, 2004 in Iraq. He was a weekend soldier with the California National Guard, and never thought that he would be deployed to combat. Nadia McCaffrey went on Global Exchange's trip to the Jordan and Iraq border at the start of 2005 with the Families for Peace delegation which delivered over $650,000 of medical and humanitarian aid for the thousands of refugees, mostly women and children, made homeless by the U.S. attack on Falluja.

Of course many more Iraqis than US troops have been killed in the Iraq war. The US military refuses to count how many.




Organizers created a labyrinth whose paths were outlined by civilian shoes, so that visitors to the exhibit could walk meditatively among the reminders of the fallen.