TCOWI, the Tufts Coalition Opposed to the War in Iraq, is organizing an installation on campus for this Wednesday, Nov. 15 and Thursday, Nov. 16 to protest the ongoing occupation of Iraq. The 119 pairs of boots we will have outside the Tisch Patio will serve as a representation of the 119 New England troops who have thus far been killed serving in Iraq. Hopefully, every student on campus will get an opportunity within these two days to personally confront this poignant reminder of the war's cost in human lives.
At 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, TCOWI will adjourn the exhibition with a moment of silence to mourn the victims of this war, both American and Iraqi. At this point in time, over 2,840 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq. Each one of these deaths represents the violation of a soldier's pledge to defend his country by our elected officials who have needlessly placed them in excessive danger in a war based on deceptions.
The deaths of American soldiers are vastly superseded by the number of innocent Iraqis who have been killed in Iraq and are also worthy of our grievances. The UK medical journal, The Lancet, recently placed the number of killed Iraqis at 655,000. Each day that the United States stays in Iraq is another day that the will of the aggrieved Iraqi people is betrayed and their sectarian divisions are intensified through the injustice of military occupation.
TCOWI member Becky Saggese points out in her Nov. 13 Viewpoint that, despite Tufts' strong tradition of activism, antiwar activity on campus is alarmingly underrepresented, especially for a school that considers itself so "liberal." Like any other significant social movement in American history, the drive and commitment to end the war in Iraq will be birthed by strong social movements that fall outside institutional realms. As a community of scholars dedicated to helping work for global peace and justice, I hope we can come to together to confront the casualties of war, grieve their loss and work for the solution their grievous deaths compel us to do: ending the war in Iraq.
