“Eyes Wide Open: The Human Cost of War in Iraq” Visits Washington, DC

By Delinda C. Hanley

LEFT: Fernando Suarez del Solar points to a photo of his only son, Jesus, 20, who died after stepping on a U.S. cluster bomb in Iraq. RIGHT: Ivan Medina’s 22-year-old twin brother, Irving, was killed in Iraq (staff photos D. Hanley).

NEARLY 800 pairs of combat boots tagged with the name, state of origin, age, and rank of every fallen U.S. soldier stretched across Upper Senate Park, in the shadows of the Capitol dome, on May 25 and 27. Alongside the boots, a 24-foot “wall” listed the thousands of names, and the ages, of Iraqi civilians who have been killed in the U.S.-led war on their country. The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) opened the two-day exhibition, called “Eyes Wide Open: The Human Cost of War in Iraq,” only blocks from the new World War II memorial, shortly before the dedication ceremony.

The exhibit’s creator, AFSC Great Lakes Regional Office Director Michael McConnell, described the inspiration behind his tribute. “I saw a photograph of combat boots in The New York Times,” he said. “It struck me that this was a perfect symbol for the people who had died. Every soldier has a pair of combat boots. Their boots are real. They’re necessary. They’re very personal.

“We’ve felt all along the human cost of this war has been hidden from the American public,” McConnell continued. “We didn’t see the death of civilians in Iraq as the rest of the world did. The Bush administration has denied access to the images of flag-draped coffins. We needed a visual symbol of this war to make it real to us.

“We felt it was important to show both the U.S. soldiers and the Iraqi victims,” he explained. “We designed the wall to show the names of Iraqi civilians and the incidents in which they were killed. Most of the names have been lost to public records.”

U.S. authorities refuse to quote Iraqi casualty figures. But the Wall’s list speaks volumes: The Yas family lost nine members, of various ages, on a highway 12 miles northeast of Baghdad when a missile struck their car on April 7, 2003; two days later, in another such incident, Khali Abbas Ali’s brother, sister-in-law, two nephews and two nieces were killed in Baghdad. The names of so many Iraqi victims are unknown—and unsought—by U.S. occupation forces.


	TOP: The Wall lists the names of known Iraqi casualties. ABOVE: The boots worn by 19-year-old Pvt. Robert Frantz (staff photos D. Hanley).

“People say the boots and the wall are powerful and haunting,” McConnell said. “They look at the tags and say, ‘They’re all so young,’ or ‘I didn’t realize there were so many.’ There’s a quote [from Josef Stalin]: ‘One death is a tragedy, a thousand deaths is a statistic.’ Our purpose is to keep a sense of tragedy.”

McConnell described some of the people who have visited the exhibit as it traveled the country. One father brought a dusty pair of boots from his son, who had come home alive. A mother said her son, who served on a medical team, came home haunted by memories of scooping up teeth and bone fragments. A young woman came by looking for the name of her ex-boyfriend. She was trying to find out what happened to him. When she found his boots, McConnell said, she slipped a note inside and broke down in tears, inconsolable.

“On Memorial Day we honor the veterans of past wars. This Memorial Day, we want to commemorate the lives lost in this ongoing war,” the AFSC representative said. “We did it in the shadow of the Capitol to say: This is what your decision to go to war has wrought. We think the cost is too high.”

“One hears the numbers and sees the pictures, but the full import doesn’t sink in,” said AFSC’s general secretary Mary Ellen McNish, as she looked across row after row of boots. “This exhibit puts a human face on the war. A lost life is a lost life, whether they’re Iraqi or American.

“This administration made one mistake after another in its war with Iraq,” McNish charged. “They didn’t try to solve problems diplomatically in their rush to war. They didn’t listen to all the human rights organizations which advised against the war. The war planners failed to prepare properly for the disastrous aftermath. It’s too late for these young American men and women and Iraqi civilians. It will take a long time to undo the terrible consequences of this war.”

Fernando Suarez del Solar, of San Diego, CA, lost his only son, a 20-year-old Marine named Jesus, when he stepped on a U.S. cluster bomb on March 27, 2003, while fighting in Iraq. Jesus died leaving a new wife and infant son, Erik.

The death of Jesus forever changed his 48-year-old father, who had immigrated to the United States from Tijuana, Mexico in 1997, with his wife and children. Fernando quit his jobs cashiering at a 7/11 store and delivering newspapers. He wanted to learn all he could about the war, and attended anti-war protests and met other military families.

Last December, Suarez traveled to the Iraqi desert where his son was killed. “Ordinary Iraqis welcomed me into their homes,” he recalled. “I visited children in Iraqi hospitals. They had no drugs or equipment. I held a baby in my arms who later died from diarrhea. Why aren’t we fixing the hospitals? Years of U.S.-backed sanctions damaged Iraq. Our war finished it off. We have to fix what we broke.”

He met nearly 300 servicemen, Suarez said. “All the boys I saw said, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing here. I want to go home,’” he told the Washington Report, and complained they had little in the way of supplies, equipment or protection. “After spending $87 billion in Iraq, I just don’t see the results,” Suarez said. “The schools are a mess, the electricity is irregular, the hospitals are full of sick and injured patients with no medicine.”

Suarez brought with him thousands of letters from American children for both Iraqi children and U.S. soldiers. After listening to the needs of both Americans and Iraqis, he returned home to speak out against the war with members of Congress, U.N. officials and the media.

His son, Jesus, wanted to become a policeman after his 8-year-old cousin had run into trouble with gangs, Suarez reminisced, and hoped his time in the Marines would help him fulfill his dream of attending police academy. As Jesus shipped off to war he told his father, “I don’t want to go to war, but I’m a Marine, so I’ll go.”

Suarez has now dedicated his life to searching for peace and working with low-income Hispanic youth—who are being heavily recruited by the military. “America doesn’t need more heroes,” Fernando says, “it needs more students.

“I feel bad there are more than 800 boots now,” Suarez said sadly. “This is the face of war that President Bush tries to cover up.”

Ivan Medina, a 22-year-old former U.S. soldier who served 11 months in Iraq, lost his twin brother, Irving, in Baghdad on Nov. 14, 2003, after an explosive device struck Irving’s convoy. The boys, who were born in Mexico City, Mexico, moved to Goshen, NY at the age of six. Before they joined the Army Ivan was class president and Irving a soccer star at Goshen High School. The brothers, as well as the twins’ older sister, joined the military in order to give something back to their country, which had given them so much.

Ivan joined the military never thinking he’d go to war. He disagreed with the war from day one, he said. “But I took an oath,” he explained. “My job was to follow orders and make sure nothing happened to the person on my left and the other on my right.”

Ivan spent 11 months in Iraq. In the beginning, he said, it was heady stuff. “As we drove into towns Iraqis waved American flags and blew kisses and said, ‘Thank you America!’ I visited Iraqi orphanages and schools,” he recalled, “and I felt so good. We did our job. Mission accomplished, I thought. We won the war, so let’s go home.

“But we didn’t,” he stated. “Now we had to work as peacekeepers. The same guys who made war on Iraqis were now told to keep them safe. No wonder they didn’t trust us too much. The president said ‘Bring it on!’ and they did. Iraqi fighters blew up private cars or improvised explosive devices in our path. Others hid behind women and children. We had to decide if we should shoot at them anyway. Many did.

“I was a chaplain’s assistant,” Ivan explained, “and talked to a lot of soldiers. No one knew why we were there. They knew there was no connection between 9/11 and Saddam Hussain. President Bush used 9/11 to get his way in Iraq.

“We need to go home and let other countries, especially Arab countries, and the U.N. take over,” he argued. “It’s only arrogance that keeps us there. No one likes us or trusts us. We have no credibility. We can’t pull out completely until we rebuild what we bombed, but we can internationalize the situation.”

Coming home was the happiest day of Ivan’s life, he said. His family had a party with all his teachers and friends. Three months later his brother, Irving, returned to be buried in Goshen’s veterans’ cemetery.

Vietnam veteran Don Lucas happened onto the AFSC exhibit while visiting Washington, DC’s new WWII memorial. “When I see these boots,” he said, “I think of the friends I lost in Vietnam. The two wars are so similar: There was no North Vietnamese attack on a U.S. destroyer in the Tonkin Gulf. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Both times we went to war on the basis of misinformation.”

Lucas works in a home for people with mental illnesses in Niagara Falls, one of the poorest cities in the United States. Mental health programs like his face serious budget cuts, he said, as do soup kitchens and programs for needy children, because money is diverted to the war effort and homeland security. Many of the residents of his facility are Vietnam veterans still tormented by demons and violent behavior, depression, and alcohol and drug abuse.

Lucas said he’s worried about the soldiers who’ll come home from Iraq haunted by similar bad memories. In both wars, he pointed out, soldiers couldn’t tell who was the enemy. ”They’ll never know if the people they killed were shepherds or terrorists.

“I just hope these 800 shoes don’t become 58,000, like we lost in Vietnam,“ Lucas concluded, as he walked off into the field of boots.

By June 7, 2004, 813 U.S. service members, 11,000 Iraqi soldiers, and 8,875 to 10,275 Iraqi civilians were killed, according to the U.N. The exhibition, which opened in Chicago’s Federal Plaza with 500 pairs of boots in January, will continue to travel and, sadly, to grow.

For more information, or for a schedule of future stops on the tour, visit <http://eyes.peacechicago.org/>, or the American Friends Service Committee’s Web site, <http://www.afsc.org/> For a list of Iraqi civilians killed, see <www.iraqbodycount.net>.

Delinda C. Hanley is news editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.