Independence day

Independence Day
Originally uploaded by michael j nolan.

On a hot July 4th I walked among more than 900 pairs of these boots. They represented our soldiers killed in Iraq. Each pair of boots had a nametag attached to it, with name, state and age of the fallen hero. Some of the boots were decorated with photographs of happy families and other mementos. I remember thinking how young these lost lives were ...19...23...22...31. I thought of my own 17 year old son and his friends, cousins.

I was taken back to the fervor of the 1960s and the war protests, when we naively thought we had used our power to stop senseless war for our time. I remembered candlelight vigils and the icy winter protests in Indianapolis where hundreds marched, like their counterparts all over the country in the months before the Iraq war launched. I felt a sense of having failed. I felt I failed the next generation by not being steadfast enough.

I started to cry and was glad I had sunglasses on so others wouldn't notice. These promising lives, lost to the folly of old men like George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. I shuddered even though it was nearly ninety degrees in the bright sun.