Each red heart rep­re­sents an Amer­i­can sol­dier killed in Iraq.

Just as Man­hat­tan Beach Toy­ota was adver­tis­ing its three-day “Heart Stop­pin’ Sale” in hon­or of Valentine’s Day, com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers marked the upcom­ing hol­i­day in a dif­fer­ent way. Approx­i­mate­ly five hun­dred peo­ple gath­ered at Pol­li­wog Park on Sun­day for a “No More Bro­ken Hearts” ral­ly to hon­or the more than 3,000 Amer­i­can sol­diers killed in Iraq and to call for an end to the war.

Accord­ing to April Hal­prin Way­land of Man­hat­tan Beach, “There’s no orga­ni­za­tion behind this ral­ly, just a group of friends. Back when the 2,000th sol­dier was killed [in Octo­ber 2005], we knew that we would also have to com­mem­o­rate the 3,000th. Lat­er, we real­ized that it would fall near Valentine’s Day.”

The mile­stone was actu­al­ly reached on Decem­ber 31, 2006 with the death of Dustin Don­ica, 22.

“The Viet­nam War didn’t stop until 58,000 Amer­i­can sol­diers died. We think that 3,000 is enough.” says Wayland.

Mem­bers of Iraq Vet­er­ans Against the War (IVAW) were also present at Sunday’s ral­ly. Twen­ty-six year old Tim Goodrich, co-founder of IVAW, was deployed to the Mid­dle East three times, once as part of the pre-war bomb­ing raid. After being hon­or­ably dis­charged, Goodrich returned to Iraq as a civilian.

“George Bush was so impa­tient for the bomb­ing to begin that he couldn’t wait for diplo­ma­cy to have any effect,” Goodrich told the crowd.

“I’m here today to stand in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the major­i­ty of the Amer­i­can peo­ple that are against this war. The sit­u­a­tion in Iraq has gone on too long. There is no mil­i­tary solution.”

Twen­ty-four year old Jason Lemieux, also a mem­ber of IVAW, has com­plet­ed four tours of duty in Iraq as a Marine.

“We can’t win over there because sol­diers are not giv­en a clear mis­sion. We’re fight­ing an urban war in the mid­dle of a civil­ian population.”

In Husay­bah, a town on the Syr­i­an bor­der so vio­lent that it’s known as the Wild Wild West, Lemieux says, “Our mission–for a 210 day com­bat mission–was to ‘kill those who need­ed to be killed and save those who need­ed to be saved.’ That was it. That was the guid­ance we got for sev­en months.”

Before orga­niz­ers and pro­test­ers left Pol­li­wog Park and took to the street, Lemieux told the crowd, “I can see a change in the atti­tude of the coun­try. It’s not unpa­tri­ot­ic any­more to protest the war.”

This entry was post­ed on Sun­day, Feb­ru­ary 11th, 2007 at 5:33 pm and is filed under Pol­i­tics, Ener­gy, News. You can fol­low any responses