Vigil For 2,000 Dead in Iraq Held on Campus

By Maury Hirschkorn

Staff Writer

Holding candles and singing softly, approximately 30 people held a vigil outside the Student Activities Center on the evening of Oct. 27th.  They were marking the 2,000 U.S. military deaths in Iraq since the invasion of that country began in 2003.

“The purpose [of the vigil] was to make people aware that the war is still going on and that people are continuously dying,” said Charlene Obernauer, secretary of the Social Justice Alliance, a campus anti-war, human rights organization.  The Social Justice Alliance organized this vigil and publicized it largely through e-mail.  

Most students walking by the vigil glanced at its direction and continuing walking without stopping or making a comment.  People who joined were given a candle to hold.

The people at the vigil were students, professors and others.  Their presence was also a quiet protest to the invasion and continuing occupation of Iraq .

“We’re honoring people who died needlessly in an ill conceived war based on a lie,” said Michael Bell, a Stony Brook professor of ecology and evolution.  “You do something to honor people as a matter of principal.  It’s important for people to talk about a pattern of dishonestly, which is the hallmark of the Bush administration.”  Bell was at the vigil with his wife.

President Bush’s justification for the war was that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that might be used against other countries or given to terrorists.  Those weapons have not been found. 

Similar vigils were held across Long Island and New York City .  They were held outside military recruiting centers in Lindenhurst, Patchogue and Times Square, outside a carousel in Greenport, across from a Mobil gas station in Huntington , outside a CVS in Setauket, across from the Seven Seas Diner in Great Neck, in front of the offices of Senators Clinton and Schumer in Melville, and other places throughout the region.

John Schindler went from an hour-long seven person vigil in front of Borders Bookstore in Stony Brook to the vigil at the SAC.  He said that after hearing about the deceit of the Bush administration, he decided to be more active in protesting its policies. 

“After reading the Downing Street Memo, I got so agitated that I felt I had to more than just sending e-mails to Congress people,” he said. 

The Downing Street Memo is a leaked British government memo that revealed that President Bush didn’t think Iraq was a serious threat, and the intelligence about the weapons of mass destruction was “fixed” to sell the war to Americans.