To President Bennet:
The current war in Iraq has been weighing heavily on my mind of late. According to most estimates, well over one hundred thousand individuals have been killed in a conflict whose reasoning and causes cannot be clearly articulated by the American government. At the present time, we in the University are in a privileged position with regard to the fighting. As Americans younger than me are in a combat theater, shooting and being shot at by Iraqis who are most likely of similar age, I am sitting behind a laptop in a dorm room worrying about Drop/Add period.
As this open letter is being written, 1,372 American soldiers have been killed in action and some one hundred thousand Iraqi soldiers and civilians have met the same fate. Yet in the face of this tremendous loss of life, we live in a culture that refuses to respect it. As people continue to die for what are increasingly dubious reasons, we are still not allowed to take pictures of their caskets when they return home to be buried. And when asked about Iraqi casualties, the American military simply responds that it does not conduct body counts. Our culture has become one without even the most basic respect for human life.
It is in this vein, then, that I request that the American flag outside of South College, being the primary American flag flown on this campus, be flown at half-mast for the remainder of this war. In so doing, may we proclaim our respect for human life, and mourn the disastrous losses caused by the Iraq War.
Sincerely,
Evan Simko-Bednarski
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