Utahns pack Salt Lake library to condemn war, buildup
Four small, black and white pictures of a man he calls "Bon." In two of the photographs, "Bon" is standing in front of a fence covered with intertwining, leafy vines. He stands tall, wearing a dress shirt and a pair of ironed slacks. Based on the shadows that hit his smiling, round face, the day must have been fairly sunny.
The other two pictures, however, feature the same young man, but this time, he's not standing or smiling. He's face down on the ground, in army fatigues, limp and surrounded by puddles of his own blood.
Miller was the one responsible for "Bon's" death.
It occurred in a village five miles south of Saigon, Vietnam, while Miller was serving in the Army, midwar, around 1967. He took the first two pictures from "Bon's" wallet for identification purposes for the Army. The other two were taken as proof of death.
"I carried that photograph around every day to remind me of the human costs of war," Miller said. "And I apologized to it — to him — every single night."
Miller, who is a member of Veterans for Peace, spoke Saturday at a community speak-out against the Iraq war. Miller was joined at the Salt Lake City Library by local leaders ranging from member of Utah Military Families Speak Out to students and faculty from the University of Utah. Besides speaking out against the war, they also criticized President Bush and his administration's newest pledge to send 21,500 more troops to Iraq.
"I just wish someone had fought to bring the troops home back then," Miller said, in an emotional speech to the overflowing library auditorium. "I wish someone would have fought to bring me home."
A much younger veteran, Larry Cannon, who served in the military since 2001, gave his own view of the current war, adding that the Bush administration thinks of the military as a "multipurpose tool."
"Everyone knows that even a multipurpose tool doesn't fix everything," said Cannon, a University of Utah student. "And if the administration keeps using this multipurpose tool, it's going to eventually break."
The first week Cannon was in the military, 9/11 occurred. Most recently, he served in Operation Iraqi Freedom, ending his service in 2005. And although he is not anti-military, he said his experience has helped him view the war from other soldiers' points of view.
"While some guys love their job out there, some feel frustration because they don't really have a choice to be there," Cannon said. "It's a terrible event, the war on terror, and to most of us, it doesn't make sense to fight terror with terror."
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