Michael McConnell thinks Americans don't understand the true cost of the conflict in Iraq.
"For most Americans, the war looks like a video game rather than the grim reality that it is," said McConnell, a regional director for the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker group that promotes peace.
McConnell devised an exhibit, "Eyes Wide Open: The Human Cost of War," to fight American indifference. The traveling display features one pair of combat boots for every American soldier killed in Iraq. A smaller exhibit commemorates the war's 350 National Guard casualties.
The National Guard display is coming to Fargo this weekend.
It will be showing from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday and from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday at the Nativity School Gymnasium, 1825 11th St. S.
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"We feel it is very appropriate to have at a Catholic parish because reverence for life is at the core of our faith," said Sister Maris Stella Korb, director of the Presentation Sisters' Peace and Justice Office.
"We're memorializing the troops and also the civilians who have been victims in this war," Korb said.
Each pair of combat boots includes the name, rank, age and home state of the deceased soldiers.
Besides boots, about 50 pair of shoes will be displayed to represent Iraqi civilians who have been killed in the conflict, estimated in the tens of thousands.
At the top of each hour, names of North Dakota soldiers who have died in Iraq or Afghanistan will be read aloud. Periodically, music will be played and poetry read.
The exhibit transcends politics, Korb said.
But Paddy McLaughlin, director of the Center for Peace in Fargo, an event co-sponsor, said the message sent is implicitly anti-war.
"It says that war is not the answer," she said. "War does not affirm life, it affirms death."
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McDonnell said organizers hope people who see the display can begin to treat soldiers' deaths as individual tragedies, not merely statistics.
"When you see the boots you can imagine the people that should be here but are not," McConnell said from his Chicago office.
Readers can reach Forum reporter Bryce Haugen at (701) 235-7311
