Desecration?

Posted at 5:03 PM on June 15, 2009 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Crime and Justice

Thousands gathered at the Vietnam Memorial on the grounds of the State Capitol on Saturday for Minnesota Honors Vietnam Era Veterans. The idea was to give Vietnam vets the return they didn't get in the '60s and '70s.

But no one was around today (or perhaps, Sunday) when people scrawled graffiti over a page in a book used to find the names of Minnesotans who died in Vietnam on the memorial. Some of it was against the war in Iraq, some was religious proselytizing, some was just an obscenity or two.

Comments (2)

Desecration, no. painful scars left unhealed, the fact that we (as a nation) didn't learn what should've been learned in Vietnam, with no venue to express the anger and frustration of being involved in another unpopular war. At least we are trying to catch up on honoring those who served the country and came home to rejection.

Posted by Minn Whaler | June 15, 2009 6:07 PM

//... with no venue to express the anger and frustration ...

Frustrated anger, that requires social acceptance: yes.

Appropriate venue? likely not.

Scrawling obscenities (or religion) in this location is not a useful way to come to terms with the failure of the U.S. to deal with the Vietnam War.

If I was looking for my father's name here, it would anger me to wade through this additional graffiti for the simple matter of finding the only remaining memorial for him. [it's not, it's on speed-dial, yet ... there but for the grace of god go I]

Posted by Elizabeth T | June 15, 2009 11:14 PM

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