Thursday, September 24, 2009

War Memorial Charity for the Civilian Dead

The idea here is to create a charity to put up war memorials for the civilian dead of any war any time. This serves several purposes. Firstly, to help grieving communities feel like they have some closure for their deceased loved ones. This will help prevent similar outbreaks over old grievances. It also serves as a record and reminder for future generations of how devastating war is to their friends and family, how many people are no longer in their world.
It also gives surviving soldiers a chance to bury their dead, which often haunt them for years after the conflict is over. During wars people (particularly soldiers) do and see things (like civilians maimed, tortured, and killed) that can haunt them almost timelessly, leading to suicide, murderous rampages, night horrors, flashbacks, abuse of their own, and other nightmarish side effects. If they can contribute towards a decent memorial for the civilian dead it may ease their pain somewhat. It may even occasionally unify old enemies in a more worthy cause.
Of course, people who would want to contribute to such a charity would be the loved ones of the dead, as well as concerned citizens, peace mongers, the U.N. and anybody who was disturbed by the experience.
The "any war anytime" aspect is that the charity is that they put memorials up wherever a war has occurred regardless of who won and who was on which side. The only requirement to get on the listing of the memorial is that the civilian died due to wartime activity. I also think that it could be placed near war memorials of soldiers of the war, although war mongers might not like that because it will inevitably show that far more civilians died then soldiers.

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