As the War in Iraq enters its fifth year with casualties nearing 4,000, the American public is being slowly disenchanted with a battle fought so far from home.
Code Pink Women for Peace, a national group with a chapter in Buffalo, wages their own battle everyday, protesting the war they find to be unjustified and the cause of so much tragedy.
"No one else seems to be doing it," said Sue Phibbs, the leader of the Buffalo chapter of Code Pink. "Despite 70 percent of Americans being opposed to the occupation, the anti-war sentiment and the tragedy of lost lives get very little media coverage."
According to Phibbs, holding demonstrations and traveling around Buffalo creating awareness and fighting for an end to the war are just some of the things Code Pink does during their bi-monthly meetings held on Elmwood Ave. and in Lancaster.
Phibbs said that getting their voice heard by the elected officials is an important part of trying to stop a war that Code Pink feels is causing more harm than good. She hopes to get more people to join the movement, and subsequently end the war.
Taylor Drozenski, a freshman pre-med major, thinks that it is hard to care about the war when none of her family or friends are participating in it. According to Drozenski, it's not that she doesn't care about the soldiers going overseas, but the lack of personal affect makes it hard to side with the anti or pro-war movements.
"We want to get the message out that there is [an] organized opposition to the war and war in general," Phibbs said. "With thousands of Americans injured and dead and the number of Iraqis reaching into the hundreds of thousands, almost millions, we need to create awareness about what is going on."
According to Phibbs the tragedy of the Iraq War isn't limited to the death and injury of thousands of American and Iraqi soldiers. Many American and Iraqi women have lost their lives in the war, or have been directly impacted by the conflict.
A poll by Women for Women International showed that 91.8 percent of women polled say that violence against women is increasing in Iraq. It also shows that 74.5 percent of women avoid leaving their homes and 63.2 percent don't send their children to school anymore because of the increased violence.
"Statistics show that the tragedy does not end with just soldier causalities," Phibbs said. "Rather, the suffering continues and the impact on women is more than we realize."
Ajla Glavasevic, a freshmen business major, believes this is a war the US shouldn't be prolonging.
"I don't support the war because it is not beneficial to our economy and does not help our people or theirs," Glavasevic said.
Other students like Michael Sullivan, a freshman business major, believe that violence isn't the answer, and that the War in Iraq isn't ours to fight. According to Sullivan, the body count of the war is disproportional to the amount of good that is being done.
Code Pink, a play on Bush's color-coded terrorist alert system, is based on compassion and a call for women and men to fight for peace, according to Code Pink's mission statement.
Megan Alo, a freshman biomedical science major, and Elizabeth Persaud, a freshman early childhood education major, believe that America is in Iraq for all the wrong reasons and do not support the war.
"It is not any of our business to change what is going on in other parts of the world," Alo said. "We're hurting the Iraqi people and creating animosity towards Muslims in the US."
According to Persaud, although she doesn't support the war, she does support the troops since so many of her friends are overseas fighting. Persaud believes that Bush had no right to send troops into Iraq in the first place.
"We hope to make demonstrations like this one a regular event with turnout growing." Phibbs said. "Folks need to know that we're out here and they can join us. There is organized opposition to this war out there."
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
