Matthew Bean

On my way to work on Friday June 8th, I was driving through Pembroke Center where the funeral preparations were being made for a Pembroke man who lost his life in Iraq. His name is (not in the past tense) Matthew (Matty) Bean.

It was a beautiful morning. Men, women, and children were gathering to pay their respect. Yellow ribbons and the “Red, White, and Blue” were everywhere. With yellow “Road Closed” easels ready to be put in place, and some street access denied by police

However, for me, it was like Bush and Cheney had poured salt into my already open wound inflicted by the Iraq War. How dare they kill a young man like Matty Bean, and continue to conduct their lives as if nothing has happened -- those “SOB’s!” For, in fact, they are killing men, like Matty, and women to satisfy their own personal ideology. Continuing this immoral war even though it is has failed. IT IS BUSH’S AND CHENEY’S WAR!

How can we sit back and watch Soap Operas, American Idol, Dancing with the Stars, celebrate in every imaginable way, and refuse to watch the News because it’s always about Iraq and violence, while at the same time standing by and doing absolutely nothing.

So, we are complicit in Matthew’s death, also. Most Americans promoted the war with Iraq, and many now are promoting military action against Iran, and only are against the Iraq War because we are not winning; not because young men and women are dying on our behalf.

Matthew was awarded the Purple Heart, the Bronze Star and an Army Commendation Medal. Not much of a replacement for a man’s future, for taking all his possessions. Totally meaningless; they treat us like children presenting our soldiers or their families with pretty ribbons, and shiny, glistening medals; imbuing Americans with the “pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war!".

Matthew Bean is a typical of the young men we are sending into harm’s way.

FOR WHAT?! WHAT A LOSS!

From the Pembroke Mariner & Reporter

Photo by Craig Goedecke
Matthew Bean’s casket, draped in the Stars and Stripes, is tended to by members of the Army’s 10th Mountain Division.

Army Pfc. Matthew Bean, 22, a 2003 graduate of Silver Lake Regional High School, was shot by a sniper on May 19 while searching for three missing soldiers in the Sunni Triangle region of Iraq. He was taken off life support at Bethesda Naval Hospital on May 31, when it became clear that he would not recover from his injury.

This is Matthew (Matty) Bean, the face behind that flag.