Brown University students Phil Kae and Sarah Kay march in Pawtucket Wednesday in a vigil marking the fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq.   Butch Adams/The Times

By VINAYA SAKSENA

PAWTUCKET — A march and vigil marking the anniversary of the war in Iraq was met with rain Wednesday evening, coating not only the participants, but also several large paintings of tragic scenes of that country that had been set up at the vigil site.

However, foul weather seemed not to faze the event’s participants. Many wore rain coats, while some brought umbrellas. Even the paintings displayed outside the city’s Visitor Center, the site of the vigil, had been coated for protection from rain before being set up there.
Dozens of people marched to the Visitor Center from Tolman High School and the Machines with Magnets art gallery, candles in hand, singing “We Shall Overcome” as they arrived at the center’s entrance.
Once there, some stopped to look at the paintings, which depicted the plight of Iraqi men, women and children caught in the tumult of the war that began five years ago yesterday.
Once inside, the vigil formally began with Sam Smith of the activist group MoveOn East offering a brief welcome before introducing two guests whose words would be the focal point of the event.
“This is one of those gatherings that I’m almost sad to have all of you gather here for,” Smith said. “I’m just glad that we could get together.”
The audience that filled a hallway inside the Visitor Center then heard from former Army Pfc. Scott Ewing, a Brown University student from Providence who joined the Army in September 2004.
He told of serving in the Iraqi city of Tal Afar, near Mosul. Ewing said his experience there convinced him that the mainstream media’s depiction of the United States’ military involvement in Iraq had given citizens a distorted impression of the conflict.
“The fact is that this isn’t a winnable war,” Ewing said. “And that’s because it’s not a war; it’s an occupation of a country. And occupations can’t be won. They can only be ended.”
Ewing said most of the soldiers he served with seemed to agree that the war in Iraq was unjustified by the time he was honorably discharged in early 2006.
He said he and his fellow soldiers were not involved in the type of neighborhood-repairing humanitarian efforts soldiers had been reported as undertaking in Iraq.
As for giving out sweets to Iraqi children, Ewing said soldiers were looking to create  protective human shields at least as much as they hoped to generate goodwill.
However, he pointed out that his experience in Iraq was confined to one part of the country, and therefore he could not say for sure that American soldiers throughout the country had experienced the war the same way.
“My experience may be the exception to the rule,” he said. “I think it’s important to be skeptical.”
Singer Joyce Katzberg led the audience in the singing of a song she wrote calling for an end to war, the refrain of which included the words: “Not another mother’s son, not another father’s daughter.”
Like Ewing, she critiqued the popular representation of the war, saying the mainstream media had skewed perceptions by bombarding citizens with a message that fighting terrorists “over there” was preferable to doing so at home.
As Katzberg sees it, the idea of a “war on terror” simply does not make sense.
“There is no such thing as a war on terror,” Katzberg said. “War is terror. It just has a bigger budget.”
Katzberg added that she did not wish to express hostility toward President Bush and his administration, suggesting that conflicts could be settled once people to learn to view their fellow human beings as family.
Ewing also spoke of the dangers of dehumanizing people, as he felt he had seen happen in Iraq, particularly via news coverage of the war.
“We’re (supposedly) killing Iraqis over there so that Americans won’t get killed here,” he said. “I think this is reflected in the fact that we know (how many) Americans have died, and we don’t know how many Iraqis have died. It is in and of itself reason enough to stop the occupation.”