Candles were out of the question. The wind was strong enough to use the three ten-foot-tall lists as sails. So we put them flat on the ground, with enough space around them so people could walk between, and see all the names.

Eric welcomed everyone, and waited for Barber's Adagio for Strings to finish before speaking.

In the record album 2000 and One Years with Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner, Mel recalls the very first national anthem: "Let them all go to hell, except cave seventeen!

I think Mel Brooks may have been right. How far have we come since then, and what is patriotism, really?

As a child, I thought patriotism was something only Americans could have. We had this great song, and the pledge that everybody said together, and this beautiful flag. Sure, other countries had flags and songs, maybe even pledges too, but ours were so obviously the best.

My parents had driven across the country, route 66 one way, and a long and winding northern route that doesn't even exist today, so I knew our country was beautiful. It was the best.

I think every child must feel that. And when they become young men and women, they want to give something back, to show their pride and love, to help protect and make their country even better. They want to show that they are grateful, and worthy. I think this happens in every country, in every land, to all children.

At sixty-four I find that I think of them all as children: eager, believing, wanting so much to protect what they love, whether it is America, Iraq, or cave seventeen. For what land is not wonderful in its own way? The deserts. The mountains. The plains. The great cities and the small towns. The villages and isolated farms. They are all wonderful.

The only land that is terrible, hateful, truly desolate, is land that has been spoiled by war. As hard and difficult a place as Afghanistan is, it has beautiful mountains and valleys - it is the towns and villages that have been ravaged by bombs and artillary and rockets from years of war.

Iraq and Iran are desert lands - yet these people loved their land until war destroyed it and tens of thousands died defending their towns and villages, and war literally laid waste to their fields. Who caused these wars? Who helped each side against the other, and when that was no longer possible, who attacked them directly and overthrew their governments? We did. We did this in Afghanistan, where we created Al Qaeda and trained bin Laden. We did this in Iran where we overthrew Mossadegh and replaced him with a tyrant Shah. We did this in Iraq, where Hussein was our puppet, and we gave him the weapons of mass destruction specifically to use on the Kurds and Iranians. And then we overthrew Hussein and let Baghdad, a city ten times older than the United States, we let Baghdad burn.

Is it any wonder that there are bin Ladins and Husseins and Ayatollahs who hate us? Is it any wonder that the children, who have seen their parents and siblings killed by soldiers in our uniforms, who have seen their beautiful cities and villages and farms, the very land itself, ground down and made barren by our bombs - is it any wonder that they would prefer that we go away now, and leave them alone? Is it any surprize that some would even try to strike back at us?

Must our county, our empire, act this way? As a child in school I was taught all of the ideals of America, and learned not just how a bill becomes a law, but why the Bill of Rights was a great and wonderful thing. It was a terrible revelation to find that America did not live up to the ideals it taught its children.

I think we can change. I think we can make our country match the promise of freedom and democracy that it holds out to the rest of the world. The powerful have always protected their own interests at the cost of the little people. The whole force of democracy and the concept of universal human rights is directed towards tempering the strength of the powerful. Our oldest stories tell of King Arthur, who believed that might should always serve the right, the true; and that there is justice in a Robin Hood who redistributes just enough wealth to keep society whole.

Today, our King Arthurs and Robin Hoods are organisations like the U.N., the World Social Forum, the International Criminal Court: no matter how imperfect they are in practice, they are founded and operate on the principle that all lands are beautiful and that all children should be proud to be citizens in every country.

So yes, we honor the children who so love their country that they offer their lives. We honor them even when that country is not our own. And we condemn those leaders of any country who would break faith with these children, and use their blood, casually, carelessly, for their own ends.

We will always love our country, but its symbols are now associated with the worst that has been done in our name, as well as the best of our ideals. Until we can be proud of our own flag again, without qualification, there is another flag that we can still pledge our aliegence to. It stands for no nation. It shows no stars and stripes, but only a picture of our cloud-covered planet. It belongs to all of us. We can honor it by recognizing the sacrifices that these children, these young men and women, have made, and by doing our best to see that some day no child will have to take another's life, or offer their own, ever again.

Then we read the names of the seventy-six Coalition soldiers who lost their lives since we last gathered, and we remembered that many more Iraqi non-combatant civilians had also lost their lives this month. After a few moments, we said our goodbyes until next month.