Dictatorships can be disintegrated

October 27, 2010
By A. Gaffar Peang-Meth
PACIFIC DAILY NEWS

I like the national capital's Korean War memorial that honors America's "sons and daughters who answered the call to defend a country they never knew and a people they never met." Life-size sculptures of American soldiers, with World War II helmets and winter ponchos, carry rifles and equipment of the "old" U.S. Army, their postures and faces expressive of the danger all around them, a platoon fixed in time on a plot of grass on the National Mall.

Freedom isn't free

(Photo: Dr. A. Gaffar Peang-Meth)

With my old Pentax -- state of the art at the time -- I clicked photos of the sculptures and the adjacent pool that reflected the Stars and Stripes and visitors of different races ... until I reached a wall of lovely marble with four chiseled words: "Freedom is not free." I stopped, photographed the words, sat, looked and photographed again.

A mix of emotion rushed through me --sad and happy, anxious.
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