Room on the hill ran out after 4,000 crosses. For years, the Lafayette hillside memorial for Americans soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan has marked new deaths with a number on a sign. On Monday, the sign counted 6,702 war dead.
Ten years after the war in Iraq started, and seven years after the memorial's organizers first started planting crosses, it's not clear when the memorial will come down, according to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle.
The idea was to leave the crosses standing until the wars were over and American soldiers came home. While the war in Iraq is officially over and U.S. troops are slated to leave Afghanistan in 2014, the United States will keep weapons and soldiers in both countries for years to come.
"Leaving it all up until the soldiers all come back was the commitment, but it's hard now to imagine when that could be, because it looks like we'll have people over there for a long time," Jeff Heaton, the memorial's chief creator, told the Chron. "We'll just have to see as 2014 gets closer."
What do you think? Is it time for the memorial to come down, or should it be made permanent in some way?
