Berezivka is quite a small town. This memorial with its outline of Afghanistan reminds me of the Island of Tears in Minsk. When Brzezinski told Carter „We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam“ he was saying the US now had the opportunity to give innumerable small farming communities in Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia memorials to the small town’s dead, tombstones with images which will forever pose the question of grieving parents and spouses: „Why?“
