How should America memorialize the war in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Posted at 5:00 AM on May 31, 2010
by Eric Ringham
(7 Comments)
Filed under: Culture, International affairs
Visitors to Washington can see a variety of war memorials, covering conflicts of varying size and duration. Today's Question: How should America memorialize the war in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Comments (7)
A memorial should touch on the community of soldiers who sacrificed; it should capture the tragedy as much as the bravery.
They died so we could.... what? Throw teabags at our elected officials with impunity? Cheat one another in business? Measure our "net worth" by the dollar value of all the stuff with our name on it, instead of by what we contribute to society? Foul the oceans so we can have cheap oil? Eat & drink too much on the holiday we celebrate in their honor? Send more of them into another useless war a decade or two from now? We honor their memory best when we use well the freedom they fought for, learn from the mistakes our politicians made that led to their ultimate sacrifice, and strive to do better in the future. Above all, we should resolve never again to elect a pair of chicken-hawks as president and VP.
Iraq - NEVER forget and never go into pre-emptive war again! Is there a memorial that can do that? Before we build statues, we need to pay the medical costs and benefits we owe these families and live up to our promises. Acknowledging the sacrifices of our military men and women two days per year is not enough. The nearly daily tributes to our fallen servicepeople on The Nightly News Hour is a start.
Afghanistan - Instead of tearing it down and breaking it into fighting factions, we need to invest in the country and get the people to school and to work. Leaving Afghanistan with a viable economy would honor the sacrifice of our men and women. The average life span of an Afghani at birth is 43.6 years. 78 % do not have an improved water source. The Human Poverty Index (HPI-1) ranked Afghanistan as "135th among 135 countries for which the index has been calculated. The HPI - 1 measures severe deprivation in health by the proportion of people who are not expected to survive to age 40." 39% of children under age 5 are underwieght. How can they vote and form a successful democracy when the adult literacy rate of those age 15 and above is 28%? Human Development Reports (HDR) - United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) http://hdrstats.undp.org/en/countries/country_fact_sheets/cty_fs_AFG.html
These human beings are not fighting against us, they are fighting for their lives.
As the daughter of a Viet Nam veteran, I'd like to see us honor and memorialize our service men and women daily by educating ourselves as much as possible about their sacrifices, and the countries and missions we are sending them into. Then we share that information with everyone we can. We can truly honor our men and women when we add educated civic actions and voices to the policies that will send them into harm's way. Our actions and inactions speak louder than our biannual tears.
My only grandson is currently serving with the U.S. Army in Afghanistan (his second time there, and he was previously in Iraq.)
His father, my late son, is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
I believe I'm well qualified to state my opinion: The Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington should remain as the official monument to U.S. servicepersons from ALL wars. I believe the apparent trend toward establishing a separate "official" memorial for each war is
a measure of how militaristic our civil society has become. Enough, already. We need no further war memorials in our nation's capital.
In the past tense. And as soon as possible.
And while it is indeed appropriate to honor those who have died in the service of the country, we should work just as hard, if not harder, to honor those who have suffered grievous injury in combat.
Their is as great a sacrifice -- now having to put up with injuries that would have been fatal in earlier wars, but which will impact their lives severely every single day of the rest of their lives. Lives not spent doing the ordinary things the rest of us get to do.
No one can say they did not sacrifice their life for their country. We can be thankful that modern medicine offered them a new chance at life. But the sacrifice has indeed been made.
We cannot let them suffer at the hands of unfeeling bureaucracy.
The best war memorial that I can think of is a Veteran's Administration that serves the needs of the veterans first, above all other considerations.
I second Mr. Sorensen's idea, only I'd add on the entrance side a few ranks of soldiers cleanly lined up in formation, as if they're preparing to leave, then on the exit side a few soldiers maimed, in a wheel chair, perhaps in a bed with IVs, then some benches where people may sit alongside human sized replicas of Middle Eastern people (old and young), an American mother looking at a picture of her dead daughter (only where the daughter's image would be there might be a mirror at an angle where the person sitting next to the replica could see their own image; and lastly a replica of a young gay man looking at a picture of another young man. Lastly compose a script written in English and Arabic with an insightful script, perhaps 'What price of War?"
The most appropriate and disturbing war memorial I have ever seen is at Dachau. It's essentially a a mangled pile of bodies in Bronze. For Afghanistan and Iraq, perhaps bodies of civilians, military personnel, an exploded military transport vehicle and the shell of an exploded vehicle could be cast in Bronze surrounding a circular wall with the names of soldiers engraved. Visitors would have to walk on paths leading in from the exterior to the center, passing mangled bronze statues to get to the center.
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