Disir
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On my first deployment to Iraq, in 2004, our infantry battalion of several hundred Marines lost 21 killed in action. Immediately, we erected our own modest memorials: An ever-expanding roster of the photographs of the fallen hung outside our battalion headquarters in Fallujah; many of us wrote the names of lost friends in black marker on the inside of our body armor, to keep them close; eventually, firebases were dedicated in their honor. The impulse to memorialize was powerful. We did it for them, but also for ourselves. A promise to remember was also a promise that if we, too, were killed, we would not be forgotten.
It has been 17 years since the attacks of September 11, and the wars we’ve been fighting since then haven’t yet ended. Already, though, in 2017, Congress passed the Global War on Terrorism War Memorial Act, which authorized the construction of a monument on the National Mall. In order to pass it, Congress had to exempt the memorial from a requirement that prohibits erecting such monuments until ten years after a war’s conclusion. Supporters argued that waiting wasn’t a reasonable option: Before too long, the war’s earliest combatants might not be around to witness the dedication, and besides, there’s no telling if and when these wars will finally conclude. Which, of course, only highlights the challenges—even the paradox—of memorializing an ongoing war that is now our nation’s longest overseas conflict.
Communities around the country have already erected their own memorials, approximately 130 across the 50 states as of this writing. Both privately and publicly funded, they are varied in size and design, placed in front of high schools, in public parks, at colleges and universities. With the future national monument in mind, this past Memorial Day weekend I set out to visit a few of them, to see whether they might shed some light on how to memorialize wars that haven’t ended, and might never.
Read more: How Should We Memorialize Those Lost in the War on Terror? | History | Smithsonian
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Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on Twitter
It's a good article. The pictures are big so it appears lengthy.
It has been 17 years since the attacks of September 11, and the wars we’ve been fighting since then haven’t yet ended. Already, though, in 2017, Congress passed the Global War on Terrorism War Memorial Act, which authorized the construction of a monument on the National Mall. In order to pass it, Congress had to exempt the memorial from a requirement that prohibits erecting such monuments until ten years after a war’s conclusion. Supporters argued that waiting wasn’t a reasonable option: Before too long, the war’s earliest combatants might not be around to witness the dedication, and besides, there’s no telling if and when these wars will finally conclude. Which, of course, only highlights the challenges—even the paradox—of memorializing an ongoing war that is now our nation’s longest overseas conflict.
Communities around the country have already erected their own memorials, approximately 130 across the 50 states as of this writing. Both privately and publicly funded, they are varied in size and design, placed in front of high schools, in public parks, at colleges and universities. With the future national monument in mind, this past Memorial Day weekend I set out to visit a few of them, to see whether they might shed some light on how to memorialize wars that haven’t ended, and might never.
Read more: How Should We Memorialize Those Lost in the War on Terror? | History | Smithsonian
Give the gift of Smithsonian magazine for only $12! Give the gift of Smithsonian
Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on Twitter
It's a good article. The pictures are big so it appears lengthy.
