How will this war be memorialized?
This US war in and against Iraq was lost a long time ago. There remain many large political questions regarding the manner, timing, and consequences of the US exit. But on this weekend, when Americans participate in their annual commemoration of the fallen of former wars, I wonder what form the future memorialization of this war will take-- both here and in Iraq.
Wars, and those who have lost their lives in them, can be memorialized in many different ways (or not at all.) In the United States, memorials to wars and warfighters past run the gamut from the bronzed triumphalism of the horse-riding generals who prance atop the traffic circles in Washington DC to the stark gash of Maya Lin's Vietnam War Memorial. Somewhere close to Lin's mood (but less shocking) is the display in another of my favorite war memorials, the one at Appomatox Court House, the place where Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered his secessionist "Army of Northern Virginia" to the federal general Ulysses Grant, thus marking the end of any hope for victory of the slaveholding southern secessionists.
The Appomattox museum is in a rural area of Virginia around four hours' drive south of DC. It is sited in a collection of small, old buildings in a pastoral setting. The particular display that I like is a large room that presents many photos of the war-dead. I guess the US Civil War was fought near the dawn of the age of photography, and the families of many of the young men going off to war from North or South were able to have photographs of their loved ones made, to remember them by, before they shipped out to battle. (Okay, it seems to have been almost solely the officers who did that. I guess photography was still expensive in those days.)
The casualty rates in the war were truly appalling. Photography and the reloadable musket may have made their way onto the scene, but antibiotics and the practice of antiseptic doctoring certainly had not. A huge proportion of those men who set off never came home again. Relatively lucky were the families who at least had a treasured daguerrotype of the loved one, made before he left...
So in this room in the museum today, they have lined the walls with a few hundred of these photographs. Each one is mounted on a matte made in the color of the side he fought for: blue, or grey. And the matted photos have been put up on the walls in a checkerboard design: blue next to grey next to blue next to grey... The room commemorates them all, equally. Look up close and you see the stiff images of those men, mostly young men trying to look stern and brave, like warriors. Look from a distance and you see a sea of men all cut off in the bloom of their manhood, and their political affiliations don't matter at all.
The "message", if you like, of that display is one of national reconciliation and national unity, and it is very effectively and movingly conveyed. (This mood is lost completely if you click through this webpage maintained by the museum, where you click on two different flags to see the slideshows of the dead from each of the separate sides...)
However, what we need with respect to the US-Iraq war is probably not at this stage the projection of any message of "unity" or even "friendship". Friendship between the two countries may, or may not, come. At some point. But when one country's army is still occupying another country it seems dishonest to speak of that relationship as having anything to do with "friendship". Surely the message that we in the US anti-war, anti-occupation movement should seek to have our memorial project instead is a strong message of reproach to our government and to those individuals within it who dragged our country-- and also with far, far worse consequences, Iraq-- into this horrific war.
As well as a message of comfort, remembering, and compassion to all those who lost loved ones or were wounded in this war.
Reproach and remembering are, of course, the two main messages of Maya Lin's beautiful Vietnam War memorial. But reproach is also a strong element in another U.S. memorial from the Civil War era: Arlington National Cemetery .
Arlington National Cemetery was established right on the grounds of Gen.Robert E. Lee's family home, on the banks of the Potomac River looking straight across at Washington DC. Lee, who had been a general in the Union Army before the Civil War, was probably the highest ranking military man to defect to the Confederacy. (His wife was also the grand-daughter of George and Martha Washington.) After Lee's defection, the Union Army sent troops to occupy his homealong with all its extensive pastures and other landholdings. In 1864, the US government expropriated the land from the Lee family. By that time the dead from the war were becoming very numerous. The Union generals transformed much of the Lee land into a vast war cemetery, burying the dead right up to the edge of the family home of the man they blamed most for the prolongation of the rebellion and the terrible, continuing toll of the fighting.
So here's my plan. Maybe the best reproach for this present war would be for the next US administration to acquire land right up to the door of George W. Bush's family home on Prairie Chapel Road, in Crawford, Texas, and to establish there a large and impressive monument of reproach, mourning, and remembrance. Or we could have two such monuments: one in Crawford, and one in St. Michaels, Maryland, that could take in and engulf the homes there of both Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.
Of course, Cindy Sheehan and the folks at Camp Casey in Crawford did a pretty good job last year, in starting to mount a reproach-and-remembrance memorial there that would surely have caught George Bush's eye whenever he drove along Prairie Chapel Road to his "ranch". (Look at the second photo here, in particular.)
They used crosses... Which is okay as far as it goes, though perhaps a little too theologically specific for the great public monument I envision. I found the empty boots of the "Eyes Wide Open" exhibition very moving. Maybe something could be done along those lines, instead?
But that's for later.
Cindy and her friends are resourceful and dedicated. But they are still just a bunch of under-resourced individuals. What we need to do, as a citizenry, is to get our whole national government into the right frame of mind regarding the war in Iraq. That means, first and foremost, electing a government that will undertake a troop pullout from Iraq that is speedy, total, and generous. But it also means, in the years ahead, following that great group of Vietnam-war veterans who managed to persuade Congress to build a memorial to their war that was impressive, serious, and non-triumphalistic. They got Congress to give them a great location for their memorial, too.
Probably, on second thoughts, the future Iraq war memorial should be located on the National Mall in Washington DC. As near to the White House-- or to the Pentagon-- as possible, I say.
But there could still also be additional memorials in Crawford, Texas, and St. Michaels, Maryland. Just like Robert E. Lee, Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld should never be allowed to forget the extent of the losses that their decision to launch this war has inflicted on the world.
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