The world war

Are you complaining about the furtive nature of the decision-making process? That's certainly how I perceive it. Maybe it's just that I'm in Virginia, but it seems like every time I turn around someone is touting a plan to Do Something with the site which may or may not be Bold, Courageous and Breathtaking, and then the next thing I hear everyone hates it because it's too tall, or not tall enough, or disturbs the footprints of the towers, etc.

Yeah, I prefer the Vietnam memorial. I think the thing that disturbs me the most about it is how it substitutes one star in the center for every 100 American dead.



I understand that copying the Vietnam memorial and carving every single name of the dead is impractical. But how much could it possibly have cost to get 400,000 bronze stars? It bothers me every time I look at it. The fact that carved above those stars is the legend "Here We Mark the Price of Freedom" only makes it worse. I suppose "Here We Mark the Price of Freedom Divided by One Hundred" doesn't have quite the same ring.

The embarrassing thing about World War I memorials is that, naturally, they don't read "To the Soldiers of the First World War." No, why on earth would we ever do that again? And seeing a memorial with "To the Soldiers of the World War" hurts a little inside, I feel.

Based solely on my anecdotal experience with Civil War memorials, it seems possible to be triumphalist without being crass: viz., a place we should all be familiar with:



And the 1st Minnesota's memorial at Gettysburg: