A Memorial Too Far

Riding into work today, I saw the granite monstrosity that will be the National World War II Memorial (here are some pictures). The decision to put this memorial in the center of the mall rather than on the side of the mall basically boiled down to a decision that World War II more like the Civil War and the Revolutionary War, than like Korea and Vietnam. The WWII monument has joined the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial as only the third monument on the mall, while the Korea and Vietnam memorials are off to the side. See this map for details.

I'm not sure this a decision I agree with. I don't think WWII really defined our nation like the Civil War and the Revolutionary War did. We were certainly the good guys in WWII, and making the world safe for democracy is a great accomplishment, but the existence of our nation was simply not at stake like it was in the Revolutianry and Civil Wars. The WWII memorial is up there, I think, because we've created a mythology about WWII based on three things: Hitler's genocide is the example of evil today - so we were moral; we tried to stay out of the war until Pearl Harbor - which makes the pacificts happy; and we won - which makes everyone happy. Well, almost everyone. I suspect these folks are disappointed.

But, for now, for all but the crackpots, these beliefs combine to make WWII a "good war," and a symbol equal to the Civil and Revolutionary Wars, but I doubt it'll stay that way. At some point, we'll start to question the mythology of WWII. If Bush's aggressive pre-emption doctrine becomes widely accepted, for example, we may begin to doubt whether waiting until Pearl Harbor was smart, or even moral. We may have saved the lives of millions of Jews by acting earlier. If that happens, or if something else changes, the WWII monument will look a bit out of place. Here's my prediction: Those of us my age will, during a long shuffle down the mall in our autum years, have a hard time explaining to our grandchildren why WWII was such a big deal.
- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 10:12 PM