Robert C. Koehler: Stale Glory

[marmar]

from CommonWonders:


Stale Glory
I'd be surprised if the next war were announced in the shadow of the Wall

By ROBERT C. KOEHLER
Tribune Media Services

February 22, 2007


“I thought about what death is, what a loss is. A sharp pain that lessens with time, but can never quite heal over. A scar.” — Maya Lin, speaking of her initial vision of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall

The most frequently visited and heart-tearing monument in Washington D.C. is nearing its 25th birthday, its place at the core of American life growing stronger with each passing year. This fact belies the early critics, who called it communist- (or Jane Fonda)-inspired, a black gash of shame, a public urinal, and howled in outrage that it was designed by . . . well, an Asian-American woman (but of course the term many people used was left over from the war, and much uglier).

More importantly, however, the Wall, which was meant to heal a national wound, not glorify a military adventure, signaled — as the critics instinctively understood — a new public attitude toward war, or perhaps more accurately, a public manifestation, at long last, of an ancient yearning for peace.

What the critics (living in a two-dimensional, us-versus-them world) failed utterly to grasp, however — and which has special bearing today as Democrats and Republicans alike grope for policy coherence that extricates us from the Bush administration’s disastrous war to promote terror — is that the Wall is non-ideological, or rather transcends ideology. It’s simply two sunken triangular wedges of black granite and 58,195 names.

These names are not symbols. They’re not abstractions. As Robert Frost famously observed, “Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak.” Accordingly, the names are not cheapened with any sentiment, any “glorification,” whatsoever. The result is something extraordinary. ...(more)

The complete article is at: http://commonwonders.com/

[mopinko]

1. none of the names on that wall are anyone that i knew, but

just reading that story makes me cry. when you stand in front of it, it overwhelms you. it is a true masterpiece.
we should sentence bush and cheney to the stocks right there in front of that wall. leave them there until they have cried 58,000 tears. or until they die, whichever comes first.