How Do You Memorialize The Fallen In A War Without End?
How Do You Memorialize The Fallen In A War Without End? by Astead W. Herndon – Boston Globe
The National Mall is chock-full of monuments to America’s war dead: the fountains and pools of the World War II Memorial, the relentless, black wedge of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the haunting statuary of the Korean War Memorial.
Yet to be memorialized, however, are the estimated 7,000 men and women who have died in the longest conflict in the country’s history. It’s a war that began on 9/11, has shifted across multiple countries including Iraq and Afghanistan, has often been conducted under a cloak of secrecy, and still has no foreseeable end – even after 16 years of conflict.
But a fresh effort to honor the fallen veterans of what has become known as the Global War on Terrorism is underway, in the form of bipartisan legislation cosponsored by two Marines-turned-legislators, Representative Seth Moulton, a Salem Democrat, and Representative Mike Gallagher, a Wisconsin Republican. The bill would waive a 1986 law that says a federal memorial cannot be built on the Mall until 10 years after a war’s end, which has frustrated activists and relatives of those lost to this war who say the waiting period is archaic and arbitrary.
“This war is forgotten,” said Ryan Manion, whose brother, First Lieutenant Travis Manion of Pennsylvania, was killed in Iraq in 2007. “Nothing would bring me more comfort . . . than to be able to stand in front of a national monument that honors my brother and all of these other brave men and women.”
The war on terror is different from any before it, with its prolonged counterinsurgency operations, nighttime commando raids, and strikes by combat aircraft and drones in distant countries. Moulton and his supporters say a one-time special exception from the 1986 statute is necessary — and they appear to have a powerful ally in new Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. Zinke’s department recently wrote a letter to Congress in support of the Global War on Terrorism Memorial and Moulton’s legislation, which breathes new life into the project…
