This is the first in a series to discuss the designs for the future national memorials commemorating our major wars since Vietnam. While there should be memorials for all of our combat operations since they all have names and casualties, perhaps that is something that should be considered, much like the billboards that record the numbers of deaths per second from smoking. I will periodically return to this topic with reports on news of proposals and competitions.
In many US international military operations, the end of combat operations signal the end of a war, but in the war memorials are the focal points that can help a nation heal although we have yet to have a national Korean War memorial and only recently one for World War II, plus we have had a contentious memorial(s) for the Vietnam War, whose history has been conditioned by its cultural significance.
So what should our primary Southwest Asian war memorials be, where should they be sited, and what should they look like? This topic was broached in 2011.
Perhaps will there be two primary war memorials: one for Iraq (Bush I & II) and one for Afghanistan
Persian Gulf War(1990-1991) Iraq War (2003-2011) Part of the War on Terror
War in Afghanistan (2001-present (2014)) Part of the War on Terror and the
Conflict in Afghanistan
My first proposal is for the Bush I & II wars because surely they are connected: whether on or off the National Mall, it should use the same plaza dimensions of the toppled Saddam statue monument including the equipment used and the actual cropped picture "crowd" numbers, but overlaid by a WTC footprint shadow and including a monument to the Pakistani ISI, surely the most important player in all our recent Southwest Asian war adventures. Every 100 hours, a fireworks display.
The War in Afghanistan should be memorialized by an actual full size reproduction of Usama Bin Laden's walled compound in Pakistan filled with water cascading over all of the walls.
Let a Thousand Designs Bloom