Extend the "WALL" or create a new one?

[KafirChobee]

The "WALL", or place of healing was created (or explained by its sellers) to bring the opposing poles together and honor the dead of Vietnam. I have supported it since irs inseption, but no more. I quit this year when they told me that by not supporting the war in Iraq ..... I wasn't supporting America. Which was something of a suprise to me.

Thing is the fngs controlling it (the wall... & their GOP'ers), and some of the old ones are now using it as a patriotic theme.

The WALL was suppose to be a reminder of an American blunder, and the heroism of Americans willing to sacrifice their lives in a misguided (political) endevour. It was suppose to heal the wounds of all of us - those that supported it and those that opposed it. Now, its a propagand point of interest.

I have a number of friends on that wall, and for the grace of Oden would be on it myself. Sullying it abhores me, but it is what is being done.

Do we create a new monument for "Iraqi Freedom". or do we just make an extention to the WALL? Me? I go with an extention - after all, why make a point of big deal about losing two unnecessary military involvements?

What pisses me off is that "the wall" has become a political tool. Shame on those that have done it, and shame on those that believe we could ever have won either conflict - they are either insain or overwhelmed with their patriotic furvor (to me, they are just plain gullible)
:wall:

Memorial. WWI, a few - the Unknown Soldier in DC, and a few plaques scattered in HSs'. WWII - every town, every county, every state, and 60 years later one in DC. Korea - plant a couple of statues of miserable GIs and lets forget that 54,000 GI's died and the politicians forgot how to allow diplomacy for 50 years.

Call this a rant, but don't dismiss it. Unless you can name atleast five men already on the wall - or one in the present BS.

Think! Do we create a new WALL? Or, can we save money and just extend the old "healing one"?

edit: corrected WWII.

[Odin]

The "WALL", or place of healing was created (or explained by its sellers) to bring the opposing poles together and honor the dead of Vietnam. I have supported it since irs inseption, but no more. I quit this year when they told me that by not supporting the war in Iraq ..... I wasn't supporting America. Which was something of a suprise to me.

Thing is the fngs controlling it (the wall... & their GOP'ers), and some of the old ones are now using it as a patriotic theme.

The WALL was suppose to be a reminder of an American blunder, and the heroism of Americans willing to sacrifice their lives in a misguided (political) endevour. It was suppose to heal the wounds of all of us - those that supported it and those that opposed it. Now, its a propagand point of interest.

I have a number of friends on that wall, and for the grace of Oden would be on it myself. Sullying it abhores me, but it is what is being done.

Do we create a new monument for "Iraqi Freedom". or do we just make an extention to the WALL? Me? I go with an extention - after all, why make a point of big deal about losing two unnecessary military involvements?

What pisses me off is that "the wall" has become a political tool. Shame on those that have done it, and shame on those that believe we could ever have won either conflict - they are either insain or overwhelmed with their patriotic furvor (to me, they are just plain gullible)
:wall:

Memorial. WWI, a few - the Unknown Soldier in DC, and a few plaques scattered in HSs'. WWI - every town, every county, every state, and 60 years later one in DC. Korea - plant a couple of statues of miserable GIs and lets forget that 54,000 GI's died and the politicians forgot how to allow diplomacy for 50 years.

Call this a rant, but don't dismiss it. Unless you can name atleast five men already on the wall - or one in the present BS.

Think! Do we create a new WALL? Or, can we save money and just extend the old "healing one"?

Before this devolves into a dossier of what is wrong with american society let me say that memorials shouldnt be used as political tools.

You say a lot in your thread so I will answer a question that is important to me:
Do we create a new monument for "Iraqi Freedom". yes we create a seperate memorial, whether you agree with the war or not those who gave thier lives to fight in it deserve a memorial that is exclusive to itself.

Vietnam was a whole different era and the circumstances were far more dynamic then the Iraq war. The Vietnam memorial should remain just that, a vietnam memorial.

[Petrus]

I do not know how this is treated in the us but I can give you the way we did it in France.

Every agglomeration created a monument in memory to its citizen that had been killed at war after WWI.

Those monuments were updated after WWII and after the colonial wars.

You also have specific monuments, for example many stations have lists of railways workers that died during the resistance, but they remain exceptions.

This politic allows homage to the men killed during the wars through time, even if those wars were very different and took place in different contexts.

The goal of those monuments is to honour the men that died during wars, not to justify or glorify the wars in themselves.

A very few of those monuments have a political message but they do not carry a specific political colour.

The monument of the (very) small village of Gentioux :


http://www.educreuse23.ac-limoges.fr/loewy/realisations/der/gentioux.htm

[gunslinger]

I know it's upsetting, buy please try not to get too worked up over it Kafir. The soldiers will go on soldiering, and the politicians will go on mucking up whatever the soldiers thought they were trying to accomplish. In time, the VFW or American Legion will start a grass roots campaign to build a memorial. The politicians, eager to help the American people forget that it was their squabbling that caused many of the deaths in the first place, will support the project, and we'll have a new wall.

It's all so inevitable, there's just no point in getting too upset about it.

[Brenus]

I was moved by the Wall when I went to USA, long time ago. It is simple and the length of it just gives you the scale of the conflict.
The French monuments are less impressive because it is done in each village… Well, I have to say to build a wall for more than 1,500,000 men killed in Action you would need a long piece of marble… WHAT is impressive is the ossuaire of Douaumont, or the immense graveyards around the former battle-fields… Thousand and thousand of white crosses (I think one has 150 000 of them), is heart breaking…
Now, I think Vietnam is a particular event. It was the end of the American Dream of Supremacy and a forgotten lesson, a dream of Technology Supremacy, kind of “we will win because we are the strongest”. And no conflict will cost so much in term if not casualties but ego.

I would agree that Vietnam Memorial should stay to Vietnam.

Ok, if you want absolutely increase it size, you can add the 77 334 French soldiers (injured 88 270) (supplétifs (natives unlisted) non-included) killed in Indochina 1945-1954. Some others historians will put the date of 1948 as a start but I put it immediately after the landing in Haiphong and the so-called incident of…