So - GWOT Will Get a Memorial?

non-concur

OK, let’s let them tell their story first, then I’ll dive in. From The American Legion website:

The Global War on Terrorism Memorial Foundation on June 10 unveiled the long-awaited design that will pay tribute to servicemembers and families involved in GWOT.

The design incorporates a living place of reflection, a concept shaped by 20,000 Americans and a 23-member Design Advisory Council of Gold Star family members, veterans and servicemembers. It is organized around a single architectural gesture: “the embrace,” a vegetated arch of reclaimed steel rising from the earth and returning to the ground.

“This design was shaped by history and held sacred from the beginning — forged by sacrifice and informed by the voices of warriors and their families,” said Michael “Rod” Rodriguez, president and CEO of the Global War on Terrorism Memorial Foundation, an American Legion member and a retired Army Green Beret. “Throughout history, societies have built sacred places to welcome their warriors home, places where a grateful people can say, ‘We see you. We honor you. You are not forgotten.’ The GWOT generations deserve that same enduring tribute. Today, we take one step closer to welcoming them home.”

The memorial will be located at the intersection of 23rd Street NW, Constitution Avenue NW, and Henry Bacon Drive NW, near the Lincoln Memorial, in the Reserve area of the National Mall, Washington, D.C. The memorial will occupy 33,524 square feet, or 0.77 acres.

“This design is the culmination of nearly a decade of listening, learning and working alongside the generations of Americans who answered our nation’s call during the Global War on Terrorism, and it reflects the service, sacrifice, healing and unity that define their experience,” Rodriguez said. “The American Legion has been with us from the beginning, and we are profoundly grateful for their unwavering commitment to ensuring the GWOT generations and their families receive the permanent place of honor they have earned on our nation’s most sacred civic landscape.”

I’m going to stick with my first reaction on Tuesday, where I drifted from disgust to sarcasm:

I’m sorry, but the design is unattractive, excessive in scale, and unsustainable in the long run.

Non-concur with both the design and especially the scale of the whole thing.

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I would be happier if instead of this half a Möbis Strip monstrosity that @GWOTMF is proposing, they instead proposed a gilded 40’ tall porta-potty or an equally large marble camel spider sitting on a RIP-IT can.

Either would be less insulting and more reflective of the GWOT experience than this…whatever it is.

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This monstrosity needs to be cancelled before we and our posterity are subjected to it.

BEHOLD!

I’m sorry, but I spent the last nine years of my 21 years on active duty in GWOT.

I was on duty getting ready for a briefing in the C5F AOR when 9/11/01 took place, and came home from Afghanistan on my last deployment just a few months before I retired in 2009.

I have skin in this game.

In those years, I was feet dry in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. Heck, throw in Turkey while you are at it.

I served with people from dozens of nations. I did a fraction of what others did. Saw but a shadow of what others saw, but that was enough.

There is absolutely nothing about this memorial that makes me think of any of it. Lots of grass and water? Sorry, I don’t think so, mate.

Nothing in this proposal makes me think of what we started off doing that beautiful New York morning at the dawn of a new century, or ended up enduring in the national disgrace in Kabul two decades later. Nothing about the people we lost or were maimed. Nothing of the trillions of dollars we poured down that bottomless pit. Nothing of the fruitlessness of it all.

Who is responsible for this carbuncle on our memory? From The Global War on Terrorism Memorial Foundation website.

Lead designer Kengo Kuma, named by Time magazine in 2021 as one of the world’s “100 Most Influential People,” led the project with his team at Kengo Kuma & Associates. They worked closely with the Foundation’s Design Team, including the Board of Directors and the Design Advisory Council, a body consisting of more than 20 Gold Star family members, veterans, and active-duty service members, who came together to inspire, educate, and advise on the importance of the Memorial. After listening to more than 30 hours of stories from the Design Team key themes emerged that began to give shape to the design.

Kuma isn’t even an American. He’s Japanese, and his firm is located there.

What is his larger philosophy?

Kuma's stated goal is to recover the tradition of Japanese buildings and to reinterpret these traditions for the 21st century. Kuma lectures extensively and is the author of numerous books and articles discussing and criticizing approaches in contemporary architecture.^[7][8] In 2008 Kuma's Anti-Object: The Dissolution and Disintegration of Architecture ^[d], was published in English by the Architectural Association.^[9][10] The book, which was first published in Japan in 2000,^[11] calls for an architecture of relations, respecting its surroundings instead of dominating them.

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Describing his practice, Kuma said "You could say that my aim is 'to recover the place'. The place is a result of nature and time; this is the most important aspect. I think my architecture is some kind of frame of nature. With it, we can experience nature more deeply and more intimately. Transparency is a characteristic of Japanese architecture; I try to use light and natural materials to get a new kind of transparency.

Museums, design, and architecture, especially memorials, are too important to leave to architects and designers. You will find few more self-referential and arrogant people than this gaggle. Spoken word poets are more thoughtful of the wider world around them.

…and one of the leads on this project in Kuma’s firm has all the right credentials…a masters in architecture from…Harvard. Of course.

I don’t care if they have awards. Their organizations give out awards based on their own insular standards. Just read the above. There is no concern for anyone but themselves. If not properly controlled and directed, they create things that only please themselves and those who want to seem, edgy.

Think that is too rough? Just look at all the awards received by the architect responsible for one of the ugliest government buildings in DC, a city full of ugly buildings: the CFPB building next to the White House.

For most of the last century, the architects who have the most awards from their profession, who came from “the best” schools, who partnered with the “best organizations” have littered the public spaces with countless eyesores. If you want something grounded, beautiful, and has a feeling of “place”, you have to look where “the right people” don’t mention.

It isn’t just an American or Japanese problem. That entire profession is worm-ridden with vandals. Don’t forget what they did during the renovation to the Museum of Military History in Dresden.

Well, that was an American architect, so maybe the U.S. is the center of the problem. No American outside of the 8th Air Force has done so much damage to German beauty.

I am more than happy to be the skunk to these peoples’ picnic.

In 2024, I said my piece about the new National Museum of the United States Navy.

Over two decades ago, I said my piece about the Flight 93 memorial. That aged quite well.

You simply cannot let these people continue to uglify our public spaces.

Beauty matters. Respect matters. Context matters. Place matters. Three thousand years of knowledge about what is timeless, what endures, and what is fleeting matters.

Finally, let’s just be blunt about the elephant in the room. If you have not already noticed, from above and from the perspective walking up to it—the proposed GWOT memorial is in the shape of a crescent—just like the Flight 93 Memorial.

Yes, the symbol of Islam that led armies against the west for fourteen centuries—including the attacks of 9/11/01.

The same symbol twice in memorials for the same war? Really? No one is supposed to notice?

That is not by accident. As it was intentional, this entire proposal must be cancelled. Those involved must be relieved of their duties and new people assigned.

If it is not by accident, then the tone-deafness and gross incompetence should result in the same treatment.

If it goes into production, shame on all of us.

There is a more personal reason it should never be built. If for no other reason, fellow GWOT veterans, we need to speak bluntly and clearly to each other.

Yes, the war was long…but our sacrifice in killed, wounded, missing, etc, is but a fraction of those lost in Vietnam, Korea, WWII, and WWI—wars that were all much shorter in a nation with a much smaller population.

If we must have a memorial, it should be a more humble monument over in Section 60. That should be enough.