Warren and JL, who post here, and I jaunted down to DC yesterday for a look at the Building Museum. Fine museum, good exhibits, well worth the trip. After we'd finished there we still had 2 hours before our train, so JL and I decided to stroll over for a look at the new WWII memorial. It was about a million soggy degrees in DC and a very long stroll but we did it anyway. (Aren't we intrepid?)

So okay, maybe "cheesy" is the wrong word. The thing's sure big, solid, and expensive enough. But I hated it instantly. JL called it "the John Wayne of memorials." This is a memorial to the glory of war. Its antecendents are the ancient Greek nation-states who made war on each other to prove how brave they were. Not for gain, not for defense, just for glory. The cost of war -- pain, destruction, death, confusion, disillusionment -- is barely alluded to in a wall of gold stars for the Gold Star Mothers. And then the memorial sweeps right on. And in the center of this set of hard-edged, muscular plinths is a pool with a lot of fountains. There's no visual quiet and there's no aural quiet, either. This is not a place for contemplation, of courage, loyalty, loss, anything. There's no sense here that war, even when it's inevitable and necessary, is a bad thing. This is a memorial whose aim is to stir the martial blood. So that later generations will feel an urge to prove they're the greatest, too.

How handy for the people who make wars.