How will this war be memorialized?

Today, at “the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month”, I have been thinking again about the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, as I did three years ago on this very date.  Those thoughts led me to ask myself what sort of symbols will some day be marshalled to commemorate the current disastrous war.

So I wrote a DailyKos diary, asking the thousands upon thousands of readers over there to consider how best to symbolize Dubya’s Folly.  What sort of artistic vision can be mustered to tell the story of this awful chapter, in a non-forced manner that doesn’t bludgeon our descendants with false bluster or phony pseudopatriotism?  In the manner, so to speak, of Maya Lin’s wrenching achievement?

I have no answers.  I’m as unartistic as a person can be.  But I feel the need to facilitate those who can create such symbols, to remind the world’s artists that we will, in time, need such a symbolic memorial.  And to spur them into thinking about it, and doing something about it.  Let’s start the creative juices flowing before the sorts of corporatists who built (I wouldn’t dignify it by saying “designed") the horridly foul, ugly Speer-esque National WWII Memorial, not far from the VVM on the Mall in DC, come up with something even more repulsive.

Comments are more than welcome, both here and over on DailyKos (where, to be honest, I’m sorely disappointed in the dearth of responses thus far).

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