yay! Better than the Post!
Well I took all these with a borrowed Sony Mavica 2 megapixel digital camera at low resolution (so I could fit more than 5 pictures on a floppy. And no I didnt photoshop any of them.
Its appropriate that this got published today, since the monument has been consecrated and dedicated (Saturday).
If your in town, its one of the great free places to go, in fact the whole mall is a great place to be. The contoversy surrounding the memorial is funny to a semi-capital area native like me. (semi because I wasn't born here, just that I've lived here all my life) because every museum, and monument built in my lifetime has been controversial.
Some people say the monument is the type of monument the Nazi's or Fasicsts would have built, while others say its too bland, or too warlike. To take in the site, you have to take in the whole vista of the mall though, the view from the steps at the front of the memorial down the reflecting pool to the Lincoln Memorial, and from the rainbow pool to the towering washington monument.
The site takes up a small area of the land it was allotted, and connects the past to the present in a very real way. The men who fought and died in World War II
did so because of the spirt and vision of Washington and Lincoln, they fought because they were called like Cincinattus to serve the people and governement of the United States, because it was the decent and noble thing to do, because men needed to be free, to worship, to govern. When the war ended they went back to their little lives, in their little towns. Satisfied that they had done a good job and a good thing.
Its important that we should look at the monument in that light, as opposed to the light of War that is now being shined on it thanks to our current war.
I think we can say justly and honestly that the world would have been a worse place if the United States hadn't gone to war. Without much needed support, Britain and the USSR might have been conquored, or more likely forced to capitulate. Austrialia and New Zealand would have probably fallen and become Japanese colonies.
