I wrote a very early story a couple of years ago on trying to think about a virtual or actual monument to this war and thought that even though we have ceased(sic) combat operations, that a national monument will eventually be constructed, probably not in my lifetime. Such a monument will suffer the same stupid politics of constructing the Vietnam Veterans Memorial recalling the sinophobia underlying the choice of designer, and since the Intertoobz is forever, here’s an early start on the iconographic program for that national memorial design competition.

• Like other monuments to our national wars(sic) it should be located on or near the Capitol Mall, but this monument must not be called the National Global War on Terrorism Monument (just imagine a decade of Congressional hearings on the naming alone).
• It should list every military casualty like the VVWM as engraving in its granite features, plinths or low walls plus perhaps even all the 9/1l civilian victims; my version would include every Iraqi and Afghani name in Romanized English.
• It should have a life-size statue at the center in soviet-style realism of GW Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and Condi Rice standing and looking hopeful and pointing to Mecca. Dick Cheney’s ubiquity and iniquity is signalled by his absence. Given the possible controversy, a bipartisan touch would be to substitute a statue of the late Charlie Wilson (D-Tx).

  

   

• It should have four life-size* or actual M1 Abrams tanks (or three and a mechanized crane/tank) arranged on a four square axis and,
• it will incorporate the twin tower dimensions and/or footprint of the 2001 WTC in the quadrants created by the tanks

 

• It will also memorialize the US casualties of Desert Storm
• It will have an enternal flame fueled by Iraqi oil or some biochemical material used in WMDs being incinerated.
• it may have an eternal unarmed Reaper drone circling it at altitude that also protects the Capitol’s no fly-zone

* there was apparently an Abrams destroyed or disabled by a truck bomb in Baghdad during the initial attack that is rarely mentioned and a sculpture of that would be more appropriate for all the usual IED reasons