When I arrived in Washington, D.C., for a wedding recently, it took me a moment to understand why flags everywhere flew at half-staff.
It was September 11.
In part, my friends had chosen to recapture our era's "date which will live in infamy," to borrow the phrase an eloquent president, Franklin Roosevelt, summoned to describe December 7, 1941. With both dates in mind, I made a pilgrimage to the new World War II Memorial on the National Mall.
After each date, the U.S. found itself thrust fatefully into a conflict the rest of the world had endured for some time. Japan's Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, who planned the Pearl Harbor attack, reportedly commented afterward, "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve." That might be mere movie dialogue (it's turned up in two, so far), but the U.S.-educated Yamamoto unquestionably had misgivings about the attack.
On the other side of the world, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill heard the news by radio, and later reflected in his history of the war that "now at this very moment I knew the United States was in the war, up to the neck and in to the death. So we had won after all!"
September 11 has been compared, of course, with Pearl Harbor Day, as the catalyst of national resolve, of wrath unleashed toward ultimate victory. Pundits and politicians even have likened, without irony, the current White House occupant with both Roosevelt and Churchill. But analogies are misleading. Both leaders knew Japan was a threat, but neither expected an attack on the U.S. "I have not hesitated to record repeatedly my disbelief that Japan would go mad," Churchill wrote.
By contrast, the U.S. and much of the world had accustomed itself to terrorism's madness by September 11, 2001, although we failed to account for its range and audacity. Far from expecting that the attacks would loose the righteous might of the United States in a triumph over evil, the world largely commiserated.
Another distinction is worth noting, one that speaks to time's reshaping of culture. The USS Arizona Memorial, our official gesture to the dead at Pearl Harbor, was dedicated in 1962, more than 20 years later. A memorial was first considered in 1949, four years after the end of the war. And the World War II Memorial opened to the public earlier this year, 59 years after the war's end. Talk of a memorial in lower Manhattan started while the debris smoldered. A new tower and memorial are designed and ready to be built.
Partly this has to do with the fact that the twin towers were a real-estate investment, and erecting their replacement has been a priority of more than pride. But it is also true that we build our memorials swiftly. We don't wait for time to salve our wounds before we solemnize the loss; we soothe ourselves with an immediate monument. We inhabit a therapeutic culture, and we crave instant gratification.
Maya Lin's Vietnam Veterans Memorial pointed the way. Lin wed the census of the dead from Sir Edwin Lutyens' Monument to the Missing of the Somme, in Thiepval, France, to a stark, enigmatic, politically neutral form, that sunken V. It immediately became a grieving ground for survivors and veterans still very much alive, without any of the rhetorical flourishes that monuments of the past wield to "redeem" sacrifices or to set them in a political or historical context.
Subsequent efforts sought the same emotional impact but failed to match Lin's stroke of young genius. The Oklahoma City National Memorial, for instance, amounts to a sprawling theme park of tokens to various interested parties—victims, survivors, families, rescuers. The new tower and memorial in New York seems headed along this path.
The World War II Memorial is more traditional in several respects. A lengthy interval separates it from its subject, and Friedrich St. Florian's design is classically inspired, with columns and tablets, eagles and wreaths. But it has its therapeutic aspects. Clearly, the relatively quick appearance of a Vietnam monument aroused older veterans to seek their due—first Korea, then World War II. And as advocates raised funds and beat back opponents, they lamented that many veterans would not live to see it.
My September 11 visit proved that many have, however. Old men with insignia caps or official badges, in tour groups and with families, strolled around the fountains, stopping for photos at the pillars with their states' names etched on them. All memorials are in essence for the living, but this one swaps Lin's gravestone grief for a pat on the back.
And yet, and yet ... It is too fussy. It does not spoil the Mall vista, as opponents had claimed, and an argument can be made that it marks the central event of the last century, as the flanking monuments to Washington and Lincoln mark those of their times. Both are traditional, too—the Egyptian obelisk and the Roman temple. But each is serenely simple. Like so many modern monuments, St. Florian's is awash in images, texts, motifs and gestures.
A more modest design would have been more grand. It would outlive its generation to speak to future ones, an idea we seem to have abandoned. We strain to associate the events and leaders of our time with those of history, but we have little sense of participating in history in any context beyond the personal.
Chuck Twardy is a really smart guy who has written for several daily newspapers and for magazines such as Metropolis.