Frontpaged at My Left Wing
23 years ago, on Veterans Day in 1982, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial - The Wall - was dedicated. On Veterans Day 2005, I thought it would be useful to take a look at this most popular of all destinations on the Mall in DC, explain the contoversy over it, and its underlying political message - that one can honor veterans while not glorifying war.
HISTORY
Vietnam Veterans have never had it easy. In contrast to a generation that had gone to war in the 1940s, and whose return was a national phenomenon in a country that had itself been transformed by the experience, Vietnam Vets came back to the US a few at a time, dropped off in San Francisco or Los Angeles by the Freedom Bird and given no debriefing or exit counseling. Not 24 hours after leaving your unit in a paddy in South Vietnam, you might find yourself on a commercial airline flight back to Omaha or Rochester or Charlotte next to people living a typical middle-class life, who have little knowledge of your experience, and little reason to care. Their lives haven't changed, yours will never be the same.
Vets had trouble readjusting to society - many, if not most, did OK, but problems like drug use and job insecurity were not uncommon. Groups of veterans began organizing to give each other the kinds of support they needed, support that the military didn't give, that other veterans refused to give. As activists like Max Cleland agitated for recognition of PTSD as a disorder and government funding to help out, older vets from previous wars scorned the sufferings of Vietnam Vets:
One Congressman, a World War II vet hostile to the veterans claims said to Max Cleland "How can you little wimps be sick? How can you need counseling? A tour of duty lasted only 12 months! In World War II, soldiers fought in the war for years. How could you be traumatized?"
In this context, some activists like Jan Scruggs began thinking about ways to heighten national recognition of Vietnam Veterans. So in 1979, a group of Vietnam veterans organized a group to raise funds to place a memorial to those soldiers who died in Vietnam somewhere in Washington DC - ideally, on the Mall itself.
They began raising money, and immediately the first controversy struck. In order to get a mailing list, the memorial organizers bought the list that George McGovern had used when he ran for president in 1972, as well as sent material to the American Legion and the VFW. This angered pro-war folks - who didn't want McGovern involved - and angered antiwar activists who didn't want pro-war folks involved.
But this fit with the core ideology of the organizers of the memorial project - that it should be non-political. Instead of being about the war, it should be about the soldiers themselves. That was why it was to be a memorial as opposed to a monument. A monument is designed to be a celebration of something - a life, a victory. But a memorial is designed to commemorate death, to honor sacrifice, without necessarily casting judgment on the cause of the sacrifice itself.
By 1980 enough money had rolled in to start seriously planning the design. In 1980 Congress passed a law setting aside 2 acres on the Mall near the Lincoln Memorial for the Vietnam memorial. And that year, a design competition was held. The staff of the memorial fund had no idea what they wanted, except something that would "bring America together", so they figured the fairest way was a national design competition open to anyone. But many weren't sure if reconciliation was possible. One critic jokingly wondered if the design should be a statue of a hippie and a Marine hugging each other.
Hundreds of designs came in. One of them came from an undergrad in Yale's architecture program. A professor there assigned his students to submit an entry to the competition. The professor's design did not make the final 15. But that of his student - 21 year old Maya Lin - did make the cut. And when the jurors who were selected by the memorial fund to pick the design saw it, they were blown away by it.
Lin's Original Design Submission
What Maya Lin envisioned was simple, yet devastatingly effective. She saw a memorial that consisted of two black granite walls that rose slowly from the ground, in two wings, and rose to meet at a high midpoint. The tops of the walls would be level with the ground, and so you would descend as you walked into the memorial. On the walls would be the names of every American who died in the Vietnam War, arranged chronologically from right to left.
Although the jury liked it and selected it, some others involved with the memorial fund were less receptive. One denounced it as a "mass grave," another called it "an open urinal." Some were resentful of the fact that it was designed by an Asian woman - one of the critics scornfully suggested the inscription read "Designed by a Gook." But the jury, and the majority of the members of the board of the memorial fund, liked it. One of them said to the press, "The proposed Memorial says exactly what we wanted to say about Vietnam - absolutely nothing."
Maya Lin's design was selected, but the controversy raged. Some in the public saw the young woman as an example of everything wrong with the antiwar movement - young, impudent, not sufficiently respectful of the veterans. She in turn felt herself strongly supportive of veterans and believed her design allowed people to create their own meanings, in a democratic fashion. Some of the earlier racism reappeared, as Lin's Asian heritage was criticized, as was the supposedly "Oriental" design that she had created.
Rendering of Proposed Memorial - Note Maya Lin on the Left
But many more Americans supported the design. However, funds were still lacking. Scruggs had initially estimated it would cost around $2.5 million to build the memorial. But it quickly became clear that the real costs would be between $6 and $10 million. The turning point came in early 1981. On the day Reagan was inaugurated, the hostages in Iran were released (as part of deal arranged by the Reagan-Bush campaign the previous October with the regime in Tehran). The hostages were given a heroic national welcome home - and immediately, bitter Vietnam Veterans began wondering why their own sacrifices in war had not been similarly honored. The result was that Americans began to agree with this perspective, and playing off of the hostage phenomenon, support for a Vietnam Vets' memorial soared - as did donations. The American Legion and the VFW kicked in significant amounts of money to get it built, and they also defended Maya Lin's design against criticism. Many prominent Americans did as well - Ross Perot donated nearly a million dollars.
However, Perot's donation came with strings attached. He, along with other pro-war people, felt that something had to be added to the design to make a clearer statement about the cause that the dead soldiers had sacrificed for. Some wanted to make a statement about freedom, others wanted to place "God Bless America" somewhere near the site. But what became the focus of these efforts to make a memorial that was more celebratory of the war was the demand for a statue of a veteran, and a prominent American flag. Maya Lin resisted this, fearing that it would take away from her design, which was meant to have no symbols, no interpretations.
The memorial fund had hoped to have it completed and dedicated by Veterans Day 1982. But as 1982 began, they still had not received the permit to begin. Reagan's Secretary of the Interior, James Watt, was holding up the permit because he wanted to ensure that the design committee added the flag and the statue. Eventually major politicians in Congress and prominent members of the public, including Bob Hope, put pressure on President Reagan himself - and he told Watt to issue the permit. With the permit in hand, the contractor, a Vietnam vet himself, immediately set to work digging a huge hole for the memorial. He wanted to make that area "look like a B-52 had attacked it" - create a mess so big that the project could not possibly be stopped now.
In the summer of 1982, a single panel of the memorial was put into place, and several politicians and members of the media were invited to see it. They all came away in amazement and approved of it - regardless of politics. They noticed what everyone else who has visited the memorial has noticed - not the black granite walls, but the names on the walls.
The granite had been shipped in from Bangalore, India and the cutting of the names into the wall was done in Memphis, Tennessee. The cutting was a laborious process due to the great care that had to be done to ensure that the names would not be hidden in shadow or cast too much glare.
The site was dedicated on Veterans Day 1982, after a march to the site by Vietnam Vets. In early 1984 the statue - of three, diverse male soldiers - was added. Pointedly, they are looking at the wall.
In 1993 a Womens Memorial was added, a statue depicting a nurse and an injured soldier.
THE MEMORIAL
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is easily the most visually arresting - and emotionally powerful - site on the Mall. Lin's design is a work of utter genius. You enter the memorial on the right, as the wall rises and the ground sinks. The first names on the wall come from 1962, but as the years progress, more names appear. The effect here is astounding - you soon become overwhelmed by the enormity of the loss. By 1967 and 1968, where the wall's corner is, the names now tower over you. You are surrounded by them. The feeling is impossible to describe.
All along the way are families, often bearing a piece of paper to take a rubbing of a name, or bearing flowers or other mementos to place near the name of a fallen loved one. These gifts are all taken later to a warehouse and stored by the National Park Service - a job taken extremely seriously by those involved in it.
As you turn the corner and enter the 1970s, the wall becomes smaller. You can see the end in sight, as you rise back to ground level and, by 1975, the names end. The death is over. You're back out into the world, but you will never forget what you have just experienced. It really is so much more than names on a wall.
The genius of Lin's design, I believe, is that it is fundamentally democratic. Unlike something such as the Marine Corps Memorial in Arlington, this does not glorify war. It presents the fallen soldiers as human beings, which is exactly what they should be remembered as. Instead of dictating a meaning to the viewer, the viewer can create his or her own meaning, own interpretation, have their own experience. In a democratic society, it really is the only way to do it.
ONGOING POLITICS
But this has never satisfied conservatives. Engaged in a decades-long effort to justify an unjustifiable war, they continue to seek ways to use the site to convey their own ideas about the war.
Part of this is because the memorial is not quite as apolitical as its planners argued. It is indeed apolitical in that it does not dictate any interpretation of the war. But it can never be wholly removed from politics. The conservative approach is that the war was good and right and the sacrifices of veterans must be used to justify not only Vietnam, but other wars - that in fact the veterans' and the dead prove there cannot be any other conclusion. So it is in fact a political act to deny that totalizing interpretation. That conservatives can still create their own meaning at the site alongside everybody else is not enough for them.
The next place this battle will be played out could be underneath the site. In 2003 Congress authorized the planning of an "interpretive center" to be located beneath the grass in front of the wall. At this point it is unfunded and unclear what it will look like. Some argue that the ground is now sacred and would be defiled by this center.
The main problem, however, will be what is said at this center. What story will be told? What will be in the display cases and on the explanatory materials? Congress legislated that the center be rented out to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, which has so far exhibited a positive attitude towards telling an honest story about the war. But they will certainly come under massive conservative pressure to tell a story that toes their party line - as recent controversies over the World Trade Center and Flight 93 memorials indicate. And it is reasonable to assume that for Congressional Republicans, that is the goal of the center - to tell a story that glorifies the Vietnam War. What will almost certainly happen, then, is a controversy reminicent of the 1995 battle over the Smithsonian's display of the Enola Gay.
Ironically, the Smithsonian's conclusion was the same as the Vietnam Veterans Memorial - to simply display the object and allow others to create meaning. This conclusion was not enough for conservatives in 1995, who wanted to glorify nuclear war and the horrific murder of 150,000 civilians, and it is not enough for them in regards to Vietnam. It is a battle we will have to fight, to ensure that an interpretive center does not become a vehicle to glorify war.
In the end, I believe the site is an example of how we can honor veterans without falling into the conservative trap of glorifying war through that act of honoring. We can recover the lives and experiences of the veterans that were robbed from them by a government bent on using their lives to justify that horrible war. And we can pursue democratic constructions of meaning instead of trying to dictate to the public. In short, it's the best memorial or monument I've ever encountered.