RE: Hussein's Obsession: An Empire of Mosques - You HAVE TO see the photo to appreciate this reporting from Baghdad. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/15/international/middleeast/15MOSQ.html Good points, Brad. Noted.
However, I think there are degrees of monument building and mythology writing. The upper Hudson River is a monument to the power and wonders of nature, as is the Grand Canyon. I tremble when I see the rows of white crosses that are Arlington and the black marble wall with names inscribed. I don't understand the Washington monument but think the Lincoln one is inspired. I love Jefferson's curving brick walls because they remind us of the creative inventiveness of that time. In fact, I miss much of the history and architecture of the East coast, living out here in the Pacific Northwest. Our nation's capitol has some fine architectural monuments that call on our sense of history and uniqueness. They have been and will be used for less than honorable purposes, calling up images and meaning. However, I don't think too many monuments to past wars are built as replicas of rifles and scud missiles, as is the Mosque dedicated to the Mother of All Battles. This one made me think of the Pharaohs. What I hoped others would note in Burn's reporting from Baghdad was his comment that "Iraqis think of themselves as warriors", that they are eager to prove themselves worthy. Are we equally committed? There have not been many challenges to a widespread notion that Americans will defect from a great battle that sacrifices too much blood, native or otherwise. I've not said much about that, but have a different notion, still not firm. As so many others have warned, there are too many people who have nothing better living than to die for their beliefs, whether that's God or nationalism so it's a good thing there are others who hesitate, who question, who demand more and better answers. Wars may be inevitable at some point, but all wars are inherently evil. I'm all for checks and balances. Some of us think we are beyond all that. Some of us don't. We are a still mixed country on war, but it's my opinion that all the war-building efforts to date have not quite rallied the nation. It was interesting that the mainstream media played down the Dec. 10 protest marches around the country. I saw one article about it, under the heading Dissent. Some people will need another 9/11 or a we're expecting this Pearl Harbor redux. I'm not a history expert, though it is my first academic love. But I have studied the two WWs and what happened in both theatres, what difference there is between a nationalized war like WW2 was in the States as opposed to the public's growing animosity to the Vietnam War. We may be a different breed than our grandparents, but my baby boomer generation and my children's have yet to be tested. I'm not certain what will be the response. It depends on how and why it starts. And that is what the scares the heck out of me. Even as I try to keep my cynicism in check, I see CNN broadcasting a 'CNN Presents' documentary of war preparations by the Israeli public, our 51st state, CNN giving their version of what led up to and 'how it happened' during Desert Storm under Bush 1 and can't help but think of the Hollywood documentaries that gave Americans and their allies conveniently packaged propaganda wrapped with some real news, like prosciutto wrapped around melon. Yes, those days were different. Or were they? Yours in discourse, Karen Brad wrote: I too was particularly struck by this picture. It is a magnificent photograph, especially the way the photographer captured the luminousness of the light. But that is not the most important thing about this picture: as soon as I saw it, I thought that it could just as well be in The Mall in The United States capital, Washington, D.C., as in the capital of Saddam Hussein's Iraq. OK, not on the mall, but a couple miles to the northwest (where The National Cathedral is...). All monumental buildings look basically the same, whether they are monuments to Saddam Hussein, or to Adlof Hitler (Hitler and Speer's New Berlin), or Mussolini (The Third Rome), or anything else, because they are not monuments to what they nominally commemorate, but rather monuments to POWER, and POWER is POWER wherever it is and whatever makeup it puts on. The meaning of every monumental monument is to make persons feel SMALL, and to encourage them to OBEY POWER. http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/monumentality.html A real democracy would not build monuments. At worst, It might build a very large radio transmitter to broadcast its presence to the heavens, as the collegium of master builders at Babel tried to do. A real democracy would have no sacred books, either: nothing would be "sacred" (i.e., beyond criticism) to it. But its citizens might study such books as Elias Canetti's _Crowds and Power_. Outgoing Mail Scanned by NAV 2002
