Powerful reminders

The Vietnam War TV documentary made me think of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in D.C. It is a great memorial and would be even greater if it included an appropriate remembrance of the hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of Southeast Asians who died or were severely damaged by the war and its aftermath.

By appropriate, I mean in-yourface prominent, not a footnote or afterthought. I believe many other veterans of Vietnam and other wars would agree.

As in all wars, most victims, by far, were and are noncombatants. I’m sure many honor the nameless victims in their minds and hearts. Maybe that’s the best way, better than some grandiose physical display. Or maybe we need an unabashed, unsubtle, physical display more to remind ourselves than to honor them.

I would convert the acreage surrounding the wall to flooded paddies full of crosses. Walkways among them would lead to and around the wall. I would blow up the trees; plate the remaining stumps, limbs and trunks with an appropriate metal; and have a towering, pulsating wall of fire among them. Statuary and other art would depict the humanity and suffering of victims.

We obviously, and I can’t stress this enough, need powerful and constant reminders of what war makes us do, as well as what it does to us. We need them in places where our warmakers can see them on their drive to the office. HOWELL MEDDERS Fayetteville