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The National Mall is consecrated to American fundamentals - but World War II was not fundamental either to the establishment of our political institutions or to the formation of our national character. Build elsewhere.
Winston Churchill, who wrote of minor things verbosely, wrote of major things succinctly. The above is his succinct description of his thoughts upon learning of a very major thing - the decision of the United States, at long last and nearly too late, to join the Allied cause in World War II. It was an exuberant sentiment, but not a frivolous one. Until the two houses of Congress, by a tally of 470-1, voted America into six decades of world predominance (and world preeminence) by declaring war upon Germany and Japan, expansionist totalitarianism had advanced undefeated and appeared (to many) undefeatable. But while it would require nearly four more awful years to bring the conflict to a resolution, Churchill recognized from the start what Hitler and Hirohito had persistently failed to comprehend, or simply denied - that the United States is like "a gigantic boiler. Once the fire is lighted under it there is no limit to the power it can generate." Churchill knew that America's material capacity, brought to bear with what the world would come to know as American spirit, made Allied victory an inevitability. With the United States in the fight, said Churchill, "the rest was merely the proper application of overwhelming force."
Until this abrupt reversal, the opponents' prospects had appeared increasingly bleak. Though legal and other challenges had prolonged the approval process (it has been 14 years since the memorial was first proposed in Congress, and eight since President Clinton approved it), the proposal had made steady progress toward reality. And in recent months it had acquired an apparently irresistible momentum, abetted by celebrity fundraising and symbolic non-events like a less-than-inspiring "groundbreaking" in which Bob Dole, Tom Hanks, and other notables scooped dirt from a trough that had been carried to the National Mall for the occasion. The best hope for memorial opponents was to do something - anything - to stall this advance long enough to force a fresh examination of the basic merits of the proposal. Any such review, whether by court, Congress, or independent administrative agency, would surely prove decisive, for the simple reason that placing the memorial on the Mall is so supremely ill-advised that any minimally competent decisionmaking body would surely send the design sailing back to the drawing-board whence it came. Hence the various legal challenges, on various legal grounds; and hence the rejoicing at the (questionably competent) Commission's sudden and startlingly sensible turnabout. Well, exuberance is the stuff famous last words are made of. Or, as was said of another narrowly decided battle: "It was a damned close-run thing." Eleven days after the Commission's reversal, by a roll call vote (that is, with cameras on call and rolling) which was nearly as lopsided (400-15) as the declaration of war in '41, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 1696, "An act to expedite the construction of the World War II memorial in the District of Columbia." The Senate approved the bill a week later, and President Bush signed it on Memorial Day. The law does three things:
An effort, spearheaded by the National Coalition to Save Our Mall, to obtain an emergency injunction against enforcement of the new law has failed in two federal courts and now rests at the mercy of the Supreme Court, where it faces the always long odds of obtaining review. Next: Absent some saving miracle ... John Renehan, J.D., is Counsel to the New York State Task Force on Life and the Law, the state's bioethics commission. |
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o we had won after all!" 
Similar thoughts were probably in the minds of the long-suffering opponents of the National World War II Memorial (or rather, of its proposed location on the National Mall) in May 2000, after the National Capital Planning Commission suddenly rescinded its earlier approval of the project and voted unanimously to conduct a top-to-bottom reappraisal of the design - to start over, essentially.