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Sizzling Gettysburgers
What’s cooking on America’s battlefields?
by Scott McNutt
Development is eating up the United State’s historical battle sites. Developers seem to believe that the best way to honor our soldiers’ death-sites is to build atop them subdivisions with names like Longstreet’s End, Sherman’s Marsh, and Nathan Bedford’s Forest; then they’ll add upscale snack shops named Custer’s Last Custard Stand, Meade’s Meadery and Sherman’s Sherbet Shack. This is wrong.
If there’s one thing we as a nation should value, it’s places where lots of men died violently. In the short time we’ve existed as a nation, killing is something we’ve excelled at. It’s a tradition of which we are proud. Lincoln said we cannot dedicate, consecrate, or hallow these grounds. But that doesn’t mean we should just surrender them for four score and several million bucks.
These sites, where brave souls gave that last full measure of dedication to their country, should be reserved for the purposes of mourning, veneration, recreation and learning. Especially if the lesson learned is not to allow the history there to repeat itself.
Last year, a plan to build a 3,000-slot gaming facility next to the Gettysburg battlefield was beaten back in Pennsylvania. Some might appreciate the symbolism of a gambling den marking the spot where the forces of the daring Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s were fought to a standstill by the grinding Union leader, Ulysses S. Grant. But the prospect of Wayne Newton doing a floorshow atop the graves of 7,000 American soldiers ought to chill the fever of even the most addicted gambler. Do we really want our history reduced to a carnival barker hawking Gettysburgers at the Bobby E. Lee Betting Hall?
You would think more care would be given to the blood-soaked soil in a region nicknamed "The Volunteer State" because of the willingness of its young men to go die for the cause. But no. We Tennesseans are no better than the rest of the nation at preserving our sacrificial landscapes. The site of one of the worst defeats for the South in Tennessee, the battle of Franklin, for years was overrun with sprawl. Only recently have preservationists advanced the front of setting aside some portion of thebattlefield for posterity. "Volunteer State" seems to mean that we’ll gladly volunteer battlefields for development.
Knoxville honors Fort. Sanders, the site where 880 Civil war soldiers were killed, wounded or went missing, with cheap condos, parking lots and beer bottles. War is hell, they say, but they probably never envisioned its aftermath as a college-student ghetto "heaven."
Is it too late? Important battle sites in Georgia, Alabama, Virginia and even Washington, D.C., are either under threat from developers or already erased by our avaricious desire for commerce. So if battlefields will always eventually end up under development, why bother preserving any on continental soil at all? We seem determined to surrender our heritage for the sake of profit, so why not go all the way? Why not let the developers have it all and outsource our battlefields to foreign operators?
We could skim six inches of topsoil off battlefields like Gettysburg and replant them at Abu Ghraib and other foreign sites we occupy. Blackwater, that militia-for-hire that likes to use the civilian population of Iraq for target practice, could administrate Abu Gettysburg. To make the experience even more authentic, the Blackwater mercenaries could fire randomly into the crowd of visitors every 20th tour or so.
Just as gamblers are driven to the gaming tables, developers will inevitably want to cash in on these outsourced battlefields. Commercialism and our military heritage, it seems, must always be intertwined. So perhaps it would be better to preempt the development? Prisoners in the CIA’s secret prisons could be forced to construct hotels and casinos at their concentration camps. Abu Gettysburg would morph into Abu Vegas, as tourists flocked to drop big bucks and get a sneak peek at our future bloodstained battlegrounds.
Tourists would pass an entertaining evening, drinking and carousing and playfully positioned prisoners in naked human pyramids for photo ops. To the delight of the audience, inmates would do chain dances to tunes like "Chain, Chain, Chain," "Working on a Chain Gang," "Unchain My Heart," and "Back on the Chain Gang," and for an encore, "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?"
Floor shows and gambling could be combined, with prisoners being interrogated in front of a live audience. As the Beach Boys warbled their new hit, "Waterboarding, U.S.A.," the audience would place bets on which internee will break under what alternative interrogation method. It’d be fun for the whole family! Just remember, what happens in Abu Vegas, stays in Abu Vegas. Under penalty of death.
With this arrangement, we should never run out of battlefields to honor and eventually redevelop. Squads of Blackwater operatives could periodically venture out into the general Iraqi population and dedicate, consecrate and hallow new battlegrounds with the blood of innocent civilians. And if ever – God forbid, perish the thought –outsourced battle-sites in Iraq fall into short supply, we can always export them somewhere else.
Like Iran.
But if outsourcing our national heritage doesn’t appeal to you, it’s not too late to turn the tide of this battle. We can defeat the developers over here so we don’t have to fight them over there. You can learn more about what development is doing to historical battlefields and what you can do to combat it by checking with the Civil War Preservation Trust (www.civilwar.org).
Or you can turn your back on your country’s history and invest in a condo with a nice view of the spot where gallant American soldiers died for your right to live there. Your choice. After all, it’s a free country, isn’t it?
Or is it for sale?
Only the fields of battle know.
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