 It's a fascinating volley in the war of the monuments, but
according to the news today, a monument was dedicated in Behesht-e Zahra cemetery in Tehran to commemorate the "martyrs" who bombed the US Marine Barracks in Beirut. It was sponsored by a group known as the "Committee for the Glorification of Martyrs of the Global Islamic
Movement".
The piece itself is a simple 5 foot high square black tower with low relief plaques of soldiers picking up their dead. The rest of the tower is covered with etched writing in both Arabic and western
characters. Meanwhile, back in North Carolina, what started as a tree-planting memorial project between Camp Lejeune and Jacksonville, blossomed into a larger project. Since there were plenty of funds left over from the trees, a commission elected to raise a permanent monument to those
who were killed and sponsored a competition at the NC University School of Design. The final product, dedicated in 1986, features two broken walls, the inscription "They Came in Peace", the
names of the dead, stair steps and a bronze figure of an armed Marine. Five years later, a poem that was donated by families in Beirut was cast in bronze and installed in the memorial.
So I'm thinking about how many other memorials tell two sides to the same story. In the US, of course, we have both Confederate and Union monuments to the events of the Civil war. But how many directly confront interpretations of the same events. More later...
12:02:33 PM 
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