Who Can Really Say?

I try to imagine a day 60 years from now, when the veterans of our present conflict ? old men themselves by then ? gather at their brand-new war memorial, somewhere down on the Mall, to commemorate their own D-Day (that would be March 20, 2063). What will that new generation of old soldiers have in their minds that day? Not the certainty and confidence that today's old men have. Nor the sense of having served in a democratic war that every young man fought in and all the folks at home supported. They'll remember their buddies, and the good times and the bad ones, and wish, perhaps, that their sad war had been worthy of them.

Something has gone badly wrong when (with the exception of a few country songs) our popular culture visibly recoils from the biggest event of our time. Hollywood has plenty of ''courage'' when it comes to Michael Moore conspiracies or Madonna's bottom. But ask them to make a post-9/11 thriller in which Americans are the good guys and the enemy is, well, the enemy, and they'd tell you there's no audience for it. Just like they told Mel he'd lose his shirt on ''The Passion of the Christ.'' It's not about economics, it's about the loss of that ''cultural confidence'' James Lileks wrote about.