‘War on Terror’ panel will honor past, present, future service members Saturday
How best to honor our nation’s military will be discussed in downtown Las Vegas on Veterans Day.
The Global War on Terrorism Memorial Foundation will host a panel about the topic at the World Market Center on Saturday during the MCON military convention.
The panel follows the foundation reopening its public campaign seeking input on a new memorial for service members in Washington D.C.
Foundation president and CEO Michael Rodriguez will sit on the panel, alongside Kirsten Brunson, who served over 20 years in the Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corps. Rodriguez’s youngest son, who is a high school senior that plans to enlist in the military, will also join.
“Equally important to the conversation that we’re gonna have is to engage the audience and get them to look at this conflict in a very different manner,” said Rodriguez, who is a Green Berets veteran. “Because everyone thinks it’s just another war, but no two wars are the same. And the striking difference with this one is that it’s the longest war.”
The global “War on Terror,” which followed the Sept. 11 attacks, is unique from other modern conflicts because multiple generations fought in the same war, often years apart from one another, Rodriguez said. His oldest son deployed to Afghanistan as part of the same war in which both Rodriguez and his wife served.
“In that moment, I was just like, ‘Man, what would have been like, for my father, who’s a Vietnam veteran, watch me graduate Airborne School then go fight the Viet Cong, or what would have been like, from my grandfather, who fought in World War II, watch my father complete his artillery training in Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and then go fight the Nazis or in the Central Pacific?’” Rodriguez said about his son’s deployment.
‘Help Design History Campaign’
The foundation is designing a memorial for soldiers who fought in the “War on Terrorism.” The memorial will be adjacent to the Lincoln Memorial in the National Mall in Washington D.C.
The public can help steer the project’s artistic direction through the “Help Design History Campaign,” an online survey, according to Rodriguez.
The initiative started in 2018. This September it was opened to the public for 22 days, to represent how many years the U.S. was involved in the war. The deadline was extended to allow additional public input, Rodriguez said.
The campaign is open from now until the end of the year. The survey can be found on the Global War on Terrorism Memorial Foundation’s website.
A previous version of this story misstated the name of the Global War on Terrorism Memorial Foundation.
Contact Mark Credico at mcredico@reviewjournal.com. Follow him @writermark2.
