U.S. Rep. Jared Golden of Lewiston hopes someday to take his baby daughter, Rosemary, to a memorial in Washington dedicated to the men and women who served their nation during the Global War on Terrorism and tell her what it meant to his life.

Golden, who joined the Marines after 9/11 and served in Afghanistan and Iraq, doesn’t know when the memorial will be built or exactly where it’s going to be. He can’t even say for sure that the war will be over by then.

But thanks to a successful bipartisan push that he and other congressional veterans made in 2021 to get the project a prime location in the nation’s capital, he is confident the day will eventually arrive.

“It’s really important to me that the country doesn’t ever forget” the sacrifices made after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Golden said in a recent interview.

Providing a permanent, high-profile place for people “to gather, reflect and heal,” he said, is a way to honor “an entire generation of Americans who served” in the country’s longest-running war.

“It’s going to be art,” said the president of the Global War on Terrorism Memorial Foundation, Michael “Rod” Rodriguez, a former U.S. Army Green Beret sniper who deployed 10 times during 21 years in uniform. “That’s the only way to convey the story and share the emotions.”

Golden, a second-term Democrat from Maine’s 2nd District, said the bipartisan For Country Caucus, a group of 26 veterans who serve in the U.S. House, decided a year ago to push an issue that had to be addressed before the memorial could move forward: where to put it.

Rodriguez said backers had a clear answer. They want it on “our nation’s front lawn,” not far from the most-visited sites in Washington such as the Lincoln Memorial and the memorials that honor the veterans of Vietnam, Korea and World War II.

The hitch that proponents faced is that two decades ago, Congress passed a

law that barred the placement of any more memorials within an area in the District of Columbia known as the National Reserve, basically the space in and around the National Mall and Tidal Basin.

At the time, legislators were responding to criticism that without the prohibition, the lovely and largely open space would ultimately become little more than a clogged showcase for countless worthy causes.

Source: https://www.centralmaine.com/2022/03/12/veterans-caucus-maines-jared-golden-play-crucial-role-in-war-on-terrorism-memorial/