91Èȱ¬

"...after lengthy consideration the idea was rejected"

I very much doubt it. Are you really saying the government permitted serious consideration to be given to erecting a national monument to their own epic narcissism and US-sychophancy? Per-lease.

The detritus of war is hideous, this doesn't mean that war will never happen again - nor does it mean that that war is not sometimes necessary - does the B.B.C. Seriously believe that Nazism would have been defeated without war?

Compliments to IWM for an excellent idea & addition to its exhibits.

Compliments to Mr Deller who whether or not for 'Art's sake' has made a significant humanitarian gesture.

Fantastic. An artist has, yet again, changed the meaning of a space. I dislike, but am equally fascinated by, War Museums. We have wanted to commit atrocities to each other for since the start of human records. I think it is about time we started asking why?

I visited the IWM about 10 years ago and my reaction to the hardware in the main hall was the same as Will's - it was all rather exciting.

The rest of the collection however, was in stark contrast. I felt it portrayed some of the most distressing aspects of war very effectively. The last exhibit I saw as I was leaving was about Belsen.

I walked into the main hall thinking that the weaponry all looked rather exciting, but I left the museum in tears.

Why do people attribute every bombing, every killing in Iraq to the US/UK? (JonnyH @1). Those who plant the bomb or carry out the murders are to blame. Mr Deller doesn't seem to be suggesting that the car on dispolay was hit by a US bomb.

I'm not pretending that we didn't make a complete mess of the situation in Iraq post-2003, or that that was a factor in allowing the terrorism there to spread. I'm not pretending that civilians haven't died as a result of Coalition actions. But if someone plants a car bomb or does a suicide bombing it is THEIR FAULT ALONE. The US didn't force them to do it. They made a choice to go out and kill innocent people.

If a woman is raped on a run-down estate with inadequate policing, people do not claim that the Government is guilty of rape. Why not? Because it was the rapist's decision and the rapist's fault. Likewise, the terrorists must carry the blame for their actions.

Are we really incapable of using our own judgement in forming an opinion on the nature of war? Was is indeed terrible but aspects of it are glorious in equal measure - I fear that the IWM is becoming dominated, like so many public bodies, by politically correct smarmies who make the right noises about inclusion and diversity. It won't be long before it will be one big guilt trip dedicated entirely to the exploits of whatever minority is fashionable at the time.

When you say the charred remains cannot to shown, is that on moral grounds or a practical one? The car doesn't work for me. I mean, even in the context of a war museum it still requires explanation and outside of it it's true meaning is completely lost, it's a wrecked car. Broken people is what it should be about.

Will Gompertz.

thank you, good post, and very topical given our own celebration of "September marks the 70th anniversary of the onset of the blitz - a German bombing campaign that continued until May 1941."

it is telling, and perhaps shaming, that a counter-point to the celebration of our ability to kill and maim with industrial efficiency was only provided after an artist suggested it.

re hardware and its "dramatic and exciting" effect.

I see that Simon (#5) agrees and I suppose I would too if I did spend (waste!) time visiting a war museum. the question is, is this gender specific?? we're all males and I am quite certain that, if surveyed, a much smaller percentage of women would share our 'delights'.

oh, and ste pee (#2), do you believe that "Nazism" ended with WWII? seriously?

There is something fundamentally warped and twisted about a society that trains its citizens to kill on the demand of the state and then expects them instantly to switch back to a non-violent civilian life.

The reason that society denies the glaringly obvious truth that displays of impersonal murderous violence is just fine and dandy for its (mainly) male youth so that we can train soldiers, but then refuses to acknowledge that such training produces a fractured disaffected violent society.

This is the reason that violent films and video games are not censored and that physical violence in the form of soccer, rugby, ice hocky and boxing for example is permitted, yet at the same time teachers are not permitted to chastise disruptive students. We get as a society for which we train. We train violent thugs, so that is what we get. All glorifying and sanitising of war is wrong and that includes all displays of weapons out of context of actual battle. Every 'enemy' 'killed' in a video game should require the player to write a letter of condolence to the murdered persons friends and family!

The Imperial War Museum is part of the state's propagandising for the acceptability of violence between people. It should be a requirement that there is a display of the pain, grief and sorrow of those close to a dead or severely injured combatant or indeed the far more numerous non-combatant. Collateral damage must be a feature of all 'war' museums. Otherwise we just breed and train more bunches of disaffected violent youth that act in the way that has been reported today in Afghanistan (cutting body parts off of randomly murdered non-combatant Afghan civilians for trophies.) This is partly due to the way that war is shown in museums, such as the IWM and it is our responsibility.

Killing another human being is wrong in all circumstances, and is murder, be that human being fictional as in video games or in real life. Killing may in extremis become justifiable, but it remains wrong and is a pathetic demonstration of how flawed and imperfect that we and our politicians still remain.

Whoever detonated a bomb in a book market didn't care about burning a few Korans.

"He also says it highlights that it is civilians and not soldiers who are increasing the victims of conflict. The facts bare this out. At the beginning of the 20th Century 10% of all casualties in conflict were civilians, now that figure is 90%"

Not so- or rather a bit of statistical cherry picking and thoroughly Eurocentric to boot. Warfare circa 1850-1900 was perhaps as "sanitised" in its impact on civilians as it ever was- at least as long as you're talking about wars within Europe between major European powers and (I suspect)confining civilian mortality to those killed as a drect result of military action (e.g. by the shelling of Paris in the siege of 1870-1) but excluding people who died as a result of war-provoked disease or hunger.

Things were very different when it came to wars of colonial expansion fought by those same powers against the indigenous populations of their empires(think of the fate of the Herero in then German South West Africa as the most extreme end of the spectrum but even less blatantly genocidal colonial campaigns saw far more than 10% of civilian casualties). And what about cases like the Triple Alliance War in South America which almost wiped out the male population of Paraguay- admittedly because the Paraguan leader chose to treat the whole male population of his country above the age of about seven years as soldiers-a particularly acute case of the problem of defining who's a civilian anyway in time of war.


In a longer historical perspective, the notion that war can be sanitised and given over to a small number of professionals who then take each other on in a neatly defined separate, rule- bound, world with limited impacts on wider society is simply absurd; there can be few more "total" types of warfare than the ravaging of fields in a world based primarily on subsistence agriculture, perhaps only exceeded by the experience of an urban community under siege in the medieval or early modern world. It's a remarkable indication of just how peaceful and remote from the realities of conflict that those of us fortunate to live in places like the UK have become that this kind of installation causes the stir it does

Sorry to be a nitpicker, but the 91Èȱ¬ is the international ambassador for proper English, so:

"He also says it highlights that it is civilians and not soldiers who are increasing (increasingly, surely?) the victims of conflict. The facts bare (bear - the other one means naked - this one means large furry creature and to bear a load) this out."

Keep up the good work etc - I can ignore one typo, but two in the space of two sentences distracted me from a really good article!