Respect History — Oppose the Arch

As your constituent, I urge you to oppose the proposed triumphal arch at Memorial Circle adjacent to the main entrance of Arlington National Cemetery. I write as someone who has visited Washington often. I have taken quiet walks across the Mall to the Lincoln Memorial, spent time at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and meditated on the rows of white stones in the cemetery. Arlington National Cemetery sits on land once part of Robert E. Lee’s plantation, a place transformed by war into a vast field hospital and, later, the nation’s preeminent military cemetery where thousands died, were tended, or were laid to rest. Those layers of history — grief, sacrifice, and uneasy reconciliation — give this place a moral weight that should not be repurposed as a stage for political vanity. This is not the right site for a project like this, if indeed there is any reason at all for this project our republic. Placing a colossal triumphal arch on the roundabout framing the cemetery’s main entrance would dominate historic sightlines, intrude on the axial relationship between Arlington and the Mall, and convert a site of mourning into a backdrop for partisan spectacle. Veterans, relatives of the fallen, preservationists, and many citizens have expressed that such a structure feels disrespectful to those interred and to families who come seeking solace. The arch would also introduce traffic, safety, and crowd-management challenges at an already heavily visited and solemn gateway, and risks diverting public funds and attention away from pressing veterans’ services and cemetery preservation needs. Commemoration should uplift the memory of service and sacrifice, not overshadow it. Arlington’s power comes from restraint: the careful placement of monuments, the quiet dignity of the Tomb, and the visible testimony of cost in lives lost and lives altered. Erecting a triumphal, celebratory monument at this threshold would erode that restraint and cheapen the reverence due here. The original The Arc de Triomphe in Paris was commissioned by Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte to celebrate his military victories in establishing his empire. We are not, nor never want to be that sort of polity. Please stand with veterans, family members, historians, and all who value sacred civic space by opposing construction of the arch at Memorial Circle and supporting measures that protect Arlington’s historic character and solemn purpose.