Freedom Does Not Come for Free..

Washington DC was also an interesting place to visit. Not perhaps a place, where I would come back again and again, but certainly worth visiting on this trip. The city itself is not as attractive or lively as Boston or New York, where I am at the moment, but it has got the representative monuments of United States. By seeing those monuments, one can get a glimpse of the soul of the nation, its shared values and symbols.


One thing that came very clear during the visit to Washington was that words such as liberty and freedom are here considered to be very important or even sacred. So important, that the nation has lost its finests throughout the decades, or actually centuries, in conflicts both within the country and outside of it. Monuments dedicated for various conflicts, such as World War II or Korean war in early 1950's, spot the national mall, the area in the heart of Washington DC.


In my opinion, it is prevalent in Europe to think about the concepts of liberty and freedom in a very abstract or even philosophical sense, whereas here it seems to be more about actions that one is willing to take in order to secure both the liberty and freedom. And often, those actions do not come without sacrifices, what for example we Finns know from our own history. Freedom just does not come for free, visit Arlington or any Finnish cemetary to see that in your own eyes.


There are various opinions, especially outside States, about the actions of Americans in Iraq or before that in Vietnam and the justifications of those actions and real reasons being hidden from general public. But in the end, I think, for example most of the Europeans owe a lot to Americans for their present situation. Not only because of American interventions both in WW I and WW II, but also because of their presence in the old continent during those long decades of cold war. And even nowadays, Americans are securing strategically important resources (read: oil) also for Europeans with their blood, guts, and tax dollars.

I am not trying to glorify all the actions Americans have taken and will take in the future, but I feel that the present blame put on them for example in Finnish media is far too much. I personally think that in Europe there is still remains of somekind of WW II trauma, which disables us from acting decisively, when necessary (for example in Balkans in 1990's). And I feel that it is a huge, or in future even a costly political weakness, when dealing with rogue nations or political movements that decide not to play the game according to the set rules.

P.s. Eventhough I spent here a lot of lines talking about monuments dedicated to wars and their sacrifices, there are plenty of cultural attractions in Washington too. I just want to name one here from the Smithsonian museums. The Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.. Phew! It is gigantic, one day was not even nearly enough to go through it and its shows such as IMAX movies.

[UPDATE (September 25, 2006): Added some pictures, at last.]