Of hubris, monuments and men

Statues, monuments, war memorials and art installations are erected in optimistic times. How long they endure is not up to their creators.

In Baghdad, Saddam Hussein built the Victory Arch, two massive crossed swords, to commemorate the Iran-Iraq war and serve as a paean to his reign. Unlike many of the monuments to Mr. Hussein, the Victory Arch still stands, and is now, somewhat surprisingly, undergoing a renovation.

The monument evokes mixed reactions among Iraqis. "Nuremberg and Las Vegas all rolled in one," Kanan Makiya, an Iraqi-born author and architect called it in "The Monument: Art, Vulgarity and Responsibility in Iraq." Mr. Makiya, who now lives in Massachusetts, was surprised, but glad to hear that the Victory Arch would shine again. He wrote in an e-mail: "It is such a perfect symbol of the Baathist experience. It is vulgar, but vulgar in an unspeakably horrible, terrible - and therefore unique - way."