The Forgotten War: How One Marine Fought to Honor Desert Storm Veterans
A Swift Victory That Faded From Memory
The first Persian Gulf War was a military operation that seemed almost too good to be true. In just six weeks during 1991, coalition forces liberated Kuwait from Saddam Hussein’s brutal occupation, and the Iraqi army surrendered in a ceremony led by General Norman Schwarzkopf—a commander whose confidence and charisma captured the nation’s attention. His now-famous words at that surrender perfectly captured the moment’s authority: “I’m not here to give them anything. I’m here to tell them exactly what we expect them to do.” “Stormin’ Norman,” as Americans affectionately called him, became the most beloved battlefield general since World War II, a symbol of American military competence restored. President George H.W. Bush rode the wave of victory to an astonishing 89 percent approval rating, and for the first time since the traumatic Vietnam era, Americans felt genuinely proud of their military. “By God, we’ve kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all,” Bush declared triumphantly. More than half a million American servicemembers deployed for Operation Desert Storm, with 148 killed in action—a remarkably low number that spoke to the operation’s effectiveness. Yet despite this success, the war gradually disappeared from public consciousness, becoming what historians would call a footnote in American history. This erasure didn’t sit right with everyone who served.
One Man’s Unlikely Mission
Scott Stump was just a Lance Corporal in the Marines during Desert Storm—about as far from power and influence as you can get in the military hierarchy. But the neglect of his war bothered him deeply, gnawing at him until he decided to do something audacious: build a memorial to Desert Storm on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., arguably the most prestigious and competitive piece of real estate in America. “I just felt like that was not right, and that something had to be done to change that,” Stump explained. His credentials for such an ambitious undertaking were essentially nonexistent. “I’d been to Washington D.C. one time in my life; that was the summer of 8th grade,” he admitted. “I had no connections, didn’t know anybody.” What he did have was determination and a belief that the service and sacrifice of his fellow veterans deserved recognition. The path ahead would prove far more difficult than any battlefield he’d faced, requiring a different kind of courage—the persistence to fight bureaucracy, indifference, and the cold calculations of political priorities for years on end.
The Battle for Recognition
Stump’s first challenge was convincing Congress to authorize the memorial, a process he compared to “pulling teeth.” The responses he received revealed an uncomfortable truth about how Americans measure military sacrifice. “Well, there weren’t enough people that died, you know, for there to be a memorial,” he was told repeatedly. This cold calculation—that only sufficient bloodshed warrants remembrance—struck at the heart of what the memorial controversy revealed about how we honor service. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Rick Atkinson, who wrote an acclaimed book about Desert Storm before his famous works on World War II and the Revolutionary War, pushed back forcefully against this utilitarian view of sacrifice. He called each of the 148 lives lost “unique and precious as a snowflake,” arguing that “as a nation we should always remember all those who die for us.” The relatively low casualty rate compared to the thousands or tens of thousands many had feared, Atkinson noted, was actually “a measure of success,” not a reason to forget. The U.S. deployment represented the largest commitment of American troops to combat since Vietnam, and those who served lived with genuine fear. “We all felt like there was a chance that we might never come home,” Stump recalled. “We were rallied around the commanding officer one Friday afternoon and he gave us the speech—you know, ‘Look to your left, look to your right, one of you is not going to be coming home.'” That these fears didn’t materialize on a massive scale should be celebrated, not used as justification for forgetting.
Unexpected Opposition and Persistence
In his quest for support, Stump reached out to the biggest names from Desert Storm, including Colin Powell, who as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs had become one of the operation’s breakout “stars.” The response was disappointing. An aide relayed Powell’s position: Desert Storm was “a short operation and not an extended war and he would be surprised that Congress would pass this and allot a place on the Mall for such a memorial.” Powell’s skepticism was understandable from a practical standpoint—he thought the country wouldn’t support it politically or financially. But as Atkinson observed, “He’s obviously wrong.” Stump pressed forward, and eventually the memorial was approved for an October opening in a prime location: next to the Lincoln Memorial and down the street from the Vietnam Memorial. The main feature, called the Storm Wall, is a bas relief sculpture that tells the story of Operation Desert Storm’s various phases, from the stealth fighter that dropped the first bombs on Baghdad through the air campaign and finally the four-day ground war. But securing this prestigious site required its own battle. “We had to fight tooth-and-nail to secure this site,” Stump said, “and in fact the typical time period for site selection takes 18 months. Ours took 39 grueling months.” The resistance was blunt: “You don’t belong there. This isn’t important enough to be located in that spot.”
The Price of Memory
The memorial’s location ultimately makes its own powerful statement. “A visitor is going to say it must be important, otherwise it wouldn’t be right here by the Lincoln Memorial or the Vietnam Memorial,” Stump noted. The $42 million price tag presented another challenge—Stump had to raise every penny. Well over half the funding came from Kuwait, the nation whose freedom was secured by Desert Storm. When asked if it bothered him to depend on Kuwait to honor an American-led war effort, Stump gave a measured response: “It doesn’t bother me from the fact that it’s making it happen and we’re getting it done. But it’s not right.” His words capture a complicated truth—gratitude that the memorial will exist, frustration that America didn’t fund it itself. The entire experience left Stump disillusioned, though not defeated. “Absolutely—been disillusioned at every turn of the way,” he admitted. In many ways, his disillusionment mirrors what happened to the war itself in American memory. President Bush, despite his sky-high approval ratings immediately after the war, lost his reelection bid. Saddam Hussein remained in power in Iraq. Then came September 11th and the “forever wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan that would drag on for two decades, making Desert Storm’s swift victory seem almost quaint by comparison.
Remembering What Matters
Atkinson observed that “you’re only as good as the last war you fought,” and subsequent conflicts demonstrated that “military power will only take you so far, that the success of Desert Storm is not a predicate for success in future combat.” This reality relegated Desert Storm to what Atkinson called “a footnote” in history. But as he emphasized, “That doesn’t mean it should be forgotten. We’ve got a lot of footnotes in our history, and the footnotes are important.” For the approximately 600,000 Desert Storm veterans, the memorial represents something profound. “Most of them will think, ‘Well, gosh, we thought they were never going to remember,'” Atkinson predicted. It took 35 years and one determined man’s obsession to construct not just a tribute to those who served, but a remembrance of a unique moment in American history. “Almost two generations ago, we amassed this very large force, with a lot of international allies, and very competently set out 6,000 miles to right a wrong and to do it at minimal cost,” Atkinson reflected. “I think that’s a pretty good history lesson.” Stump sees the memorial’s message extending beyond Desert Storm itself, offering hope for future generations facing their own challenges: “They’re going to look at that a hundred years from now and say, ‘Wow, if they could come together and do the right thing, maybe we can, too.'” In the end, the Desert Storm Memorial stands as testament not just to a military victory, but to the power of one person’s conviction that every service and sacrifice deserves to be remembered, regardless of whether it fits neat formulas about what makes history “important enough.”
