It is a symbol, like none other, of twentieth-century aspiration and tragic folly.
Then, after the tragic folly of Gallipoli in which 7,600 Australians were killed came the catastrophe of the European western front where 50,000 more perished.
The book ends with a horrific act of self-inflicted violence that can be seen as either martyrdom or tragic folly, a provocative ambiguity of the sort that teachers are wont to exploit in the classroom.
So Green Zone is not a journalistic tale of real-life reporter Chandrasekaran investigating the early months of the tragic folly that is Bush and co's war in Iraq.
Neoconservatives have tried to transmute the war from a tragic folly into a heroic endeavor undermined by quislings, and the entertainment industry has turned the 60's into caricature, warping both the war and its time into cliché and myth.
Even in Newfoundland and Labrador, where we spend the morning in sombre reflection on the grotesquerie of war and the tragic folly of Man, we still manage to get the barbecues and beers going by the early afternoon.
Like most wars, the war of 1914-1918 was begun with the expectation of quick victory, created more problems than it solved, and was punctuated by moments of tragic folly.
