9/11 Memorial Hijacked by Leftists
Friday, July 01, 2005
If you were to visit the Nazi concentration camp in Auschwitz, Poland where 1.5 million Jews and others were systematically slaughtered by Hitler’s machine in the 1940’s, you would expect to learn what happened there. And you would.
If you were to visit Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, the site of the December 7th, 1941 Japanese bombing attack of the U.S. Naval fleet, you would expect to learn what happened there. And you would.
Similarly, when the new complex is completed at the New York City site of the World Trade Center where Islamofascists slammed planes into America’s landmark towers on September 11th, 2001 -- killing 3,000 innocents -- you should expect to learn what happened there. But you may not.
If the politically correct leftists have their way, they will instead devote 300,000 square feet of space, at taxpayer expense no less, to an exhibit focused on America’s ugly chapters of Indian genocide and black lynchings as well as Hitler’s Final Solution and Joseph Stalin’s Soviet gulags.
“The public will be confused at first, and then feel hoodwinked and betrayed. Where, they will ask, do we go to see the September 11 Memorial?”
That’s the legitimate question raised in a powerful June 8th Wall Street Journal column written by Debra Burlingame, a recent guest on my afternoon radio talk show on 630, KSLR. She is the sister of Charles Burlingame, the pilot of American Airlines fight 77, which was crashed at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.
Debra went on to write that visitors “will get a memorial that stubbornly refuses to acknowledge the yearning to return to that day. Rather than a respectful tribute to our individual and collective loss, they will get a slanted history lesson, a didactic lecture on the meaning of liberty in a post-9/11 world.”
I understand well that “yearning to return to that day.”
A year and a month after the terrorists had turned the Twin Towers into a pile of smoking rubble and twisted flesh, I had my first opportunity to visit Ground Zero.
I had come to the Big Apple for the expressed purpose of attending Valerie Geller’s “Creating Powerful Radio” workshop on Saturday, October 11, 2002. I was looking to get back into talk radio after a year hiatus off air.
I watched Lee Harris deliver the news with authority and impeccable timing in studio at 1010 WINS Radio, the most listened to station in America. And I sat behind the camera on a prime time telecast of Eyewitness News at WABC-TV where Joel Siegel, complete with his signature bushy mustache, panned Madonna’s latest movie, claiming sarcastically that he’d witnessed better acting by the volleyball in “Castaway” with Tom Hanks.
I jumped aboard one of those red double-decker guided tour buses, sitting on the top deck, enjoying the open air view of the city that never sleeps, as my head seemed to barely miss the stoplights hanging above.
To be honest, I wasn’t prepared for what I saw that day.
Like you, I witnessed the horrific video of the planes-turned-missiles, exploding in great balls of fire as 24,000 gallons of aviation fluid literally melted the steel. I watched with horror as the helpless people, trapped above the entry point of the airplanes, jumped to their untimely deaths from the 1,368 feet tall roofs. And I saw hundreds of New Yorkers run away from what appeared to be a cinematic special effect of a gigantic cloud of debris, becoming so covered with ashes themselves that they appeared almost ghostly.
But coming to the Ground Zero site in person and watching it on television was a difference as stark as night and day.
Because my perception of the World Trade Center site was limited to my 1997 medium-sized Sony TV, I had no real grasp of the enormity of the devastation. 16 acres is a lot of real estate!
Even though the entire site was surrounded by a 10-foot-tall chain link fence, dozens of tourists and I craned are necks to watch the construction workers in their white hardhats, hundreds of feet below, busily digging and rebuilding like worker bees in a honeycomb.
And we read the photo captions of 100 or so pictures that were crudely hung in a makeshift memorial along the sidewalk, documenting those horrific moments on September 11th, when American Airlines Flight 11 crashed at 8:46 a.m. at a speed of 490 miles per hour into the north tower of the World Trade Center between floors 94 and 98 and when United Airlines Flight 175 crashed at 9:03 at a speed of 590 miles per hour into the south tower, between floors 78 and 84.
There was a palpable silence, as we all drank in the moment, trying to connect with the enormity of the tragedy and the devastating loss of life that had occurred on that very site just the year before. Even the young children restrained themselves from their normal chit-chat, aware that this was almost sacred ground.
Equally moving was my walk across the block to St. Paul’s Chapel, an Episcopal church on Fulton Street, built in 1766 and Manhattan’s oldest public building today.
Miraculously unscathed by the terrorist attack, St. Paul’s became the headquarters for eight months after 9/11 for hundreds of volunteers who worked 12-hour shifts around the clock, serving meals, making beds, counseling and praying with fire fighters, construction workers and police. Massage therapists, chiropractors, podiatrists and even musicians came to the Episcopal sanctuary to attend to their needs.
Nearly every inch of the fancy iron fence that encircled the chapel was filled with mementos from Americans, expressing their broken hearts. From worn stuffed animals and freshly cut roses to dozens of small American flags and sorrowful handwritten poems accompanied by pictures of the dead, the outpouring of America’s grief was made visible.
I took an entire roll of film with my disposable camera, documenting the spontaneous 9/11 Memorial that had emerged from the burdened spirits of resilient Americans.
Some people were praying reverentially. Others were weeping quietly, unable to contain their pain for a moment longer.
The unofficial 9/11 Memorial, which I saw in 2002 along the sidewalks of the World Trade Center site and in the mementos on the fence of St. Paul’s Chapel, touched me in a profound and almost inexplicable way.
I fear that those in charge of this so-called International Freedom Center are more interested in blaming America first than capturing the sense of loss that fateful day when Islamic radicals attacked us on our soil. And, in the process, unless we take a stand, Americans will experience a profound sense of betrayal as they’ve made pilgrimages with their families, yearning “to return to that day.”
To his credit, Alan Gerson, the New York City Councilman who represents Ground Zero, recently called for a halt of the controversial International Freedom Center planned for the World Trade Center site because of concerns voiced by outraged 9/11 families. “The families have raised legitimate questions,” said Councilman Gerson.
Debra Burlingame wrote, “The public will have come to see 9/11 but will be given a high-tech, multimedia tutorial about man's inhumanity to man.”
Richard Tofel, president of the International Freedom Center, wrote in his June 9th Wall Street Journal column that they “will host debates and note points of view with which you, and I, will disagree.”
Put succinctly, the Take Back the Memorial website asks rhetorically: “Would it be appropriate to allow a museum that hosted debates justifying the atrocities of the Nazis on the sacred beaches of Normandy? Would it be appropriate to feature exhibits on Japanese internment at the Arizona Memorial?”
You might wonder who is behind this outrageous spectacle of a non 9/11 Memorial.
Answer: Financier Tom Bernstein whose Human Rights First group teamed up with the good ole leftist ACLU and filed a lawsuit three months ago against Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on behalf of terrorist detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And some guy named George Soros whom you might remember from the millions he spent of his personal fortune to defeat President Bush last November.
Not to mention Eric Foner, a rabidly liberal Columbia University history professor, who makes Ted Kennedy look like Jerry Falwell. Foner actually stated, while the rescue crews were still pulling bodies out of the debris, that “I'm not sure which is more frightening: the horror that engulfed New York City or the apocalyptic rhetoric emanating daily from the White House."
Debra Burlingame notes that Foner is “the same man who participated in a ‘teach-in’ at Columbia to protest the Iraq war, during which a colleague exhorted students with, "The only true heroes are those who find ways to defeat the U.S. military," and called for "a million Mogadishus."
You get the picture.
Just like American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 were hijacked by Islamic idealogues to crash into the World Trade Center towers, so too it appears that the leftist idealogues have hijacked the 9/11 memorial site to promote their own hatred of America.
Ground Zero must never become some kind of “blame America” monument.
TAKE A STAND ACTION STEPS:
1. Contact former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, asking him to use his position of influence to stop the politically correct 9/ll Memorial. Giuliani Partners, 5 Times Square, New York, NY 10036, 212.931.7300, e-mail: info@giulianipartners.com
2. Contact New York Governor George Pataki, State Capitol, Albany, NY 12224, 518-474-8390, website: E-mail him through his website: http://161.11.3.75/
3. E-mail the International Freedom Center President Richard Tofel and object to his outrageous attempt to politicize the 9/11 Memorial and turn it into a “blame America” enterprise: International Freedom Center, 120 Broadway, 31st Floor, New York, NY 10271, fax: (212) 336-6727, e-mail: dtofel@ifcwtc.org
4. Join 20,000 Americans and sign the petition: http://takebackthememorial.org/petition/
© 2005 Adam McManus.
Adam McManus hosts a weekday afternoon radio show called "Take A Stand" on AM 630, KSLR in San Antonio, Texas from 3-6 p.m. If you’d like him to speak to your group or you’d like to react to this column, call Adam at (210) 344-8481 ext 132 or e-mail adam@takeastand.net. Join 5,000 San Antonions and sign up for his weekday e-mail alert about upcoming guests, critical articles and action steps to make a difference Go to: www.TakeAStand.net and listen live at www.kslr.com |
