The jury was made up of intellectuals, artists, political appointees and one well connected 9/11 family member - who would later try and co-found upon the site the notorious “International Freedom Center” which laid responsibility for the attacks upon “an immoderate world.”
It was headed by Vartan Gregorian, born in Iran and educated in Lebanon. In his response to 9/11 he wrote “Islam, A Mosaic, Not a Monolith.” A history of Islam that told us how Muslim conquerors brought intelligence, enlightenment, and general religious tolerance while the West brought murder, plunder and religious persecution. Problems of Muslim nations today are attributed to Western colonialism and the creation of Isreal. Any transgression of Islam, no matter how barbaric, is equated with or topped by some action of the West, even if they occured ten centuries ago.
He chides Americans for their ignorance and belligerence toward Islam. Americans, he wrote, believe history is “irrelevant.” “Unfortunetly,” he wrote, “it is not.”
Except at the WTC site.
Returning any of what speaks directly to the attacks, such as the towers façade remnants or the Koenig Sphere, or identifying the victims as the “flyers of the missing” did, all that America embraced as commemorating 9/11 (because they spoke directly to the attacks) would be, the jury assured us in a brilliant display of Orwellian logic, “telling us what to think.”
Somehow, eliminating all of the authentic evidence of the crime from the site and all that we embraced as commemorating 9/11, is not “telling us what to think.”
Gazing upon the ruins of the WTC or the crushed fire trucks at the WTC site, or upon those facts of the “flyers of the missing” – “Cantor Fitzgerald, WTC 1, 104th floor” – we might conclude that the Islamic fundamentalists who attacked were “guilty” and their American targets “innocent.” We and future generations might draw from a visit to the site political and moral lessons. We, and they, might confront 9/11 and our responsibilities and obligations in response.
That, we are told, would be “didactic.” The site must be remade to eliminate that.
Instead, all history of Sept. 11, 2001 and all those authentic artifacts that speak directly to it will be discarded so that the jury can impose their own meaning upon the site.
At the WTC site, where America was attacked, a handful will control what you know in order to dictate what you think and feel.
In order that they might impose their own meaning, the jury ignored the history of the site and looked to Maya Lin’s (who sat on the jury) Vietnam War memorial for their inspiration. However, a memorial in Washington DC to a war on the other side of the world is not a viable model for a 9/11 memorial at the WTC site. No battles of Vietnam were fought on the Washington Mall; none of those soldiers whose name is on that wall died there.
The World Trade Center is the site of a vast crime against humanity. At what other place of equal or similar historical value have we discarded the history in order to impose our own meaning? Would anyone, for any reason, dismantle and dispose of the death camps at Auschwitz in order to do that? And specifically, to eliminate any moral or political lesson? Because that would be “didactic?”
Why are we doing it at the WTC?
If you discard or displace the authentic artifacts that speak directly to a history, you in effect deny it. It would be so if we did it anywhere else; it is so if we do at the WTC site.
That, however, was irrelevant to the jury.
We do not have the option of not confronting 9/11 at the WTC site. Indeed, that is what all go to the site for. The site must speak to future generations as equally as it does to us. No one may alter or omit history in order to impose their own meaning and to dictate what visitors should think and feel.
Yet this is all we are getting at the WTC site.
Bloomberg understands what the memorial must do; despite the fact that his will ignore 9/11 he claims it reminds us to “Never forget” and inspires us “Never again.” It, of course, does neither and that was the intent of the jury: to help us forget and thus inspire no more response than wallowing in the wonder of ourselves.
He is just clueless as to why. In response to the arrest of several men for allegedly plotting a jihadist threat against JFK airport his police commissioner told New Yorkers “to look at their world through the prism of 9/11.” In contrast, when neighborhood residents expressed concern, Bloomberg told them to “get a life. You have a better chance of being hit by lightening than killed by a terrorist.”
In response to the terrorists’ attacks upon America there was courage, there was heroism, there was sacrifice, there was compassion and there was wisdom. First, however, and this is the virtue from whence all those others come, there was humility. From the office workers who helped each other escape, to the firefighters who responded, from those trapped in the towers above, to the airline passengers in the skies over Western Pennsylvania. Thanks to Michael Bloomberg and the memorial jury, however, humility will not be found at the WTC site. And that is the final betrayal of 9/11.
Source: Original Article here
By Guest: Michael Burke on Dec 16, 07
For more info: see http://captbillyburke.blog.com/
Michael Burke
note: On 9/11, my brother, FDNY Capt. William F. Burke, Jr., of Eng. Co. 21 gave his life. I served on the family advisory committee on the memorial to the Lower Manhattan Development Corp and the advisory committee on the memorial and museum center.
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