Keeping the Twin Towers down
By Lisa Fabrizio
web posted June 20, 2005
Let's get something straight. There is no justification for a moral equivalency that can possibly compare the unspeakable deaths suffered by 3,000 innocent human beings with the nauseatingly overblown notion of mistreatment of a handful of terror suspects held by the U.S. military. None.
Nor should there be any further sophomoric and odious comparisons of our installations at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere to the Soviet Gulag. Most of the country is painfully aware of the left wing's propensity for blaming America first, so their ongoing campaign in favor of protecting the ‘rights' of foreign terrorists should come as no surprise.
But what should come as a shock is that some of their number have been included to advise on the plans for the gaping chasm where the World Trade Center twin towers once stood. It's bad enough that unless Donald Trump comes to the rescue, the proposed Freedom Tower design will someday loom over the New York City skyline in all its twisted majesty.
Now it seems that we will also have to suffer something called the International Freedom Center, a museum whose mission apparently will concern itself more with America's purported stifling of freedom than its huge and actual contributions on behalf of same.
But don't take it from me. IFC scholar/advisor Eric Foner, a professor at Columbia University and devoted lefty says of it: "One of the things that most annoys people in other countries is the idea that we have a monopoly on freedom. It will be salutary for the museum to suggest that America has sometimes fallen short of the ideal."
Though a few moderate to right-wing advisors grace the IFC's roster, there are more than enough leftists and NGO types represented like Human Rights First, who seem obsessed with taking Donald Rumsfeld down for his alleged torture doctrine of enemy detainees.
There's also Anthony Romero of the insidiously left-wing ACLU, a group that currently whines that "religious icons were used to denigrate detainees" at Guantanamo Bay. Here is some ‘proof' of U.S. torture from their website:
One document released indicates that a soldier at an internment facility in Iraq "wrongfully display[ed] the symbolic of the 'Star of David,'" threatened a detainee, and was "very disrespectful in gestures, which in turn insulted the Arabs that were present at the time." American soldiers routinely used religious symbols to degrade and humiliate them.
In a lawsuit brought by the ACLU and Human Rights First against Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, one Iraqi detainee charged that soldiers taunted him by having a military dog pick up the Koran in its mouth. Another Iraqi detainee claimed that soldiers threw the Koran on the floor and stepped on it.
It's too bad Romero and his group of happy litigators aren't so sensible of the treatment accorded to religious icons and their display right here in their own backyard. As some have noted, if such tortuous treatment of the Bible occurred here in the USA, Mr. Romero would no doubt defend it as free speech.
Romero has also tried to sell the canard that the ACLU's efforts to ameliorate the treatment of detainees will guarantee the safety of our own soldiers should they be captured by the enemy. This will come as news to the families of the 3,000 civilians blown to smithereens by the Al Qaeda crowd whose signing of the Geneva Accords has escaped my attention
It is instructive to try and remember the reason why there even are detainees in Gitmo and who's responsible for it. Whether or not one believes that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was a haven for those who perpetrated 9/11 before the war, the fact is that Al Qaeda bigwig Abu al-Zarqawi and friends are now unquestionably there. Since their stand is there, we have been until now, without further attacks here. Which brings us back to the World Trade Center site.
In poll after poll, New Yorkers have overwhelmingly supported rebuilding the site as close to its original appearance as possible. But the various groups responsible for the project have decided to inflict the touchy-feely Daniel Libeskind design upon the city.
Michael Bloomberg -- a pseudo-Republican who was elected only because real 9/11 mayor, Rudy Giuliani deigned to put an arm around his shoulder--is apparently too busy trying to curb the city's smoking habits to worry about a memorial to the event he owes his job to.
So unless Trump can garner enough support to do otherwise, it seems the IFC and its advisors will have their way. It is bad enough that the towers themselves were annihilated by America haters, should the WTC memorial museum echo their message as well? 
Lisa Fabrizio is a columnist who hails from Connecticut. You may write her at mailbox@lisafab.com.
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