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9/11 Memorial Museum Neglects Tales of Terror
Steve Malzberg
Monday, June 13, 2005
On 9/11/2001, Debra Burlingame lost her beloved brother Charles F. "Chic" Burlingame III, pilot of American Airlines flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon. Today Debra sits on the board of directors of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation.
Last week she penned an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal that shed light on the fact that a major part of the planned WTC Memorial calls for a huge on-site museum whose primary purpose will be to judge America's actions throughout her history to see if we, in effect, "deserved" what we got on 9/11. I kid you not.
The International Freedom Center, which reportedly will be granted about six times the space that will be allotted to the area where 9/11 artifacts can be displayed, will, according to its organizers, take us on "a journey through the history of freedom." That history is slated to include a look at Native American genocide and the lynchings and cross burnings that occurred in the south under Jim Crow laws.
The IFC also plans to look at Soviet gulags, Hitler's Final Solution, Chinese dissidents and Chilean refugees. All of this sitting atop the hallowed ground where the Twin Towers once stood. Why?
According to Burlingame, it satisfies the agenda of those people "who consider the post-9/11 provisions of the Patriot Act more dangerous than the terrorists that they were enacted to apprehend - people whose inflammatory claims of a deliberate torture policy at Guantanamo Bay are undermining this country's efforts to foster freedom elsewhere in the world."
And what's worse is that the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. is providing millions of our federal tax dollars to these fine folks.
Richard J. Tofel is the president of the IFC. In a WSJ op-ed piece written in response to the Burlingame op-ed, he speaks volumes about his philosophies and the philosophies of his group, by selecting the following quote from Judge Learned Hand. Speaking in New York City, Hand said, "The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the mind of other men and women."
Taken in the context of the 9/11 attacks, there should be no debate about who was right and who was wrong.
Just which other men and women would Tofel like us to understand when it comes to 9/11? Perhaps it's those minds that believe that the U.S. brought on the attacks by executing our foreign policy over the years.
This line of thought has no place at the World Trade Center Memorial. But I will tell you what should be erected instead of this out-of-sorts anti-American debating society that will be known as the International Freedom Center.
Let's build an on-site museum that traces the history of terrorist attacks against the United States and freedom-loving people all over the world. We can call it the Museum of the History of Terror. Here are some of my proposed exhibits:
June 5, 1968: Senator Robert Kennedy is assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian who was upset over the fact that the U.S. had agreed to sell fighter jets to Israel.
September 5, 1972: At the Olympic Games in Munich, Germany, 11 Israeli athletes are killed by Palestinian terrorists.
November 4, 1979: The U.S. Embassy in Teheran is taken over by supporters of the Ayatollah Khomeini. Fifty-three U.S. diplomats are held hostage until their release on January 20, 1981.
April 8, 1983: Islamic Jihad bombs the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 63, including the CIA's Middle East director.
October 23, 1983: Suicide truck bombers sent by Hezbollah kill 242 Marines while blowing up the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut.
December 4, 1984: Kuwait Airlines flight 221 is hijacked and diverted to Tehran. Hijackers kill two Americans from the U.S. Agency for International Development.
June 14, 1985: TWA flight 847 is hijacked en route from Athens to Rome and forced to Beirut. U.S. Navy diver Robert Dean Stethem is shot and his body dumped on the airport tarmac.
October 7, 1985: The Palestine Liberation Front hijacks the cruise ship Achille Lauro and tosses 69-year-old American Leon Klinghoffer overboard in his wheelchair.
April 5, 1986: Two American soldiers are killed in the bombing of a disco in West Berlin. Seventy-nine American servicemen are injured.
September 5, 1987: Abu Nidal hijacks Pan Am flight 73 in Pakistan. Twenty are killed, including several Americans.
February 17, 1988: U.S. Marine Lt. Colonel William Higgins, chief of the U.N. Peace Force, is kidnapped and killed by Hezbollah.
December 21,1988: Libyan terrorists allegedly blow up Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 259 aboard, including 200 Americans.
November 5, 1990: Jewish Defense League leader Rabbi Meir Kahane is assassinated in New York City by a group including Ramzi Yousef, who would be involved the first WTC bombing on February 26, 1993.
March 1, 1994: Sixteen-year-old Ari Halberstam is killed when Brooklyn livery cab driver Rashid Baz opens fire on a van transporting yeshiva students on the Brooklyn Bridge.
June 25, 1996: Khobar Towers near Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, is truck-bombed, killing 19 U.S. servicemen and wounding 240 more U.S. personnel.
February 23, 1997: Ali Hassan Abu Kamal, a Palestinian, opens fire from the observation deck of the Empire State Building, killing a Danish national and wounding several more before killing himself.
August 7, 1998: The U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania are simultaneously car-bombed, killing 291 and wounding 5,000 more.
October 12, 2000: The USS Cole is bombed while in port in Yemen, killing 17 U.S. sailors.
And these are just a select few. It's the acts of terror that led up to 9/11 that we must never forget. So, pick up the phone. Call New York Governor George Pataki, New Jersey Governor Richard Codey, your U.S. senators, congressmen, and members of the New York and New Jersey state Legislatures. Tell them "The IFC is not for me." Tell them to put the political correctness aside for once and tell it like it is. Insist that they tell the tales of terror.
Steve Malzberg
Monday, June 13, 2005
On 9/11/2001, Debra Burlingame lost her beloved brother Charles F. "Chic" Burlingame III, pilot of American Airlines flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon. Today Debra sits on the board of directors of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation.
Last week she penned an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal that shed light on the fact that a major part of the planned WTC Memorial calls for a huge on-site museum whose primary purpose will be to judge America's actions throughout her history to see if we, in effect, "deserved" what we got on 9/11. I kid you not.
The International Freedom Center, which reportedly will be granted about six times the space that will be allotted to the area where 9/11 artifacts can be displayed, will, according to its organizers, take us on "a journey through the history of freedom." That history is slated to include a look at Native American genocide and the lynchings and cross burnings that occurred in the south under Jim Crow laws.
The IFC also plans to look at Soviet gulags, Hitler's Final Solution, Chinese dissidents and Chilean refugees. All of this sitting atop the hallowed ground where the Twin Towers once stood. Why?
According to Burlingame, it satisfies the agenda of those people "who consider the post-9/11 provisions of the Patriot Act more dangerous than the terrorists that they were enacted to apprehend - people whose inflammatory claims of a deliberate torture policy at Guantanamo Bay are undermining this country's efforts to foster freedom elsewhere in the world."
And what's worse is that the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. is providing millions of our federal tax dollars to these fine folks.
Richard J. Tofel is the president of the IFC. In a WSJ op-ed piece written in response to the Burlingame op-ed, he speaks volumes about his philosophies and the philosophies of his group, by selecting the following quote from Judge Learned Hand. Speaking in New York City, Hand said, "The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the mind of other men and women."
Taken in the context of the 9/11 attacks, there should be no debate about who was right and who was wrong.
Just which other men and women would Tofel like us to understand when it comes to 9/11? Perhaps it's those minds that believe that the U.S. brought on the attacks by executing our foreign policy over the years.
This line of thought has no place at the World Trade Center Memorial. But I will tell you what should be erected instead of this out-of-sorts anti-American debating society that will be known as the International Freedom Center.
Let's build an on-site museum that traces the history of terrorist attacks against the United States and freedom-loving people all over the world. We can call it the Museum of the History of Terror. Here are some of my proposed exhibits:
June 5, 1968: Senator Robert Kennedy is assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian who was upset over the fact that the U.S. had agreed to sell fighter jets to Israel.
September 5, 1972: At the Olympic Games in Munich, Germany, 11 Israeli athletes are killed by Palestinian terrorists.
November 4, 1979: The U.S. Embassy in Teheran is taken over by supporters of the Ayatollah Khomeini. Fifty-three U.S. diplomats are held hostage until their release on January 20, 1981.
April 8, 1983: Islamic Jihad bombs the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 63, including the CIA's Middle East director.
October 23, 1983: Suicide truck bombers sent by Hezbollah kill 242 Marines while blowing up the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut.
December 4, 1984: Kuwait Airlines flight 221 is hijacked and diverted to Tehran. Hijackers kill two Americans from the U.S. Agency for International Development.
June 14, 1985: TWA flight 847 is hijacked en route from Athens to Rome and forced to Beirut. U.S. Navy diver Robert Dean Stethem is shot and his body dumped on the airport tarmac.
October 7, 1985: The Palestine Liberation Front hijacks the cruise ship Achille Lauro and tosses 69-year-old American Leon Klinghoffer overboard in his wheelchair.
April 5, 1986: Two American soldiers are killed in the bombing of a disco in West Berlin. Seventy-nine American servicemen are injured.
September 5, 1987: Abu Nidal hijacks Pan Am flight 73 in Pakistan. Twenty are killed, including several Americans.
February 17, 1988: U.S. Marine Lt. Colonel William Higgins, chief of the U.N. Peace Force, is kidnapped and killed by Hezbollah.
December 21,1988: Libyan terrorists allegedly blow up Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 259 aboard, including 200 Americans.
November 5, 1990: Jewish Defense League leader Rabbi Meir Kahane is assassinated in New York City by a group including Ramzi Yousef, who would be involved the first WTC bombing on February 26, 1993.
March 1, 1994: Sixteen-year-old Ari Halberstam is killed when Brooklyn livery cab driver Rashid Baz opens fire on a van transporting yeshiva students on the Brooklyn Bridge.
June 25, 1996: Khobar Towers near Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, is truck-bombed, killing 19 U.S. servicemen and wounding 240 more U.S. personnel.
February 23, 1997: Ali Hassan Abu Kamal, a Palestinian, opens fire from the observation deck of the Empire State Building, killing a Danish national and wounding several more before killing himself.
August 7, 1998: The U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania are simultaneously car-bombed, killing 291 and wounding 5,000 more.
October 12, 2000: The USS Cole is bombed while in port in Yemen, killing 17 U.S. sailors.
And these are just a select few. It's the acts of terror that led up to 9/11 that we must never forget. So, pick up the phone. Call New York Governor George Pataki, New Jersey Governor Richard Codey, your U.S. senators, congressmen, and members of the New York and New Jersey state Legislatures. Tell them "The IFC is not for me." Tell them to put the political correctness aside for once and tell it like it is. Insist that they tell the tales of terror.
