The World Trade Center site is unlike other memorials that were built to honor the sacrifice of wars that are over. The attacks of September 11th were the start of a war that is still being waged against us. The absence of an American flag waving above the plaza is a grave disappointment.
One of the early comments on our petition was left by Martin Sullivan | Our Armed Forces & Families: “Put the Towers back! Add a floor for an appropriate memorial, but the Towers must go back. We must show that we can indeed be knocked down by a surprise attack, but we are America and we will be back, bigger and stronger than before. The Towers were chosen as targets because they typified the United States. Any ‘alternative’ design for the WTC will simply become the Osama bin Laden memorial. Stand firm! Rebuild the Towers!”
Who would claim that the current WTC is bigger and stronger than before? From one angle the only prominent tower is shaped like the funereal obelisks that characterize cemeteries all over the world. And from the angle where the building is square, it is a jarring reminder of the “10 AM Skyline” when the North Tower stood alone. That may not look like an “Osama bin Laden memorial” to shortsighted go-with-the-flow Westerners — but for our implacable global adversaries, it sends a powerful message.
Michael Burke, who lost his brother William F. Burke, Jr. on 9/11, led the fight for more than ten years to “Save the Sphere” by returning the heroic relic to its rightful place on the Plaza. It survived hell on earth. Leave it to bureaucrats to displace what thousands of tons of steel could not budge. When Capt. Billy Burke ordered his men out of the tower and remained behind to help two friends, one of whom was a quadriplegic, make the slow descent, he knew what he was facing. But today’s World Trade Center was designed to lull visitors into thinking that we live in a business-as-usual world.
On October 4th of last year, Michael Burke left the following comment on a local website (The Riverdale Press):
The WTC memorial was designed and chosen specifically so visitors to the site would not have to confront the attacks. So they can, in the words of the memorial architect, think about 9/11 “or not.” It’s like if the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor excluded the U.S.S. Arizona.
The 9/11 attacks were so terrible and traumatic that, for all who witnessed and experienced it, it lives on still, as Councilman Eric Dinowitz makes clear.
However, we must beware dedicating our 9/11 memorials so exclusively to our need for “solace” and “reflection” that they become essentially places of forgetting. As we have done at the National Sept. 11 Memorial at the WTC. Where critics praised it for not recognizing the attacks.
Denying memory does not provide healing. And, more importantly, as very recent events have shown, we cannot afford to forget the threat of fanaticism and hate in our world.
Symbols speak louder than words. As we have shared before: “Terrorism is a war of symbols. That is why the Twin Towers were targeted and that is why they must be rebuilt.” — Lawrence Smith | All Other Americans
