On April 30, 2011, while on a visit to New York City, my father
and I made a point of going to Ground Zero. It was a Saturday
afternoon that was supposed to be warm but the wind was heavy and
my sweater wasn’t equal to the task. The chilliness was accompanied
by a feeling of emptiness. Although progress was being made on 1
World Trade Center there was still a large gaping hole where the
WTC once stood. It is well worth remembering that the Empire State
Building was
built in a little over a year ahead of schedule and under
budget in the midst of The Great Depression. Sadly, the rebuilding
of the WTC has become an unfortunate testament to our “can’t do”
bureaucratic spirit which has the effect of making us look weak and
small to our allies and enemies alike. Nor does it honor those who
perished that Tuesday morning.
The crowd at Ground Zero was scattered and
sparse. Certainly nothing like it was when I was there in June 2003
with my parents and my older brother Ezra. But with the passage of
time comes the inevitable fade of memory. The events simply aren’t
as immediate and people move on to other things. Fewer come by to
take note of what happened.
Yet 36 hours after my father and I had been there,
Ground Zero was once again teeming with people. This time it was
full of elation and euphoria when it was learned that Osama bin
Laden had been killed by a team of Navy SEALS. Unfortunately, this
collective catharsis was quickly chastised by the chattering
classes who said
we shouldn’t be celebrating the death of another human being like
we had just won the Super Bowl.
Well, by that logic, the famous kiss
between the sailor and the nurse in Times Square on V-J Day would
be considered an inappropriate public display of affection. After
all, there would not have been a victory over Japan if American
forces hadn’t dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yet
people back then had the common sense to understand that the sailor
and the nurse were spontaneously celebrating the end of the war
rather than celebrating the deaths of Japanese civilians. Of course
back then patriotism wasn’t something to feel ashamed
about.
The people at Ground Zero were celebrating justice
having been served. This so-called human being the chattering
classes wanted us to shed tears over had
written, “We — with God’s help — call on every
Muslim who believes in God and wishes to be rewarded to comply with
God’s order to kill the Americans (italics
mine) and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it.”
These same chattering classes have no objection to giving bin Laden
a Sharia compliant burial at sea. But raise a cross in honor of the
lives he took and you get a
lawsuit. Nor do these chattering classes have a problem with
building a mosque at Ground Zero but won’t say a word about
rebuilding St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, which was
destroyed when the South Tower
collapsed.
Of course, the tone of this discourse is set by our
Chatterer-in-Chief. Sure, President Obama gave the order to kill
bin Laden. But we cannot confront Islamic fundamentalist terrorism
if we are unable to speak of either Islamic fundamentalism or
terrorism. To call the events of September 11, 2001 “a man caused
disaster” and the 19 hijackers “violent extremists” doesn’t begin
to describe what happened that day much less why it happened.
America might not be at war with Islam but a critical mass of
Muslims is most surely at war with America and will not cease to be
at war with America simply because bin Laden is dead. For all of
President Obama’s efforts to embark upon a “new
beginning” with the Muslim world, it turns out that Muslims
hold him in greater
contempt than George W. Bush. It doesn’t matter if the
President of the United States watches NASCAR or reads Niebuhr.
Both are infidels just the same.
This means we can expect more attacks from Islamic
fundamentalists — albeit perhaps not on the scale of what occurred
on September 11, 2001. But then again how many lives would have
been lost on a busy Saturday night if that Times Square t-shirt
vendor hadn’t seen something and said something? So what does
it say about us that a gunman carrying business cards with the
phrase “Soldier
of Allah” can shout “Allahu Akbar!!!” as he kills thirteen of
his fellow servicemen and his religious motives merit no mention in
the official report? What does it say about us as a people when two
middle-aged liberal women are applauded for walking off their
own show when a man of conservative inclinations says that “Muslims
killed us on 9/11”? It says that we are easily spooked and those
who are easily spooked are not inclined to stand up for
themselves.
No sooner than Trey Parker and Matt Stone had their
lives threatened by a fringe Muslim group in Brooklyn over a two
part episode of South Park featuring the
Prophet Muhammad, Comedy Central pulled the plug. Yet
when Parker and Stone wrote The Book of
Mormon, producers fell all over themselves to mount the
musical and it became the
toast of Broadway, winning
nine Tony Awards. There were no Mormons with machine guns to
worry about. It’s easy to satirize a religion whose followers turn
the other cheek.
It doesn’t do us much good to remember those who
died on September 11, 2001 unless we remember who was responsible
for carrying out these acts of evil and the religious ideology
which drove them to do it.
