Yes, it's true. The "anti-idiotarians" of the blogosphere aren't happy with
Arizona's 9/11 Memorial. LittleGreenFootballs called it a '
disgrace', AceofSpades says '
start the bulldozers', and the outrage keeps going as you click from
Allahpundit to
FloppingAces to
Moonbattery (read all comments at your own risk). What the heck could be so wrong with a
9/11 memorial, you ask?
It depends on how you spin what's written on it.
The source of all this fury can be traced to a post by the Arizona blogger
Espresso Pundit, who took pictures of a few choice phrases etched into the steel memorial:
Then comes the spin.
For the first etching, he states:
Then the last date dawned on me. My gosh, it's the attack in the Gulf of Tonkin in August of 1964. Why is that significant? Because it's the fictionalized event that Lyndon Johnson used as an excuse to trick Congress into supporting the Vietnam War. You know...just like this time.
The left is desperate to compare Iraq to Vietnam, but do they really want to trivialize 9/11 by comparing it to Tonkin? That's the implied message. Johnson was a liar; Vietnam was a quagmire. Bush...well, you fill in the rest.
What an imagination!
For the second:
I thought the memorial was to pay tribute to the victims of 9/11, not score cheap political points about collateral damage in Afghanistan.
For the third:
That's right; what did Bush know and when did he know it? Funny, I walked over to the Pearl Harbor memorial and I didn't see any reference to Roosevelt getting advance notice of the bombing.
Now that's an interesting take. You can't make this stuff up (well, I take that back). It appears that Mr. Espresso simply doesn't get it:
A circular steel visor rising from the memorial will be tilted to take advantage of the sun's position. Etched into the visor will be three elements:
* A timeline of the specific events of 9/11, including the precise times that the planes hit and the World Trade Center's towers toppled.
* Phrases, sentiments, rescue efforts and names of Arizonans killed.
* A timeline of subsequent events, such as our deployment of troops to Afghanistan and Iraq. There will be room for future events to be added in the years ahead.
At varying times of the day, different phrases will be illuminated on the concrete base. And only on each Sept. 11, a 20- by 30-inch steel remnant from the 44th floor of the North Tower will be fully illuminated.
What's your position? Is this thing a 'disgrace'? Will the governor of Arizona be pressured to alter the memorial? We'll have to see, I guess. It appears, however, that so far the only people that have a problem with the memorial are the ones that ingested the Espresso rant:
Please, please, PLEASE call Governor Napolitano's office. I just got off the phone with them. They've received only 7 emails and ONE phone call (mine), and don't understand what all the hubbub is about.
What happened to "Never Forget", eh?
Contact info for Gov. Napolitano to express your support for the memorial.
UPDATE: This story has found it's way into an Arizona local paper: Sept. 11 inscriptions spark outrage, and the bloggers are still fuming