The New York times editorials have beaten me to this, but I'm weighing in on the subject because I feel I have a right to as a New Yorker, and an obligation to as a believer in non-violence and education.
Almost four years ago, roughly 2,800 people died in an atrocious act of violence against non-combatant civilians. It was not as heinous as the bombings of Hiroshima, Dresden, or Nagasaki, or as appalling as the Nazi death camps, but it was shocking and brutal and senseless, and evil. Since then, the families of the victims, who have suffered just as the families of other victims of violence everywhere, have had a strong voice in shaping how their loved ones are memorialized on the site where they died, as they should. But the recent hue and cry by a minority of those families against the placement of the International Freedom Center and the Drawing Center is misplaced at best and unflatteringly narrow-minded at worst.
These particular families object to the broad subject matter the museum would explore: the subjects of freedom—and lack of it—in other countries; of atrocities committed by governments against their own and other people; the myriad ways in which societies organize themselves for good or ill. If done thoughtfully and with a dispassionate eye, The International Freedom Center has the potential to be both highly educational and deeply moral, a place where people can examine both history and contemporary events and be reminded of the dangers of absolute political power. They also object to the presence of Soho's Drawing Center, which has a reputation for presenting controversial artwork, including some disturbing responses to 9/11.
About the latter, the NYTimes editorial says, "If the Drawing Center is forced to withdraw from ground zero rather than accept the censorship of exhibitions that are yet to be imagined, no other respectable arts institution will take its place." What would take up residence there instead would be merely a mouthpiece for one point of view, rather than a safe, open space for the expression of many viewpoints, or for the asking of hard questions. Is that kind of repression and censorship what should come of the events of 9/11? How would that repression of voices differ from what goes on in, say, Iran, right now? Or in the former Soviet Union, if you prefer a Cold War example.
And what, exactly, is objectionable about the agenda of the International Freedom Center, which intends to "feature exhibits on topics from civil rights to the Polish Solidarity movement," according to the New York Daily News? Apparently only that it is not focused solely on the victims of 9/11. But those victims already have a huge memorial consisting of the footprints and much of the grounds of the Twin Towers. This does not seem to be enough, however, for a small group of their families. They seem to want to claim all of the site as their personal memorials, as though the deaths of their loved ones were the only facts that mattered. This is a sentiment shared by others, including the founder of Story Corps, David Isay, which has installed a booth at Ground Zero where survivors and family members can tell their stories: "There's only one thing that's important about the site or September 11, and that's that people were lost," Mr. Isay said. "Nothing else matters."
But that's not true.
The attacks on the World Trade Center were not isolated. Nor were they attacks on specific individuals, although that is how we are memorializing them. There was also an attack on buildings in Washington that happened to take out part of the Pentagon, and one perhaps aimed at the White House or the Capitol as well. The 9/11 attacks, including the one here in New York, were attacks on symbols, on New York City and Washington, on the country, and above all, on the principles of free societies and the ideal of human equality everywhere. It's this kind of abstraction that allows ideologues to take the lives of others, and it's why it's important to include the individuals who died in the overall scheme of things in the rebuilding; destroying a symbol seems less morally reprehensible than taking the lives of 3,000 people. But the attack was also about ideology, carried out in the belief that violence will solve any problem. What better way to illustrate that relationship than to tie it to atrocities in other parts of the world? As the bombings in London have just reminded us, 9/11 was not an isolated incident, and its causes are complex and legion.
War, torture, terrorism, and the suppression of human rights anywhere are identically appalling, for whatever reason they happen, and they are an affront to humanity, not just to the individual victims or their families, or to one particular national group. If we reach out with these museums and say "our victims are just like yours; we are just like you in our suffering; we are just as appalled by such acts as you are," how much more likely are we to build common ground? To insist that our victims were special—somehow different from or more important than the victims of genocide in the Sudan, in Rwanda, in Croatia, or the bombings in London and Madrid, Israel, Palestine, Iraq is sheer arrogance—the kind of arrogance that makes us think we have the right to invade a country that has merely disagreed with our way of life, not declared war on us. The memorial should celebrate the lives that were lost, remind us of the senselessness and cruelty of the act and acts like it, and of the waste of potential and beauty that result from hate. It should not merely glorify the deaths of 2,800 people.
Update:
According to the New York Post, "No funds raised for a 9/11 memorial at Ground Zero will go toward a pair of controversial culture centers until the issue over their contents is resolved, officials said yesterday."
The Memorial Foundation's decision means that it will first raise the $500 million for the actual memorial to those lost in the terror attack, leaving the hot-button issue of the International Freedom Center and The Drawing Center on the back burner until Gov. Pataki and the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. decide their fate.
This might be a good compromise, but it strikes me as caving in.
Debra Burlingame, who started the hue and cry in the Wall Street Journal, likens the putting the International Freedom Center near the WTC memorial to "creating a Museum of Tolerance over the sunken graves of the USS Arizona." Yet Japanese and American WWII veterans meet at this site all the time, putting the past behind them and coming away changed by the experience. Isn't that mutual respect what we're really aiming for? Or are we looking only for neverending condemnation that will only fuel a cycle of violence, as our invasion of Iraq is doing now? Does Burlingame want the memorial for her loved ones to foster peace or violence?
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