NYP: NO PLACE FOR POLITICS -- the International Freedom Center for contemporary dialogue and debate?

Seemingly terminal reconstruction gridlock may not be the only scandal plaguing the site of the destroyed Twin Towers. Now serious concerns are being raised about the nature of the principal Ground Zero memorial.

The International Freedom Center is to be a 250,000-square-foot museum with a self-professed mission to "harness the power of history and use it as a springboard for contemporary dialogue and debate" on the meaning of freedom....

Because odds are that, at the end of the day, this center won't focus on freedom's triumphs, so much as on its failures — particularly those in which America can be painted as the culprit.

...Debra Burlingame... charged that Ground Zero is being "stolen, right from under our noses" by a cabal of leftist academics and historians intent on turning the IFC into "a heaping foreign policy discussion over the greater meaning of Abu Ghraib and what it portends for the country and the rest of the world."

In its defense, the IFC insists those allegations are overblown. Content planning for the facility, which will not open until 2010, remains very much a work in progress, officials say, with input from a distinguished panel of scholars on both sides of the political spectrum....

But we don't see how anything constructive comes from a shrill debate between people with opposing agendas.

We also don't see how any facility located on the ashes of the World Trade Center can include anyone who uses the 9/11 attacks as a political battering ram.

People like Eric Foner, the radical Columbia historian, who wrote — just three weeks after 9/11 — that "I'm not sure which is more frightening: the horror that engulfed New York City or the apocalyptic rhetoric emanating daily from the White House." Foner serves on the IFC's team of "scholars and advisors."...

"Ground Zero has been stolen, right from under our noses. How do we get it back?"
Excerpts from The Great Ground Zero Heist by DEBRA BURLINGAME From the Wall Street Journal, June 7, 2005.

"The World Trade Center Memorial will break ground this year. When those Marines return in 2010, the year it is scheduled to open, no doubt they will expect to see the artifacts that bring those memories to life. They’ll want a vantage point that allows them to take in the sheer scope of the destruction, to see the footage and the photographs and hear the personal stories of unbearable heartbreak and unimaginable courage. They will want the memorial to take them back to who they were on that brutal September morning.
Instead, they will get a memorial that stubbornly refuses to acknowledge the yearning to return to that day. Rather than a respectful tribute to our individual and collective loss, they will get a slanted history lesson, a didactic lecture on the meaning of liberty in a post-9/11 world. They will be served up a heaping foreign policy discussion over the greater meaning of Abu Ghraib and what it portends for the country and the rest of the world."
[...]
"The public will have come to see 9/11 but will be given a high-tech, multimedia tutorial about man's inhumanity to man, from Native American genocide to the lynchings and cross-burnings of the Jim Crow South, from the Third Reich's Final Solution to the Soviet gulags and beyond. This is a history all should know and learn, but dispensing it over the ashes of Ground Zero is like creating a Museum of Tolerance over the sunken graves of the USS Arizona."

[...]

"...the IFC’s list of those who are shaping or influencing the content and programming for their Ground Zero exhibit includes a Who’s Who of the human rights, Guantanamo-obsessed world:
• Michael Posner, executive director at Human Rights First who is leading the world-wide “Stop Torture Now” campaign focused entirely on the U.S. military. He has stated that Mr. Rumsfeld’s refusal to resign in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal is “irresponsible and dishonorable.”
• Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU, who is pushing IFC organizers for exhibits that showcase how civil liberties in this country have been curtailed since September 11.
• Eric Foner, radical-left history professor at Columbia University who, even as the bodies were being pulled out of a smoldering Ground Zero, wrote, “I’m not sure which is more frightening: the horror that engulfed New York City or the apocalyptic rhetoric emanating daily from the White House.” This is the same man who participated in a “teach-in” at Columbia to protest the Iraq war, during which a colleague exhorted students with, “The only true heroes are those who find ways to defeat the U.S. military,” and called for “a million Mogadishus.” The IFC website has posted Mr. Foner’s statement warning that future discussions should not be “overwhelmed” by the IFC’s location at the World Trade Center site itself.
• George Soros, billionaire founder of Open Society Institute, the nonprofit foundation that helps fund Human Rights First and is an early contributor to the IFC. Mr. Soros has stated that the pictures of Abu Ghraib “hit us the same way as the terrorist attack itself.”

[...]

"The so-called lessons of September 11 should not be force-fed by ideologues hoping to use the memorial site as nothing more than a powerful visual aid to promote their agenda. Instead of exhibits and symposiums about Internationalism and Global Policy we should hear the story of the courageous young firefighter whose body, cut in half, was found with his legs entwined around the body of a woman. Recovery personnel concluded that because of their positions, the young firefighter was carrying her."

[...]

"Ground Zero has been stolen, right from under our noses. How do we get it back?"

"Ms. Burlingame is a member of the board of directors of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation and the sister of Charles F. “Chic” Burlingame III, pilot of American Airlines fight 77, which was crashed at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001."

Ms. Burlingame's full commentary can be found here here.
Bill Bennett's radio interview with Ms. Burlingame is here.
How You Can Help Take Back The Memorial
Contact America's Mayor
Giuliani Partners LLC
5 Times Square
New York, NY 10036
Tel: 212.931.7300
Fax: 212.931.7310
Contact the International Freedom Center Board of Directors & Staff
120 Broadway, 31st Floor
New York, NY 10271
Fax: (212) 336-6727
IFC Chairman Tom Bernstein 212-336-6200 (Chelsea Piers Complex)
IFC President Richard Tofel
Contact the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation
Contact Your US Congressional Representative
Contact Your US Senator(s)
Contact NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg
Contact NY Governor George Pataiki
Contact The White House
Do YOUR part. Use this contact information, NOW.
For more information: 911@takebackthememorial.org
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