Posted on 09/15/2005 4:20:43 PM PDT by SJackson
One would be unlikely to come across an Allied D-Day memorial called the 'Swastika of Embrace.'
At 9.58 a.m. Eastern time, Tuesday September 11, 2001, United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.
Why? As UPI's Jim Bennett wrote, "The Era of Osama lasted about an hour and a half or so, from the time the first plane hit the tower to the moment the General Militia of Flight 93 reported for duty." Exactly right. Six decades earlier, the American people had to wait four months between Pearl Harbor and the retaliatory Doolittle Raid. But September 11 was Pearl Harbor and the Doolittle Raid wrapped up in 90 minutes. Flight 93 was supposed to be the fourth of Osama's flying bombs, its destination either the White House or the Capitol. If not for quirks of flight scheduling and al-Qaida personnel management, the headlines would have included "The vice-president is still among the missing, presumed dead." Had Flight 93 sheared the top of the White House, that would have been the day's "money shot," as it was in the alien-invasion flick Independence Day – the shattered fa ade, smoke billowing, the seat of American power reduced to rubble.
But the dopey hijackers assigned to Flight 93 were halfway across the continent before they made their move and started meandering back east. And, by the time the passengers began calling home on their cell phones, their families knew what had happened in New York. Todd Beamer couldn't get through to his wife, so the last conversation of his life was with the GTE telephone operator, who stayed on the line with him and overheard his final words: "Are you ready, guys? Let's roll!" And then a brave group of passengers jumped their hijackers and, at the cost of their own lives, prevented that day's grim toll rising even higher. At a terrible moment for America, their heroism was the only victory of the day.
FOUR YEARS on, plans for the Flight 93 National Memorial have now been revealed. The winning design, chosen from 1,011 entries, will be built in that pasture in Pennsylvania where those heroes died. The memorial is called "The Crescent of Embrace."
That sounds like a fabulous winning entry – in a competition to create a note-perfect parody of effete multicultural responses to terrorism. Indeed, if anything, it'stoo perfect a parody: the "embrace" is just the usual huggy-weepy reconciliatory boilerplate, but the "crescent" transforms its generic cultural abasement into something truly spectacular. In the design plans, "The Crescent of Embrace" looks more like the embrace of the Crescent – ie, Islam. After all, what better way to demonstrate your willingness to "embrace" your enemies than by erecting a giant Islamic crescent at the site of the day's most unambiguous episode of American heroism?
Okay, let's get all the "of courses" out of the way – of course, the overwhelming majority of Muslims aren't terrorists; of course, we all know "Islam" means "peace" and "jihad" means "healthy-lifestyle lo-carb granola bar"; etc, etc. Nevertheless, the men who hijacked Flight 93 did it in the name of Islam and their last words as they hit the Pennsylvania sod were no doubt "Allahu Akhbar."
ONE WOULD like to think that even today one would be unlikely to come across an Allied D-Day memorial called the Swastika of Embrace. Yet Paul Murdoch, the architect, has somehow managed to conceive a design that makes a splendid memorial to the hijackers rather than their victims.
Four years ago, most of us understood instinctively the courage of Flight 93. They were honored not just by chickenhawks and neocons and Zionists and the usual suspects but even by celebrities. The leathery old rocker Neil Young wrote a dark driving anthem called "Let's Roll" that began with cell phones ringing. Then: I know I said I love you I know you know it's true I got to put the phone down And do what we gotta do One's standing in the aisle way Two more at the door We got to get inside there Before they kill some more...
Granted, even then, there were a lot of folks eager to "embrace" their enemies. The day after September 11, Robert Daubenspeck of White River Junction, Vermont, wrote to my local newspaper advising against retaliation: "Someone, someday, must have the courage not to hit back but to look them in the eye and say, 'I love you.'" That's not as easy as it sounds. If you try to look Richard Reid the shoebomber in the eye as he's bending down to light the fuse sticking out of his sock, you could easily put your back out.
BUT EACH to his own. If Murdoch sincerely believes in a "crescent of embrace," let him build one, in his own name, on his own turf. To impose it on Flight 93 – to, in effect, hijack those passengers a second time – is an abomination.
Flight 93 is about what happens when you understand that some things can't be embraced. Perhaps Beamer and the rest did indeed "look them in the eye" and saw there was nothing to negotiate, nothing to "embrace." So they acted – and, faced with a novel and unprecedented form of terror, they stopped it cold in little more than an hour. Todd Beamer asked that telephone operator to join him in reciting the 23rd Psalm: "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death..." He knew there would be no happy ending that day, but in their resourcefulness and sacrifice he and his fellow passengers gave their country the next best thing: a hopeful ending. That's what the Flight 93 Memorial should be honoring.
Instead, in its feeble cultural cringe, the Crescent of Embrace hands the terrorists of Flight 93 the victory they were denied on September 11. And it profoundly dishonors Todd Beamer, Thomas Burnett, Jeremy Glick, Mark Bingham and other forgotten heroes of that flight.
Most of us are all but resigned to losing the Ground Zero memorial to a pile of non-judgmental if not explicitly anti-American pap: The minute you involve big-city politicians and foundations and funding bodies and "artists" you're on an express chute to the default mode of the cultural elite. But surely it's not too much to hope that the very precise, specific, individual, human scale of one great act of American heroism need not be buried under another soggy dollop of generic prettified passivity.
Four years ago, Todd Beamer's rallying cry was quoted by presidents and rock stars alike. That's all that's needed in Pennsylvania: the kind of simple dignified memorial you see on small-town commons honoring Civil war veterans, a granite block with the names of the passengers and the words "LET'S ROLL."
The "crescent of embrace," in its desperation to see no enemies and stand for nothing, represents a shameful modification: Are you ready, guys? Let's roll over.
The writer is senior North American columnist for Britain's Telegraph Group.
Well? Are just gonna let it happen?
If you'd like to be on or off this middle east/political ping list, please FR mail me.
Just as good a read the third time as the first. Some good conversations in the other threads too.
Where did you hear that news?
The designer unfortunately used a "trigger word".
Unfortunately, even if he'd called it the "Crater" rather than the "Crescent", we'd be photoshopping symbolic meanings into it 24/7.
FDR was right about exactly one thing ~ the best memorial is a simple block of stone ~ carve something into it ~ maybe a name, or a bunch of names ~ put it beside the road for folks to look at.
They'll impute their own meanings to it, and it'll be there an awful lot longer than just about any other kind of memorial.
One can see that it's once again crushing the life out of innocent people. This "monument" is an obscenity.
Can we not do something about this abomination before it sears itself permanently into the landscape? A proper memorial is desperately needed. I'm not an architect, but I can envision a field of 40 white stars, each bearing the name of a passenger or crew member, set in a geometric pattern around a focal point - a soaring eagle, perhaps, as a tribute to the human spirit. Anything - as opposed to what is currently proposed - a craven whimper of surrender. They deserve better from us - they expected better from us.
Expect that rat bastard to do ANOTHER backdoor tribute to terrorists.
I know here in SW PA, there is getting to be quite an uproar over this. Today in the Johnstown Tribune-Democrat,I saw that they are changing the name to "Arc of Embrace." Didn't read the whole article, though, to see if they were actually changing the layout of it.
Cut our taxes instead.
Who cares about the design ... do your jobs. Protect the country and serve the citizens. The border would be a good place to start.
They said they were going to alter it to reflect criticisms, but they didn't say exactly in what way. Personally, I think they're hoping the storm will die down, and then they'll come back with something even worse.
Hardly. It's more like Same S***, Same Sucker. Note the quote from the top of the article:
Designer Paul Murdoch said he is "somewhat optimistic" that the spirit of the design could be maintained."
In other words, they're keeping the same pro-Islamofascist idiot who designed the first abomination and he's intending to keep the "spirit of the design"!
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