I was appalled when the talk started, almost after 9/11, about rebuilding. To me, it's equivalent to if the Germans built a shopping center at a concentration camp.
Of course, it should be a national historic site. It's just that the idea is tainted because money-grabbing NYC didn't want to give up the valuable real estate, until the inconvenience of it becoming something distasteful to them. For that reason, I'm leaning toward thinking that mosque should go forward, as a living memorial to what NYC greed has accomplished.
That’s what we do, make and move money. That’s the way that area of NYC has been since the Dutch traded shares under the Buttonwood trees. That’s what a significant portion of the people that died that day did for a living. Were they greedy too? You want the world financial capital relocated to the Arab Emirates? Turn Lower Manhattan into a park and Osama wins.
There was a terrorist attack on Wall Street in 1920 that killed 20 people. You can still see the blast marks on the walls at 23 Wall Street if your ever in the area.
Fraunces Tavern on Pearl Street was blown up by Puerto Rican terrorists in 1975. They killed 4 people.
We honor the dead by continuing on.