Thoughts from
San Diego on Law, Politics, and Culture

 
Are some ideas so bad they fail?
By Tom Smith

I know it is an entirely politically motivated decision, but I'm still glad Hillary has come out against the "International Freedom Center" idea. There perhaps should be a museum about man's, especially American man's, inhumanity to man, and there are. Just check out your neighborhood university; chances are good there is an exhibit in which you will learn that America sucks. But the site of 9/11 in lower Manhattan is not that place. Arlington National Cemetery is not the place for a retrospective on American war crimes, either. Some places and events speak for themselves, and a lot of "interpretation" is not needed. Just a recounting of the facts will do. People went to work on a Tuesday morning in the fall. Evil fanatics seized control of two civilian aircraft, cutting the throats of flight attendants with boxcutters. They flew the aircraft into the two towers. Close to three thousand men, women and children from some 90 different countries burned to death, were crushed to death or suffocated in the ensuing inferno, among them hundreds of police and firefighters, who tried to save as many as they could, with apparently complete indifference to their own safety. Many, many bodies could not be recovered. Their ashes are in the ground beneath your feet. Something along those lines.

posted by thomas at 9/24/2005 05:06:00 PM