We are confident the International Freedom Center can and will be an integral part of the living memorial, helping tell the story of 9/11 while honoring mankind’s march toward freedom and highlighting America’s role as a beacon for freedom throughout the world.” - Tom Berstein (see video, post below this one)

That from Tom Bernstein as read during Debra Burlingame’s appearance on MSNBC’s Coast to Coast today.

A well-crafted, dispassionate response. It is also a statement full of the same double-talk Richard Tofel has richly used in his statements and media appearances in the last two weeks.

If you are going to bury the story of 9/11 underground, beneath a building that will house no artifacts of that day, will tell none of the stories of the brave police and firefighters that gave their lives for their fellow citizens, will not honor in any way the nearly 3000 people that perished, a building completely devoid of that day in every way, you are not “helping tell the story of 9/11.”

A museum dedicated to slavery, the “final solution”, soviet gulags, and the rest of the world’s atrocities cannot help tell the story of 9/11. Attempting to wrap those atrocities up in the context of “mankind’s march toward freedom” is a transparent attempt to hide the truth.

To quote Tom Berstein from the IFC web site:

The International Freedom Center will harness the power of history and use it as a springboard for contemporary dialogue, debate, and engagement. (emphasis added)

If anyone needs as reminder, here are some of the people “advising” the IFC:

• 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.”
• 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.”

We have no doubt what “contemporary dialogue, debate, and engagement” means to these individuals and it has no place at this site.

The simple fact is this: the story of 9/11 needs no help to be told. All the eloquent press releases in the world cannot justify the presence of the IFC at Ground Zero. The day speaks for itself. The visitors to this sacred site that will travel there in several years looking for the story of 9/11 should not be subject to politicized revisionist history under the guise of “contemporary dialogue, debate, and engagement.”

The International Freedom Center has no place on the hallowed ground of a national shrine.

Do not build it. Not there.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 29th, 2005 at 4:53 pm and is filed under Take Back the Memorial. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings on individual posts are currently closed. Please visit the Guest Book.