Big news on the Take Back the Memorial front. This could finally be the beginning of the end for the IFC.

Mohammed at Iraq The Model addresses a post to Cindy Sheehan:

Ma’am, we asked for your nation’s help and we asked you to stand with us in our war and your nation’s act was (and still is) an act of ultimate courage and unmatched sense of humanity.

Our request is justified, death was our daily bread and a million Iraqi mothers were expecting death to knock on their doors at any second to claim someone from their families.

Your face doesn’t look strange to me at all; I see it everyday on endless numbers of Iraqi women who were struck by losses like yours.

[...]

Your son sacrificed his life for a very noble cause…No, he sacrificed himself for the most precious value in this existence; that is freedom.

His blood didn’t go in vain; your son and our brethren are drawing a great example of selflessness.
God bless his free soul and God bless the souls of his comrades who are fighting evil.
God bless the souls of Iraqis who suffered and died for the sake of freedom.
God bless all the freedom lovers on earth.

You want to know what your son died for, Cindy? Here is your answer. Read the whole thing.

Listen up all you “I support the troops but I am against everything they stand for” types.

THIS is how you support the toops. From an email I got fom my Dad:

Don’t know whether you heard about this but Denzel Washington and his family visited the troups at Brook Army Medical Center, in San Antonio,Texas (BAMC) the other day. This is where soldiers that have been evacuated from Germany come to be hospitalized in the States, especially burn victims. They have buildings there called Fisher Houses. The Fisher House is a hotel where soldiers’ families can stay, for little or no charge, while their soldier is staying in the hospital. BAMC has quite a few of these houses on base but as you can imagine, they are almost completely filled most of the time.

While Denzel Washington was visiting BAMC, they gave him a tour of one of the Fisher Houses. He asked how much one of them would cost to build. He took his check book out and wrote a check for the full amount right there on the spot. The soldiers overseas were amazed to hear this story and want to get the word out to the American public, because it warmed their hearts to hear it.

The question I have is why does Alec Baldwin, Modonna, Sean Penn and other Hollywood types make front page news with their anti-everything America crap and this doesn’t even make page 3 in the Metro section of any newspaper except the base newspaper in San Antonio.

**UPDATE**

Robbie @ Urban Grounds originally reported this story here - he also corrects the version of events regarding the donation:

Denzel did visit Brook Army Medical Center, but he did not break out his check book at that time. He did go back quite some time later and did make a sizeable (but amount undisclosed) donation to the fisher house.

Regardless of when the donation came, it is an excellent story of someone putting their money where their mouth is instead of just paying lip service for political purposes.

Or I will never speak to any of you again. Seriously. Never.

Sign the Take Back The Memorial Petition

From TakeBackTheMemorial.org:

Dear Families, Friends and Supporters:

For three long years we have played by the rules as set forth by Governor Pataki, Mayor Bloomberg and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. It got us nowhere.

We want a proper, fitting and respectful September 11th Memorial for the 3,000 innocent souls who perished that day. Not “a history lesson about tolerance.”

The planners of the World Trade Center Memorial have been put on notice that we are going over their heads to make our case to the American people. Please join us for a press conference to kick off our national campaign to enlist the American people in a Fight for Ground Zero. Our loved ones deserve no less.

WHAT: PRESS CONFERENCE & RALLY

WHEN: 12:00 Noon, Monday, June 20, 2005 (Please arrive at 11:45 am)

WHERE: Ground Zero at the Corner of Church & Liberty (rain or shine)

REMEMBRANCE: Please wear black or yellow to symbolize unity, or wear clothing that symbolizes your loved one’s affiliation and bring a picture of your lost loved one to hold over your heart.

ORGANIZERS:

Advocates for 9/11 Fallen Heroes
www.911fallenheroes.org

Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund
www.cantorrelief.org

Coalition of 9/11 Families
www.coalitionof911families.org

Fix the Fund
www.fixthefund.org

September 11th Families Association
http://www.911wvfa.org

September’s Mission
www.septembersmission.org

Skyscraper Safety Campaign
www.skyscrapersafety.org

Take Back the Memorial
www.takebackthememorial.org

Voices of September 11th
www.voicesofsept11.org

W. Doyle Support Group
WDoyle5615@aol.com

WTC Families for Proper Burial
www.wtcfamiliesforproperburial.com

WTC Family Center
www.wtcfamilycenter.org

World Trade Center United Family Group
www.wtcufg.org

PLEASE ATTEND! MAKE YOUR VOICES HEARD! !

HELP US TAKE BACK THE MEMORIAL!

Video of Richard Tofel’s appearance on Your World with Neil Cavuto.

Watch (requires Windows Media Player)

He only reinforced the point. Ground Zero should be about 9/11 - NOTHING ELSE.

As you can imagine, I have been very busy with the Take Back The Memorial campaign. I will be making very few posts here this week as a result.

Progress is being made, but the MSM is largely ignoring the story. Help us out, will ya? Tell a friend about it.

If you are a crack coder and can crank out some code quick, I need some volunteer help with the Take Back The Memorial site.

What I need:

1. A Petition (someone with previous petition experience preferred)
2. A one-click “god and everybody” emailer so folks can create one email that that goes to all the contacts.

The code need to be WordPress compatible (PHP). Drop me an email (link under My Stuff on the right) if you can volunteer your time!

This is what happened on 9/11. This is what everything associated with Ground Zero represents. 9/11 Families for a Safe and Strong America has a question for you.

So tell me, at Ground Zero, should we carve in cement and bury in an underground 50,000 square foot museum the names of the nearly 3,000 people that Islamic terrorists murdered that day? Should visitors to the World Trade Center’s memorial be left to wonder what happened that day and where the artifacts of 9/11 are? Above ground, should we build a park with reflecting pools, a cultural center, and a 300,000 square foot International Freedom Center where visitors can hear lectures and discussions on why they all hated us, what we did to bring 9/11 upon ourselves, and the correct world-view future generations must choose so they won’t hate us and attack us anymore? Why not also discuss all of man’s inhumanities to man, especially those by Americans on Americans and all the other people in the world, since time immortal while we are at it in order to promote our own political agenda?

Does this all sound like a good idea to you?

No, it doesn’t. Make your voice heard: Take Back The Memorial.

Richard J. Tofel, President of the International Freedom Center, responds in an op-ed piece in today’s WSJ to Debra Burlingame’s WSJ article The Great Ground Zero Heist.

Mr. Tofel had this to say with regard the space the IFC will be taking up at ground zero.

Then there will be the Memorial Center, a museum devoted to the events of September 11 itself, with exhibit space roughly equal in size to that at the International Freedom Center. The Memorial Center will tell the stories of the day–of heroism and sacrifice, of rescue and service, of courage and resolution, of memory and loss. It is the Memorial Center that will contain the iconic artifacts of September 11.

That is necessary, but not sufficient.

As envisioned in Daniel Libeskind’s master plan for the site’s redevelopment, the International Freedom Center’s building will serve as a buffer between the sacred Memorial and the hustle and bustle of the surrounding city, including the thousands of people who will move each day in and out of Santiago Calatrava’s spectacular new transit hub.

But the International Freedom Center itself will do much more than that. It will serve as a complement to the Memorial, bringing a universal “narrative of hope” to a place where hope is imperative.

“Narrative of Hope?” Ok, I can get on board with that. But here is the basic problem: how is the narrative of hope going to be told? Will visitors be greeted with a “we must understand why they did this to us” exhibit? Will the ACLU get their way and have a platform to lecture everyone on the “evils” of the Patriot Act? These are political points of view and have no place on the hallowed ground where so many people were senselessly murdered.

To be sure, the International Freedom Center will host debates and note points of view with which you–and I–will disagree. But that is the point, the proof of our society’s enduring self-confidence and humanity. Moreover, the International Freedom Center will rise above the politics of the moment. It will not exist to precisely define “freedom” or to tell people what to think, but to get them to think–and to act in the service of freedom as they see it. And it will always do so in a manner respectful of the victims of September 11.

All wonderful stuff - somewhere else. If you present the point of view that America was somehow to blame for September 11, which is clearly how some people - myself included - will regard any discussions or exhibits that attempt to “understand” how terrorists could do something so heinous, then it has no place anywhere near ground zero.That is the litmus test in my view.

The bottom line is this. Mr. Tofel says nothing in his piece that describes the types of exhibits that will appear in the IFC. He gives us a lot of flowery language and some really nice quotes from George W. Bush and Abraham Lincoln, but he is short on facts. He also leaves a lot open to interpretation, which is exactly what I am worried about. Does anyone honestly believe that, with that much room, George Soros and the ACLU are not going to thrust their political views on those that visit the IFC, under the guise of getting “get them to think–and to act in the service of freedom as they see it?”

Mr. Tofel can gloss over it all he wants, he can’t change these facts about the people with input into the planning and design of 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.” 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. (ed. note: Really? Gee, I wonder why?)

• 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.”

Do you want these people to have any part in making these decisions? I sure as hell don’t, and I venture a majority of Americans would agree. How can Mr. Tofel expect anyone to believe that the IFC will “rise above the politics of the moment” with these people involved?

These are political people with political agendas and I am not stupid or naive enough to believe they will simply leave agendas at the door.

Are you?

**UPDATE**

More responses to Tofel’s “explanation”: Michelle Malkin, Sissy, Irish Pennants

**UPDATE**

I just received a copy of the following email from a Solidier’s Mom via the takebackthememorial.org email address. She wrote to Mr. Tofel yesterday after hearing about the IFC plans. Mr. Tofel pointed her to his article in the WSJ today for “the other side” - this is her response.

Mr. Tofel:

Thank you for your response. We have read your response with great interest — hoping that the initial stories were perhaps inflated. Sadly, that is not the case. However noble your and the International Freedom Center intent is, we are still not convinced that the WTC site is the appropriate place for such an endeavor. Perhaps it should be at the United Nations, a body allegedly devoted to Peace in the World that surely could use the attention and commitment of such a gesture? You do yourself and your project no favors parading the signatories to such a grand scheme from academia, given the history of such individuals and their somewhat anti-American stance.

To be clear, we are true supporters of all the concepts of freedom and herald its great history — and mourn its tragic failings. However, the fight of the Czech Republic and such other struggles for democratic rule have no place at such a site. “Ground Zero” truly is hallowed ground to us and most Americans — as sacred as any national cemetery or battle site — and we would no more support this grand scheme were it proposed for Arlington National Cemetery or the Gettysburg Battlefield.

We remain committed to the idea that the entire site of the attack of September 11, 2001 be reserved entirely as a memorial committed to the victims of that attack, the American people and the men and women who have given their lives in this War on Terrorism.

Sincerely,

Names Withheld

That pretty much nails it.