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New York Times to surviving family members of WTC victims: Shut up, and stop threatening free speech!
From Tim Sumner:
Greyhawk:
The NY Times has twice more come after us. The most recent one was just yesterday when they singled out Debra Burlingame and pointed their entire editorial, The Governor's Proxy, at her. Now 22,000 active and retired FDNY firefighters stand with all these folks.
-- Tim Sumner
From the editorial Tim mentioned:
No one questions the emotional legitimacy of Ms. Burlingame's cause, or the fact that for most families of victims, ground zero will never be anything but the place where their loved ones died. The relatives have rightfully been the central voice in the planning of the memorial that will be built on the site. But neither Ms. Burlingame nor her followers can be allowed to dictate the future of the entire area. That has a place in the heart of the nation as a whole, and its use must reflect not only the nation's spirit, but its commitment to its basic principles.The Freedom Center will have an auditorium, you see. And if you oppose an auditorium, well..., you oppose free speech!!! If I were to make such a feeble argument on this blog I would lose every reader I ever had - and deservedly so. But I, an avowed peacemaker, now see the perfect compromise and solution to this issue. Reduce the Freedom Center to just an auditorium, without the other political clap-trap planned to encircle it, and you'll probably see the 9/11 families endorse the effort. Deal?
At the core of the attack on the Freedom Center is the assumption that any debate or dissent near ground zero will dishonor the dead. One of the concerns about the center's plans, for instance, is whether it will include an auditorium - in other words, a place where people will be able to engage in free speech. To us, this attempt to stifle discussion at the site of the 9/11 attacks is utterly at odds with the spirit that should be embodied in this sacred place. It also ignores the fact that the memorial itself, with or without the center, will inevitably become a locus of debate and even protest. The Take Back the Memorial group seeks to void the public process that led to the current master plan for ground zero.
Ms. Burlingame, by the way, is the sister of Charles Burlingame III, the pilot of American Airlines Flight 77. The plane was hijacked by terrorists and crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. The 9/11 Families group (dismissed as "a vocal cadre of families of 9/11 victims" in the editorial) consists of those who lost relatives on that day - sons, daughters, husbands, wives, fathers, mothers... you get the picture.
Interesting that the stated position of the Times is that relatives of the fallen in the war on terror have no more validity than anyone else when discussing the issue.
That same day, over in the news section of the Times:
Memorial to Troops Killed in Iraq Is Vandalized in TexasMs Sheehan is the mother of Spc Casey Sheehan, a US soldier killed while fighting terrorists in Iraq.CRAWFORD, Tex., Aug. 16 - Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq, who has set up a vigil near President Bush's ranch here, said today that she was "very disturbed" that hundreds of small crosses bearing the names of dead American troops had been knocked down, and that her now 10-day protest was "only the beginning" of national movement to bring all American forces home from the war.
(See also our previous entry on 9/11 families here.)
Update: For those who play the numbers game -
Here are the relatives of the approximately 3,000 9/11 victims who've endorsed that "vocal cadre of families" - "9/11 Families for a Safe and Strong America".
And here are the relatives of the approximately 405,399 GIs killed during WWII, 36,574 killed in the Korean war, 58,200 fallen in Vietnam, 383 dead in the Persian Gulf War, 220 fallen in Afghanistan, and 1,852 killed in Iraq (as of Aug 16, 2005 - all figures via CNN) that have joined Sheehan's "Gold Star Families for Peace".
