The Record
NINE YEARS ago, four hijacked planes on suicide missions destroyed the Twin Towers, damaged the Pentagon and crashed into a field in Pennsylvania. It is not the ongoing military fight against global terrorism that poses a lasting threat to our nation. It is the rising vitriolic rhetoric on American soil by Americans in the name of "9/11" that is endangering our way of life.
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| Ground Zero from the Air Today |
New York Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Lazio has used images of the damaged World Trade Center site in his quest to win Tuesday's primary. Lazio has also fed on the anti-Islamic fever that has spread over a proposed Islamic cultural center and mosque two blocks north of Ground Zero.
Meanwhile, Ground Zero itself is a massive construction site. We are supposed to be pleased that One World Trade Center is rising, that work on that national Sept. 11 memorial is well under way, as is the transportation hub and one of three additional commercial towers. And we are pleased that these projects are moving along. But it has been nine years. Nine years and nothing is completed.
Building at this scale is generally a slow business. But some of the delays, while partially attributed to the need to find all human remains at Ground Zero and navigating a complicated maze of underground infrastructure stripped bare, are also due to politics and commerce at its ugliest. Just this summer, New Jersey signed off on a $1 billion Port Authority of New York and New Jersey deal to completely build out the World Trade Center site in exchange for $1 billion to either raise or replace the Bayonne Bridge.
New York developer Larry Silverstein gained control of the Trade Center weeks before Sept. 11, 2001. He was originally responsible for rebuilding the destroyed commercial space. But nothing was getting built – aside from Tower Seven, which was not on the 16-acre site. If it was not for the intervention of the Port Authority, the owner of the World Trade Center, we seriously doubt there would be as much progress as there is today.
At least there is rebuilding at Ground Zero. Across America, it is deconstruction that progresses. Protests against the proposed Islamic center continue. Protests against planned mosques in other regions of the nation grow. And an obscure pastor of a tiny Florida church grabbed the international spotlight by proposing to burn Qurans today.
Next year is a defining anniversary — 10 years since the attacks. Much of the memorial at Ground Zero should be completed. Perhaps when that occurs, our attention will shift back to remembering those who perished that fateful Tuesday. But today, it is a divided America that marks this ninth anniversary.
We owe the dead and the survivors more. We owe the men and women who risked their health to find survivors and recover human remains guaranteed health care. We owe the families and friends of the victims a dignified place to grieve. We owe the men and women who built America something more than a new World Trade Center. We must restore the America whose values were the real targets on Sept. 11, 2001.
After nine years, it's time to start paying back that debt.
In other news...
World Trade Center Rebuilding May Finish by 2014, Officials Say
Four office towers, a transit center designed by Santiago Calatrava, a memorial and museum at the downtown Manhattan site of the World Trade Center may be complete by 2014, according to city and state officials.
A landscaped outdoor memorial featuring a walkway through a grove of trees will adorn the site by next year’s 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attack, which killed 2,752, said Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The National September 11 Memorial & Museum, adjacent to the open plaza, will be completed in 2012, said Bloomberg, who also serves as chairman of the museum.
“It’s very difficult to see progress when the action is mostly negotiations,” Bloomberg said. Nine years is not a long time, considering the complexity of the job, he said.
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