Right Voices

Is it a memorial to the victims of 9/11?
PLANS for a cultural complex to commemorate freedom alongside a memorial to the victims of 9/11 have incensed many of the families of the dead.
The proposed museum, which will help to fill the gaping hole at ground zero, is being dubbed the “ultimate guilt complex” for its politically correct interpretation of the concept of freedom.

Controversy erupted when Debra Burlingame, sister of the pilot of one of the hijacked planes, wrote an angry article in The Wall Street Journal last week. “Ground zero has been stolen right from under our noses. How do we get it back?” she asked.

Burlingame, a director of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, drew attention to behind-the-scenes plans to host exhibitions at the complex devoted to such issues as the genocide of native Americans, the fight against slavery, the Holocaust and the Gulag, instead of the bravery and dignity of nearly 3,000 victims of the Al-Qaeda suicide squads.

It will also be the site of academic symposiums on the foundations of freedom, providing a “magnet” to activists and academics to debate the US “domestic and foreign policy they despise”, she said.

An early design for the cultural centre included a large mural of an Iraqi voter. But in a sign of things to come, said Burlingame, this was replaced by a photograph of Martin Luther King, the murdered civil rights leader, with President Lyndon Johnson. The centre is due to open in 2010.

“People will be shocked. Instead of exhibits and symposiums about internationalism and global policy, we should hear the story of the courageous young firefighter whose body, cut in half, was found with his legs entwined with the body of a woman,” said Burlingame.

“Recovery personnel concluded that, because of their positions, the young firefighter was carrying her.”

One official adviser to the project believes that photographs of the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib should form part of the exhibit. Eric Foner, a professor of history at Columbia University, said: “One of the things that most annoys people in other countries is the idea that we have a monopoly on freedom. It will be salutary for the museum to suggest that America has sometimes fallen short of the ideal.”

Foner is a controversial figure who declared after the September 11 attacks in 2001: “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.”

For Burlingame, Foner is just one of many advisers and board members who are hostile to America’s foreign policy.

The International Freedom Center (IFC), a specially created cultural institution which won a competition to oversee the use of the site, is being funded in part by George Soros, the billionaire financier and determined opponent of President George W Bush.