The Eleventh Day_ The History and Legacy of 9_11 - Anthony Summers [214]
Aulaqi eventually took refuge in Yemen, where he was still believed to be active as of spring 2011. Days after bin Laden was killed, Aulaqi was targeted by a U.S. drone. He reportedly got away.
AT HOME in recent times, there has been crass posturing and prolonged squabbling, with predictably tragic results.
In Florida, after months of threatening to do so—and after many appeals that he desist, including one by President Obama—the pastor of a fringe church he calls the Dove World Outreach Center burned a copy of the Qur’an. He had earlier held a mockery of a “trial” at which the Muslims’ holy book was found guilty of “crimes against humanity.” A “jury” convened by the pastor, Terry Jones, had chosen burning over three other ways of destroying the sacred text: shredding, drowning, or firing squad.
In Afghanistan, when news of the burning of the Qur’an spread, thousands of protesters took to the streets. Seven United Nations employees were killed, two of them by beheading, when a mob overran one of the organization’s compounds. Violence over three days resulted in further deaths and dozens of injuries. Back in Florida, Jones said that he did not feel responsible, and that the time had come “to hold Islam accountable.”
In New York City, there has been protracted discord over whether a new mosque and Muslim community center should be allowed on a site two blocks from Ground Zero. Its sponsors say it will be a symbol “that will give voice to the silent majority of Muslims who suffer at the hands of extremists.” Opponents say the center would be “sacrilege on sacred ground,” a “gross insult to the memory of those that were killed.” As of the spring of this year, the dispute was unresolved.
So were more melancholy disagreements centered on what really is and always will be hallowed ground—the memorial at Ground Zero, with which we opened this book. Seventy feet below ground, in what will be the September 11 Museum, the steel bases of the Twin Towers stand exposed at the point of bedrock, preserved by order of the federal government. Nearby, sheathed in a climate-controlled covering, will stand the last steel column removed from the debris of the World Trade Center, a column that in the aftermath of 9/11 served as a memorial in and of itself.
The plan, as of this writing, is that the museum will hold something else, the collection of some 9,000 fragments of humanity, the remains of the 1,122 people whose body parts cannot be identified. They would repose, hidden from the public eye yet hauntingly present. The plan’s proponents maintained that the presence of the remains would enhance the sanctity of the memorial, making it a place where generations would come to pay their respects and reflect. Its opponents objected to what is left of their loved ones being turned into what they saw as a lure for tourists. Placement in the museum space, relatives thought, was tantamount to creating “a freak show” put on for “gawkers.”
Two thousand miles away, in Phoenix, Arizona, state senators were voting to remove wording on the city’s 9/11 memorial that they deemed objectionable. A memorial, one senator said, should display only “patriotic, pro-American words.” The inscribed words he and others found upsetting included “VIOLENT ACTS LEADING US TO WAR”; “MIDDLE EAST VIOLENCE MOTIVATES ATTACKS IN US”; “YOU DON’T WIN BATTLES OF TERRORISM WITH MORE BATTLES”; “FEELING OF INVINCIBILITY LOST”; “MUST BOMB BACK”; “FOREIGN-BORN AMERICANS AFRAID”; and “FEAR OF FOREIGNERS.”
The fury that flamed across America after 9/11 was shot through with fear, fear of a foe few citizens could even begin to understand, fear of the unknown, fear that more was coming. Wisdom still holds, as that three-term President told the nation almost eighty years ago, that the only thing to be feared is fear itself. Yet fear, unspoken, remains pervasive, in airports and train stations,