Flight 93 memorial: blogburst for 8/7/08

Today’s blogburst installment consists of Alec Rawls’ brief account of last weekend’s protest at the quarterly meeting of the memorial design project. I was not in attendance, unfortunately, but I can guarantee Alec’s personal characterization of the meeting is spot-on accurate. How do I know? Well, for one thing, he tells the story of a conflict where one side presents facts and reasoned arguments while the other side carefully but vociferously avoids addressing those same facts and arguments. Anyone who has followed along is accustomed to this pattern. With the heat cranked up by our organized protest, last weekend’s events were destined to throw the usual contrast into sharp dichotomous relief.

What Alec doesn’t talk about, but I’m certain he will as time goes by, is the counter-offensive launched by the National Park Service to coincide with our protest in Somerset. The project side is pulling out all the stops in its propaganda front. It would be humorous if it weren’t so tragic. Talk about postmodern, New Age hooey, as I’ve labeled it here in the past. Check out some of the inane drivel from the Memorial Design Presentation, subtitled A common field one day. A field of honor forever:

Timeless in simplicity and beauty, like its landscape, both stark and serene, the Memorial should be quiet in reverence, yet powerful in form, a place both solemn and uplifting.

Like a mosque?

It should instill pride, and humility. The Memorial should offer intimate experience, yet be heroic in scale. Its strong framework should be open to natural change and allow freedom of personal interpretation.

But not our interpretation. That is dismissed out of hand. Besides, I don’t know about you, but I for one don’t want a design that allows for personal interpretation. I’m thinking of something simpler, like an unequivocal memorial.

And this artificial and ponderous dialectic, this “all things to all men” concept, is almost more than I can bear. Pride and humility, no less. It reminds of haughty Islamists with their hairy butts raised in humble supplication.

We want to restore life here, to heal the land, and nourish our souls. In this place, a scrap yard will become a gateway and a strip mine will grow into a flowering meadow.

But more than restoring health, the Memorial should be radiant, in loving memory of the passengers and crew who gave their lives on Flight 93.

Good grief.

Flight 93 Families Divided

Tom Burnett Sr. entered the lion’s den on Saturday to oppose the crescent memorial to Flight 93 (now called a broken circle). An excerpt from the beginning of the Somerset Daily American’s banner headline story about division amongst the families:

“Tom Burnett Jr. led the effort to take the plane back,” his father said. “When I was on the design jury, I saw the red crescent of embrace and realized it was an obvious and blatant symbol of Islam. It does not properly honor our people — those Flight 93 heroes. I think it’s a travesty that it’s moved along so fast.”

He called for an investigation into the design. When he has brought up his concerns, some of the task force and advisory commission members have dismissed him, he said.

“This is a cataclysmic mistake,” he said. “I’m going to save you from yourselves. I’d like to ask for an unbiased, transparent, honest investigation. This is just a terrible, terrible mistake. I’m asking every American — we must stop this mistake. This panel doesn’t own the design. I don’t own it. Pennsylvania doesn’t own it. All of America and all of the world own it.”

He said he is also tired of the controversy, but that they must honor the heroes properly. It will reverberate in history.

“I’m not going to stop fighting this thing. It is very, very bad,” Burnett said. “Wake up. Get your heads out of the sand.”

Other Flight 93 family members roared back. What is usually a three hour quarterly meeting of the Memorial Project stretched to five hours as over twenty people signed up to speak on both sides.

One side wants scrutiny. The other is desperate to avoid it.

The pattern at the meeting was simple and consistent. Critics of the crescent design pointed out damning facts and called for independent investigation. Defenders of the broken circle insisted that there is nothing to investigate and cried out for critics of the design to stop putting them through this agony.

If the claims of the critics are not accurate, an independent investigation would end the agony. If the crescent/broken circle does not actually point within two degrees of Mecca, then put this explosive claim to rest by showing where the crescent does point. If there are not actually to be forty-four inscribed translucent blocks placed along the flight path (matching the number of passengers, crew, and terrorists), it is a simple matter of opening up the design drawings and counting.

If the defenders of the crescent had truth on their side, they would be eager to have it exposed. Unfortunately for them, the giant crescent does point to Mecca, and somehow they don’t want the public to know it.

Todd Beamer’s father is on the side of the crescent?

The highest profile defender of the crescent design was Mr. David Beamer, whose son Todd issued the “Let’s roll” signal to re-take Flight 93. Mr. Beamer, beloved by conservatives for his opposition to Congressman Murtha, had not previously taken a public position on the crescent design. He has apparently gotten involved in fund raising for the memorial, and he announced at the meeting that he has undertaken two months of due diligence, looking into criticisms of the design.

Listeners expected Mr. Beamer to continue with a report on his fact-checking efforts, but he did not have a single word to say about any of the claims that Mr. Rawls and Mr. Burnett have put forward, launching instead an extended condemnation of Alec Rawls for his “obsessive” persistence.

If he found that the giant crescent does not point to Mecca, surely he would have said so. Similarly for the terrorist memorializing block count or the placement of the 9/11 date in the exact position of the star on an Islamic crescent and star flag. What better way to be rid of this dastardly Rawls fellow than to expose his claims as a fraud?

Mr. Beamer’s silence about what he found speaks volumes, and not just about the crescent design. Who could fact check these claims and then be silent about his findings?

Don’t look at the design drawings!

Every defender of the crescent had his own scheme of evasion and obfuscation. Patrick White, Vice President of Families of Flight 93, took Alec Rawls to task for holding up a 2005 graphic of the top of the Tower of Voices, where an Islamic-shaped crescent soars in the sky above the symbolic lives of the forty heroes. This old graphic should not be taken as indicative of the current design, Mr. White suggested, as the design has been evolving for three years now. Yet the exact same graphic was brought to the meeting by the Memorial Project itself, and it was on display right outside the courtroom where the meeting was held!

That’s going to make some great video, as will one particularly scurrilous attack on Mr. Burnett and the victim card played by Project Superintendent Joanne Hanley. Several videographers will be sending raw footage, which Alec will start putting together when he returns to California next week.

Big enough to check the facts yet?

How big does the conflict have to get before some major media outlet is willing to do their jobs and actually check the facts for themselves? David Dunbar and Brad Reagan of Popular Mechanics were willing to fact-check the “9/11 truth” morons, finding that most of their evidence is deliberately taken out of context, and that none of their claims stands up to the least bit of scrutiny.

Come on, PM. If we are a bunch of frauds then we are just as much in need of debunking. We’ve even got Flight 93 family members at loggerheads and crying out for relief. What are you waiting for? (A handy dandy list of damning facts to check here).

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