You can see a lot more of what Alec Rawls describes in today’s blogburst installment at the site of the National Park Service. The government’s propaganda for the awful design is proudly displayed there for all to see. Continually, our opposition to the proposed design is characterized there as a form of terrorism, which is rather amusing considering that we have all along employed the metaphor of retaking the hijacked plane from the terrorists. As Alec notes, the idea that we are hijacking the memorial is ludicrous, somewhat along the lines of a Flight 93 passenger complaining that the heroes were threatening the passengers by enlisting their help to take back the plane.

What I find most troublesome is the persistent allusion to healing, when in fact this memorial will do nothing even remotely of the sort. It is quite a peculiar concept of healing that extends the middle finger to those deeply troubled, as so many of us are about the planned Flight 93 Memorial design. What the architect and his supporters mean by healing us is disabusing us of the notion that there is anything wrong with incorporating Islamic imagery into the monument. They want not to promote healing, but to heal us—that is, to cure us.

Since Project Superintendent Hanley and her supporters are so obsessed with what she perceives as threats, I would like to clarify by issuing a real threat. None has been issued thus far by any of our opposition partners, at least none that I’m aware of, but I am nevertheless not speaking solely for myself here. My threat is based on boots-on-the-ground reality, so who can defend against it?

Ready? Here it is:

Build this atrocious monument to New Age hooey and we will construct alongside it a permanent condemnation, and we will build a perpetual controversy to surround it. Like the valiant and immortal deeds of our Flight 93 heroes, this will never die.

Now that’s a threat you can take to the bank.

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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.

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This week, Alec Rawls of Error Theory focuses on some of the most annoying aspects among all the offensive memorial plan features. If you’re one of those people who’s not convinced, who thinks that we’re just making a mountain of a molehill, then you need to view the design features Alec details in today’s blogburst installment. These aspects of the design convinced me a while back that the disturbing Islamic imagery and character of the memorial plan could not have been fortuitously accomplished. I will not elaborate because Alec’s fair presentation throughout the series needs no clarification or amplification. See for yourself.

Far as I’m concerned, proof positive of Islamist sympathies on the part of the project’s supporters is their incessant need to explain things to us, as Islam itself is continually explicated for us ignorant unbelievers. Like Islam and Islamic terrorism, the memorial design provides us with so many unfortunate misconceptions and silly misunderstandings, don’t you know. We poor dimwitted dullards require education and illumination, both in Islam and in art. We’re just letting our prejudices cloud our understanding and appreciation of culture, of beauty, of the sacred. But fear not. Our intellectual and moral superiors will clear the air for us.

As for the design’s much-trumpeted aesthetic achievements, blow on this: Great art does not require a user manual. Crescent of Embrace, Circle of Embrace, Tower of Voices, Sacred Ground—this crap is simply unctuous and unimaginatively contrived with all the iconic hallmarks of New Age, multicultural, Islam-is-peace, diversity training hooey. It’s as repulsive aesthetically as it is conceptually.

Anyway, architect Paul Murdoch and his supporters missed a page in the manual. I remain unconvinced that Islam is peace.

So I’m certainly not yet ready to buy that Islamic jihad can be translated into peace and understanding.

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My last post about the prospect of talks with Ahmadinejad and the Iranian leadership was uncanny in its alacrity and celerity, if I do say so myself. When I heard the morning news informing us of today’s stunning development that the Bush administration has agreed to negotiate directly with Iran on the nuclear issue, an eerie wave swept over me. I felt as if I were in the Twilight Zone. While I had been lightheartedly amusing myself with publishing a cute little tirade on the futility of dialog with Iran, the uselessness of which is glaringly obvious to anyone who cares to glare, feeble nitwits in our nation’s policy think tanks, in the State Department, and in the White House were ready to pop the cork on a bottle of what I had just defined as patent idiocy. It certainly can seem as if the world has gone mad.

But now and then there is a ray of light, some truly wonderful news—not the usual small victory or consolation prize , but a genuine triumph. Our blogburst author Alec Rawls (who blogs on the Flight 93 memorial plan and other relevant topics at Error Theory) has scored a major coup by enlisting and securing the valuable support of Muslims Against Sharia in condemning the project design. I have been interested in, but admittedly suspicious of, their intriguing website and work for some time. Let’s just say I have healthy reservations about almost everyone on both sides of the jihad. One never knows who is going to throw you under the bus, and I didn’t get to be the great Haid Dasalami by being anyone’s chump or by failing to learn from naive mistakes that can get one killed. I live by the admonition, “Remember, thou art mortal.” That being said, Alec opined on June 25th that Muslims “could undo much of this suspicion” by joining in our indignant condemnation of the memorial plan.

Indeed they can, and now a valiant group of them has.

The present collaboration of these important Muslim reformers is extremely gratifying, enormously encouraging, most appreciated, and very much welcome.

As anti-Nazi resistance leader Victor Laszlo (immortally played by the late Paul Henreid) said in the 1942 Humphrey Bogart classic Casablanca, “Now I know our side will win.”

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