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There is much dialogue going around our country about the Mosque that has been approved for construction near “Ground Zero” in New York City. Commentary about the issue of religious freedom...and the beliefs our country was founded upon have generated passionate responses from both sides of the issue. As I listen to and read this commentary there are visual images that I can’t remove from the eye of my brain.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was at my computer and I also had my television tuned to the NBC Today Show. My concentration was primarily focused on my computer work but I was listening to the Today Show, which had switched their regular program to the World Trade Center site just moments after the first plane (American Airlines Flight 11, Boeing 767-223ER) rammed into the North Tower. The commotion and screaming caught my attention and I abandoned my computer to sit spellbound in front of my television for hours to come. The North Tower burning is the first image that is permanently burned into my brain.
As I was watching the North Tower events, I caught a glimpse of the second plane (United Airlines Flight 175- Boeing 767-222) as it headed toward the South Tower and watched in horror as it penetrated the Hudson River north side of the tower and pushed its way through the opposite south side of the tower with one of its jet engines flying through the air for several blocks from the WTC site. This is the second image that is permanently burned into my brain.
American Airlines Flight 77 - Boeing 757-223 hits the Pentagon at 9:37 a.m. This was a third scene of chaos, fire, death and injury that became the third image that is permanently burned into my brain.
The south tower of the World Trade Center suddenly collapses at 9:59 a.m. plummeting into the streets below. A massive cloud of dust and debris quickly fills lower Manhattan. The subsequent images are too numerous to detail but let it suffice to identify but one image preceding collapse of the tower; the image of people jumping from the tower to their certain death hundreds of feet below. That image is co-mingled with the image of the South Tower collapse as the fourth image that is permanently burned into my brain.
United Airlines Flight 93, a Boeing 757-222, crashes at 10:06 a.m. near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, in Somerset County, about 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. All that can be seen at the crash site is a huge hole in the ground with little or no rubble remnants from the Boeing 757-222. Although this event received much less television coverage than did the WTC and Pentagon sites, the image of the giant hole in the ground is the fifth image that is permanently burned into my brain.
The north tower of the World Trade Center collapses at 10:28 a.m. joining the south tower melee of human loss and dense smoke and building material residue that begins a long journey of drifting over Manhattan. Fire from the WTC rubble burns for many days keeping the memory of the entire terrorist act vivid in the minds of people throughout the world. This is the sixth image that is permanently burned into my brain.
The horror and senselessness of these terrorist acts perpetrated by Muslim extremists defies understanding and acceptance by any civilized human being. The loss of innocent lives far exceeds the material loss and is at the center of the issue regarding building a mosque near “Ground Zero”. Peoples who attempt to use our nations’ laws and stated rights against us in a manner that suits their purpose are sometimes successful only because so many citizens of our nation are consumed with guilt that we might offend someone different than us. Our nation is about “freedoms and rights” but not without forethought from our founding fathers about the threat of freedoms to the security of our nation.
The following quote from written dialogue contained in our nations’ Declaration of Independence must have originated from within the brain of someone, or some people, who wrote this all important document and had the forethought to anticipate the need for future revision of the words of this document as necessary to preserve rights and freedoms, but not at the expense of the future security of our nation.
“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
Muslims should not be allowed to build any structure near “Ground Zero” that is objectionable to the sanity of those who have horrific images permanently burned into their brain of the atrocities committed by those Muslim brothers who hold the same religious convictions of those who wish to build the mosque with the sole purpose of converting non-believers to their religion. This would be an extreme insult to those who died at “Ground Zero” as well as their survivors and this insult should never be allowed to happen. Wake up America, wake up Americans!!