International Freedom Center - Views - Defense

Defense

The New York Times, in an editorial, criticized the protests against the IFC, arguing that the IFC's opponents had made trivial and unconvincing suggestions that both the IFC and the "cultural component" of architect Daniel Libeskind's plans would somehow diminish the scope of the Memorial Museum: "To argue over the size of these two spaces is to assume that emotional power is solely the result of square footage. It is also to forget the profound effect that going to the roots of the World Trade Center will have on most visitors." The Times concluded that beneath the superficial arguments and their irrational implications lay an even more disturbing motivation:

But this is not really a campaign about money or space. It is a campaign about political purity—about how people remember 9/11 and about how we choose to read its aftermath, including the Iraq war. On their Web site...critics of the cultural plan at ground zero offer a resolution called Campaign America. It says that ground zero must contain no facilities "that house controversial debate, dialogue, artistic impressions, or exhibits referring to extraneous historical events." This, to us, sounds un-American.