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How the Left Hijacked the September 11th Memorial By Jacob Laksin <http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/authors.asp?ID=2454> FrontPageMagazine.com | June 9, 2005 Imagine the following scenario. A gaggle of leftist ideologues, most of them vocally hostile to the U.S.-led War on Terror and some of them inclined to believe that the U.S. itself poses the greatest threat to world peace, is tasked with creating a memorial to the victims of 9-11 terrorism and a tribute to freedom. This, in essence, is what has happened with <http://www.ifcwtc.org/index.html> International Freedom Center in New York. Created specifically for the World Trade Center Site, the new center is being billed as an "educational complement" to the World Trade Center Memorial, slated for completion in 2009. But a curious thing about the center is how little attention it devotes to the tragedy that birthed it. Rather than focusing on America's response to the terrorist attacks-whether in the form of the firefighter in Lower Manhattan or the Marine in Northern Iraq-the center has taken upon itself the mission of showcasing "humanity's response to September 11." To this end, the four-story center, which will be housed in the World Trade Center Memorial Cultural Complex erected on the site of the former Twin Towers, will feature museum-like galleries furnished with multimedia exhibits cataloguing the abuses of freedom throughout history. Photographs of everyone from the fabled leftwinger and union organizer Mother Jones to a voter in Ukraine are being considered for the ceiling. As well, the center, which is expected to host up to 2 million visitors annually, will reportedly include presentations on everything from the depredations visited upon Native Americans to the struggles of dissidents in Soviet gulags, all giving a faddishly universal gloss to a uniquely American tragedy. There will even be an "engagement" program, which will encourage visitors to take up activism "on behalf of freedom" but not necessarily freedom as America has defined and developed it and been attacked for advancing it. All of this comes into sharper focus when one considers that the "creative team" charged with designing the memorial center is led by Peter W. Kunhardt, who founded the center with Tom Bernstein, president of New York's Chelsea Piers sports complex. He is also the president of Kunhardt Productions, a film company that specializes in historical documentaries. Among its recent productions is a 2003 series of half-hour programs for PBS called "Freedom: A History of US." Although it featured a host of Hollywood celebrity narrators, the series, breaking with standard PBS procedure of using a panel of experts, relied on a single historian to supply the relevant historical background. That historian was anti-war activist and veteran leftwinger <http://www.discoverthenetwork.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1327%20> Eric Foner, professor of history at Columbia University. When it comes to the International Freedom Center's memorial project, however, Kunhardt has been quick to waive aside suggestions that he might have a political agenda. As he recently <http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/19/nyregion/19cnd-wtc.html?ex=1118376000&en= a2310a7203ee34e6&ei=5070&pagewanted=1&ei=5070&en=c1914b80cc1d9e0f&ex=1117166 400> told the New York Times, he wants only to "explore freedom in accurate and meaningful and exciting ways." Moreover, he insisted, "We tried to be above politics as we did our research." They didn't try very hard. For ideas about the direction and content of the planned memorial, the International Freedom Center has, in its own words, "reached out to an extraordinary roster of scholars," with the intention of fostering "conversations on freedom." But a survey of the scholars solicited by the center beginning with Foner suggests that the more likely result will be a leftist propaganda assault on the United States and its foreign policy. Making Foner's association with a September 11 memorial project all the more strange is the fact the professor evinced little sympathy for his country in the wake of the terrorist attacks. Writing just days after the attacks in the London Review of Books, Foner opined: "I'm not sure which is more frightening: the horror that engulfed New York City or the apocalyptic rhetoric emanating daily from the [Bush] White House." Foner further urged "[American] allies to impose some restraint on the White House." That the root cause of the terrorist attacks was American foreign policy toward the Middle East Foner had no doubt: In a September 2004 <http://www.ericfoner.com/articles/090604hnn.html> article for the History News Network, Foner explained, "It is based primarily on American policies -- toward Israel, the Palestinians, oil supplies, the region's corrupt and authoritarian regimes, and, most recently, Iraq." In remarks posted on the International Freedom Center's website, Foner explains that the memorial will require a "critical eye," and stresses that, "There have been many points in our history where freedom has been restricted, and has gone backwards." What relevance this has to a September 11 memorial is unclear, but it does suggest that leftists like Foner intend to use the memorial to project their view of American history as an unabated stretch of oppression and intolerance. That concern is only strengthened by the presence of <http://www.discoverthenetwork.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1744> Michael Posner among the center's advisors. Posner is another odd choice for a memorial honoring freedom. In his capacity as the executive director of the leftist group <http://www.discoverthenetwork.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6806> Human Rights First, Posner has been among the more vocal members in the chorus of activists noisily insisting that the United States, in its War on Terror, poses the greatest threat to freedom. Contending that the United States has engaged in widespread torture, Posner charges the U.S. government with crimes "against mankind, against humanity." This March, his Human Rights First, working in tandem with the ACLU, filed a lawsuit against Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, citing alleged reports of torture in Iraq and Afghanistan. Posner is just as aggressive on the domestic front. His group has filed amicus curiae briefs on behalf of suspected "Dirty Bomber" <http://www.discoverthenetwork.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=703> Jose Padilla. It has also waged a fierce propaganda war. Among other outrageous claims, Posner likens the U.S. treatment of Middle Easterners since 9-11 to the internment of Americans of Japanese origin during World War II, contending that "a number of actions taken over the past three and a half years, and directed against people from South Asia and the Middle East, fall into this pattern." Of counterterrorism legislation like the PATRIOT Act, Posner has claimed that it is "draconian." In a reference to the Bush administration, meanwhile, Posner has said that "it is incumbent on all of us to respond in whatever ways we can to fend off the darkness." (It is worth noting that Tom Bernstein, the co-founder of the International Freedom Center, is a lifetime member of Human Rights First and the longtime president of its board of directors, although, in addition to contributions to liberal Democratic Senators like Chuck Schumer and Barack Obama, Bernstein has also made several high-profile donations to President Bush's re-election campaign.) Still another representative of the "legal left" who serves as an advisor to the memorial is ACLU executive director <http://www.discoverthenetwork.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1788%20> Anthony Romero. Romero, who has mounted media and legal campaigns against the PATRIOT Act, has garnered headlines for throwing the ACLU's clout behind Sami Al-Arian, the University of South Florida professor charged with organizing on behalf of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist group. Ever ready to assail the U.S. government, Romero is far more circumspect on the subject of terrorism. For instance, he recently told the New York Observer that, "No one fully knows why the attacks came on the U.S." With respect to the center's memorial, Romero has expressed his hope that, to the extent that it celebrates the values of freedom, it will incorporate the ACLU's activist rallying cry that they have been neglected by the American government. As Romero told the Observer, "What is clear is that the center stands for our core principles and values, and that, in the aftermath of 9/11-unfortunately-our government has forgotten those very same values. And so, in a very interesting way, the center may provide a place where you remind the American people, and maybe even the government, of the importance of freedom, liberty and equality." To be sure, not all of the center's advisors can be lumped into the category of left-wing activists. Historians like David Hackett Fischer, Pauline Maier, and Walter Isaacson have all made valuable contributions to the study of American history, and the center should be commended for inviting their contributions to the memorial. But incomparably better represented are left-wing academics like Anthony Appiah, the professor of philosophy at Princeton University who has <http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17511> assailed the U.S.-led liberation of Iraq as a war whose aim is "extremely obscure," whose "human costs to both Americans and Iraqis have been appalling," and in which "victory correspondingly elusive." (Such comments notwithstanding, the center's website carries the following inspirational quote by Appiah: "I think a Museum like this could actually make people see why it matters to be involved and care about freedom everywhere." Everywhere, apparently, except Iraq.) More recent additions to the center's list of advisors do nothing to dispel its image as a brain trust of the activist left. Although it passed largely under the radar of the media, the center's Board of Advisors, announced this April, comprised some telling choices. In addition to Democratic stalwarts like Harris Wofford, the former Democratic U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania, the board includes Joe Trippi. Trippi, who spearheaded the grassroots anti-war presidential campaign of Howard Dean, will now help devise the center's activist "engagement" programs. The tone for the center's work was actually set last June, when, in a dedication ceremony for the center, the Archbishop Desmond Tutu <http://www.ifcwtc.org/jun2004_article2.html> referred to the terrorism attacks as "acts of desperation." In the same speech, Tutu suggested that terrorists where driven by "abject poverty," and, in a backhanded dig at the War on Terrorism, added that in "our common passion for freedom that we can't go it alone." Perhaps unsurprisingly, this message, coupled with the center's less than diverse assemblage of advisors, has enticed the moneyed left to bankroll the center's memorial. Sponsors include the Open Society Institute, the grant-making arm of leftist financier George Soros. Another sponsor is the left-wing <http://www.discoverthenetwork.org/funderProfile.asp?fndid=5322> Rockefeller Brothers Fund. The fund's interest in the memorial is easily deciphered: its administrators have long maintained that the greatest threat to the post-911 world comes from the United States. As the fund's Peace and Security Program has understatedly put it, "At the start of the 21st century and in the wake of September 11, 2001, there exists a pressing need to examine the content, style, and tone of U.S. global engagement and to ensure that they reflect an understanding of the reality and implications of increasing global interdependence." The final design of the center's memorial will not be finalized until the end of 2005, but unless an aroused American public speaks up, all signs suggest that the finished product will be little more than a propaganda vehicle for the blame America left. Discussing the still-developing plans, Tom Bernstein recently told the New York Times, "We're not trying to be comprehensive." To judge by the ideological groupthink obtaining among the center's advisors, this is a resounding understatement of what amounts to a monumental betrayal of those who died in the 9/11 attack. 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