At some point in the next few years, the National Park Service will give us its version of the Flight 93 Memorial. It won’t have any of the sentimentality of left-behind crosses or rosaries, motorcycle jackets or matchbox cars. Neither will it have any elements of the heroic or the classical–no obelisks or domes or statuary. Instead it will, as the NPS Flight 93 Memorial newsletter soothingly explains, offer the visitor “space for reflection, learning, social interaction, and healing.” Not to mention wind chimes. And a spacious visitors’ center, too.

To those who prefer their monuments to be monumental, this may come as something of a disappointment, if not an outright betrayal. Even at this late date, seemingly ordinary citizens can perform extraordinary feats, as Flight 93′s heroic epic reminds us. The problem isn’t that we’ve run out of heroes in America. We just don’t know how to honor them anymore.

Well, precisely.

***

Previous:

Flight 93 memorial update: redesigned
The real “Crescent of Embrace”
Flight 93 memorial: design will be altered
Flight 93 memorial: fighting back
(Dis)honoring the flight that fought back
Flight 93 memorial: Seeing is believing
Flight 93 memorial: controversy

The above phrase in Arabic is “lan astaslem.” It means “I will not surrender/I will not submit.” (Thanks to Rusty, Laura, and Daveed for translation help.) This is the last line of my 9/11 column and it’s my 9/11 anniversary message to the convert-or-die jihadists.

And yes, I’ve got t-shirts in the works as a response to Cindy Sheehan’s own Arabic moonbat version, which protests national security profiling.

Hers reads: “We will not be silent.” Yeah, well neither will I.

My morning has been devoted to paying tribute to the victims of the terrorist attacks five years ago. They will never be forgotten. But as I wrote last night in noting the new Zawahiri video:

“Remembrance is worthless without resolve. And resolve is useless without recognition. You can’t know our enemies, let alone defeat them, with your head buried in the sand hiding from the ‘Islamophobia’ brigade.”

Remembrance. Resolve. Recognition. Those have been major themes of this blog over the past several years in covering everything from the battle over the Ground Zero memorial to the fight over the Flight 93 memorial to the terror-coddling by CAIR to our persistently stupid open-door policies to jihadis to the Mohammed Cartoon rage to the plight of Abdul Rahman to the blogger whistle-blowing on “Fauxtography.”

In keeping with those three tenets, I have chosen to welcome best-selling author Robert Spencer over at Hot Air today to provide much deeper historical context for the 9/11 attacks–context the appeasers and the Islamophobia-phobes prefer to ignore, misremember, or whitewash. We’ll be running another program later this week hosted by Robert, who will have a rejoinder to American al Qaeda Adam Gadahn. Gadahn named Robert and several other outspoken American analysts and authors, including Daniel Pipes and Steve Emerson, who write critically on Islam and jihad.

We owe these and many other outspoken dissidents our thanks. I personally owe Robert, Daniel, Steve, Diana West, and Andy Bostom deepest gratitude for helping educate me about a threat I shrugged my shoulders at before 9/11. More: Bat Ye’or. Oriana Fallaci. Wafa Sultan. Aayan Hirsi Ali. Irshad Manji. Ibn Warraq. Bruce Bawer. MEMRI. Bloggers: Charles Johnson, The Jawa Report, Laura Mansfield, Gates of Vienna, The Counterterrorism Blog, Zombie, Honest Reporting, Paul Belien and The Brussels Journal. So many more.

Not all of them agree on every aspect of the Islamic terrorist threat to the West or how best to defend ourselves against it. And I don’t agree with everything they’ve written. But all of these men and women are inspirations who share a common intellectual defiance against submission to jihad.

For their refusal to submit, they have earned death threats, scorn, and endless accusations of “Islamophobia.” And not just from the unhinged Left. Ralph Peters of the New York Post, a venerable writer and author whose work I’ve admired and respected, lost it completely last week pointing fingers at unnamed “right-wing extremists” as “Islam Haters: The Enemy Within.” He refuses to name any names. He rages that his anonymous targets are the “Ku Klux Klan with higher-thread-count sheets.” And he plays the chickenhawk card to the hilt, as if civilians have no ammunition to offer in the battle against jihadists.

Sputters Peters:

“The most repugnant trend in the American shouting match that passes for a debate on the struggle with Islamist terrorism isn’t the irresponsible nonsense on the left – destructive though that is. The really ugly “domestic insurgency” is among right-wing extremists bent on discrediting honorable conservatism.”

Um, who’s shouting? And if “right-wing extremists” are more destructive than the jihadi-coddling Left, why can’t Peters muster up the cojones to name a single one of these destructive forces?

Andy Bostom has a scathing response. So does Spencer, who writes:

As I have said many times, I am all for encouraging and working with moderate Muslims. But for their moderation to be effective, they have to confront, repudiate, and help other Muslims to repudiate the elements of Islam that are giving rise to violent fanaticism. Most self-proclaimed moderates instead simply deny those elements exist, while the mujahedin continue to use those same elements to recruit new members. And now Ralph Peters, in his fog of confusion, has just contributed to that destructive denial.

It’s a measure of how triumphant the forces of political correctness have been over the past five years that attempts to discuss what Islam is actually about immediately invite cries of bigotry and “Islamophobia”–not only from the unhinged Left, but also from the obsequious Right.

I share my friend and Hot Air colleague Bryan Preston’s related thoughts on this:

Five years on, a psychosis has gripped millions who can’t and won’t fathom the true nature of the war we are in. For many of them, having been born and raised in an essentially post-Christian West, they can’t imagine that anyone might be motivated to kill and die because of something a warlord wrote down centuries ago. They cannot imagine any religion other than the one they believe they have outgrown being violent or causing violence. They cannot imagine anyone fighting for a cause that offers no material gains and therefore cannot be negotiated away. In our essentially materialist West, millions lack the imagination to believe that bin Laden’s pining for the return of Andalusia to Muslim rule is in his mind a legitimate reason to wage war on America now. They can imagine their own countrymen being so motivated, though, and I think that’s key to understanding their state of mind. They can imagine the Rotary Club member down the street plotting mayhem because he goes to church and votes Republican, but they can’t imagine that the Muslim in Karachi is a real, live enemy who is actually plotting an attack.

This lack of imagination has bred the anti-war madness we have now. Rather than accept the reality of an enemy that cannot and therefore will not negotiate away what he believes to be the will of God, and rather than accept that this enemy will understand nothing outside total victory or total defeat, and rather than understand that this enemy’s goals include enslaving the entire world in a global caliphate, and rather than accept that this reality necessitates the use of all tools including military might to defend ourselves, millions have embraced an alternate reality. The reality of the enemy outside the West and its motivations being too terrifying and too far beyond their own control, millions now imagine that the enemy in this war is within. The enemy, to them, isn’t the turbaned man behind the plot to hijack multiple airplanes and crash them into multiple buildings in America. The real enemy, to these millions, is the man in the Oval Office, and the man or men behind him.

Imagining the enemy as a Westerner who has a Western worldview and essentially Western motivations gives these millions the comfort of thinking that they can understand and defeat the enemy easily. They can expose him in the press or on their blog. They can spread the word through a bumper sticker or a sign in their yard. They can vote against him and encourage others to help vote him out. They can impeach him. They can shout and rail at anyone who supports him. They can destroy his political party and ruin his name. They can, in their own minds, win the war on their own terms without exposing themselves to danger. Because they have imagined their own enemy from before that day to be the enemy of civilization. And because it’s not really a war at all, just a made-up threat some evil neocons conjured up to scare everyone into giving them power. And that being the case, the deniers imagine that they can save civilizaton at the ballot box. They don’t have to find out what makes the enemy tick, they don’t have to fight him, and they don’t have to change their fundamental and now obviously flawed assumptions about humanity and the world.

If only it were that easy.

Five years on, the illness of replacing an implacable, indeed alien enemy with one from our own civilizational family has spread and metastasized through the majority of one of our two political parties, and may yet claim a majority of the country itself. History has a way of fading out as the day’s current noise rises in volume, and to them 9-11 is either history or a historic lie. The loudest voice, though not always or even often right, is often the one that gets the last word. And the 9-11 deniers and their allies across the left are nothing if not loud.

Five years on, it’s hard to take a positive look at the war because we are failing to comprehend it. The mass denial of reality is taking half our arsenal of unity and morale away from us. Those of us who see the threat for what it is still say that we will prevail because we are right and because we are America, but that’s just letting the others off the hook. If we’re going to prevail anyway, why should they snap out of their fog? And why should we demand that they do? The truth is, we need the denial to end and we need our countrymen to understand and help, but since we’re powerless to cure it with reason we shrug or laugh at it. But it’s eating away at our ability to defend ourselves.

And so I commemorate the fifth anniversary of the jihadi attacks on America with a small gesture.

“Lan astaslem.”

I will not submit. I will not surrender.

None of us can know exactly how we would act in Todd Beamer’s or Barbara Olson’s or Robert Stethem’s or Fabrizio Quattrocchi’s shoes. But we can gain strength in their memory, in the reinforcing presence of each other’s company, in making our refusal to submit public, and in working to honor this anniversary vow in small ways and large–long after the memorial candles have been blown out.

There is this new design out for the Flight 93 Memorial near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Its original version, called the “Crescent of Embrace,” met a barrage of flak in the blogosphere because of its unfortunate resemblance to an Islamic crescent, aligned toward Mecca. In the wake of the criticism the architects retitled that section as the “Forty Memorial Groves” and revised their plan to close the crimson crescent of maple trees around a large natural depression in the earth, adjacent to the “sacred ground” where Flight 93 crashed.

I suppose that is an improvement. Nonetheless, the winning memorial to a plane crash is still…a hole in the ground.

Is that the most tasteful commemoration possible for a struggle aboard a doomed plane, one that may have saved the United States Capitol from the fate of the World Trade Center?

Next up from the same firm: The Titanic memorial ice sculpture.

The revised design is still the subject of some criticism, with one blog called “Error Theory” lambasting it as an “Islamofascist shrine.” I don’t buy that. I don’t think Paul Murdoch Architects, the L.A.-based firm who came up with this, harbors some deep affinity for Taliban hegemony. On the other hand, I do believe that the revised plan is so vague that it is possible to find any number of conflicting interpretations within its incoherent and nihilistic expanse. Murdoch’s designers bear some of the blame for this failure, but there are three sources of bad inspiration that deserve singling out as well…

…The aesthetic of the Murdoch design is not, as Error Theory suggested, Islamofascist, but rather pagan, or at least New Age. The chimes, the Stonehenge-like circle of trees, the obsession with the ecology of the area, all decry the thoroughly Californicated roots of the idea…

Read the whole thing. Meanwhile, Alec Rawls of Error Theory says he will be submitting a report to the US parks superintendent about his concerns.

Stay tuned.

***
Previous:

Flight 93 memorial update: redesigned
The real “Crescent of Embrace”
Flight 93 memorial: design will be altered
Flight 93 memorial: fighting back
(Dis)honoring the flight that fought back
Flight 93 memorial: Seeing is believing
Flight 93 memorial: controversy

The crescent is gone. AP reports:

Designers of a Flight 93 memorial have made a bowl-shaped piece of land its centerpiece, replacing a crescent-shape design that some critics had said was a symbol honoring terrorists, officials announced Wednesday.

The new design for the memorial, to be built on the site of the Sept. 11, 2001, crash near Shanksville, features most of the details of the original, which was unveiled in September after a worldwide design competition.

But a round, bowl-shaped area would replace a “Crescent of Embrace,” a crescent-shaped cluster of maple trees.

In September, Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., criticized the design in a letter to the National Park Service Director, saying many questioned the shape “because of the crescent’s prominent use as a symbol in Islam and the fact that the hijackers were radical Islamists.”

Paul Murdoch, president of Paul Murdoch Architects, which designed the memorial, had called the criticism of the crescent an “unfortunate diversion,” but said they were sensitive to the concerns.

In both old and new versions of the design, a tower with 40 wind chimes welcomes visitors to the site, where they can then walk to a large circular field ringed by 40 groves of red and sugar maple trees, symbolizing the 40 passengers and crew who died. There will also be pedestrian trails, a plaza from which to view the crash site, and a white marble wall with the victims’ names inscribed.

In the Flight 93 National Memorial’s newsletter, Murdoch described the new design as an “evolution” of what was announced two months ago, reflecting input from the public, the competition’s jury and others.

The circle enhances the earlier design by putting more emphasis on the crash site, officials said in the newsletter. A break in the trees will symbolize the path the plane took as it crashed.

Good.

***
12/1 update: Alec Rawls says not so fast.

Previous:

The real “Crescent of Embrace”
Flight 93 memorial: design will be altered
Flight 93 memorial: fighting back
(Dis)honoring the flight that fought back
Flight 93 memorial: Seeing is believing
Flight 93 memorial: controversy

***
Dimitri Vassilaros of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review says “Kill the crescent.”

The Philadelphia Inquirer calls critics “blind.”

The Johnstown Tribune Democrat supports altering the memorial and cites the second-stage jury’s own words:

“Consider the interpretation and impact of words within the context of this event,” the jury wrote in its report. “The ‘Crescent’ should be referred to as the ‘circle’ or ‘arc’ or other words that are not tied to specific religious iconography.”

Henry Cook, president of Somerset Trust Co. and a member of the second-stage jury, said: “We suggested the name be changed. Someone did point out that the crescent had certain religious overtones.”

It’s not too late to do the right thing…

…Let’s make sure that message of unity and sacrifice is not drowned out by a clamor over semantics and religious imagery.

Changing the name is a start. If the design must be tweaked, we should be willing to do that, too.

Architect Paul Murdoch is reportedly open to more “evolution” of the memorial design.

***
While we’re on the subject of murderous Islamists on planes, have your heard about Mahmoud Maawad? More at Rantburg and Large Bill.

***
Previous:

Flight 93 memorial: design will be altered
Flight 93 memorial: fighting back
(Dis)honoring the flight that fought back
Flight 93 memorial: Seeing is believing
Flight 93 memorial: controversy

WASHINGTON – The architect of the memorial to a plane downed in western Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001, said Wednesday he would work to satisfy critics who complained that it honors terrorists with its crescent-shaped design.

Designer Paul Murdoch said he is “somewhat optimistic” that the spirit of the design could be maintained.

“It’s a disappointment there is a misinterpretation and a simplistic distortion of this, but if that is a public concern, then that is something we will look to resolve in a way that keeps the essential qualities,” Murdoch, 48, of Los Angeles, said in a telephone interview.

Good.

The controversy, however, is not over. Some are insisting that the “topography of the land” dictates that the crescent remain. But several other finalists did not use a crescent or arc in their plans. Murdoch should give them a call.

***

Don’t forget that there’s another crucial memorial battle still under way at NYC’s Ground Zero. Visit Take Back the Memorial for the latest on how to help.

***

The Washington Times covers the controversy.

Ed Morrissey:

Removing the crescent will handle the most objectionable part of the design. However, unless the design does more to memorialize the way these forty civilians galvanized the nation into action instead of defeatist paralysis, it will still do an injustice to their memory. The other elements of the Murdoch design sound and look beautiful, but communicate passivity and detachment. These qualities embody the antithesis of Flight 93, which demand action and involvement of all Americans in defiance of terrorism and the defense of the nation.

Let’s hope that Murdoch will rethink his design to truly memorialize what Flight 93 meant to America. Otherwise, the jury needs to literally go back to the drawing board.

***
KHOW’s Caplis and Silverman get a dissenting view from a Flight 93 family member. Audio here.

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Previous:

Flight 93 memorial: fighting back
(Dis)honoring the flight that fought back
Flight 93 memorial: Seeing is believing
Flight 93 memorial: controversy

Technorati: Flight 93 memorial

War memorials should memorialize war. If you want peace and understanding and healing and good will toward all, go build Kabbalah centers…

…A proper war memorial stirs to anger and action. We all remember passenger Todd Beamer’s last heard words as he and his fellow Americans prepared to take back the plane from al Qaeda’s killers, don’t we?

No, the phrase wasn’t “Let’s meditate.” It was “Let’s roll.”

I focus not only on the use of the red crescent, but also the overall tone and intent of architect Paul Murdoch’s design:

Funded with a mix of public money and private cash (including a $500,000 grant from Teresa Heinz’s far left Heinz Endowments), the winning design, titled the “Crescent of Embrace,” features a grove of maple trees ringing the crash site in the shape of an unmistakable red crescent. The crescent, New York University Middle East Studies professor Bernard Haykel told the Johnstown, Pa., Tribune-Democrat, “is the symbol of ritual and religious life for Muslims.”

Some design contest jury members reportedly raised concerns about the jarring symbol of the hijackers’ faith implanted on the hallowed ground where the passengers of Flight 93 were murdered. But their recommendations to change the name of the memorial (to “Arc of Embrace,” or some such whitewashing) were ignored. Memorial architect Paul Murdoch, whose firm emphasizes “environmental responsibility and sustainability,” did not return calls and e-mails seeking comment, but he did emphasize to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that his creation was about “healing” and “contemplation.” He is also proud of his idea to hang a bunch of wind chimes in a tall tower at the site as a “gesture of healing and bonding.”

Wind chimes? Hey, why not add pinwheels and smiley face stickers and Care Bears while we’re at it, too?

Let’s set aside the utter boneheaded-ness of using a symbol that, inadvertently or not, commemorates the killers’ faith instead of the victims’ revolt. The soft-and-fuzzy memorial design of “Crescent of Embrace” still does injustice to the steely courage of the Flight 93′s passengers and crew. It evokes the defeatism embodied by those behind a similar move to turn the 9/11 memorial at Ground Zero in New York City into a pacifist guilt complex.

This is no way to fight a war. Or to remember those who have died fighting it.

Mark Steyn weighs in on Flight 93, re-hijacked:

If [architect Paul] Murdoch sincerely believes in a “crescent of embrace”, let him build one – at the headquarters of a “moderate” Islamic lobby group, or in the parking lot of your wackier colleges. To impose it on Flight 93 – to, in effect, hijack those passengers a second time – is an abomination. Flight 93 is about what happens when you understand that some things can’t be embraced.

The New York Sun editorializes:

We went to the architect’s Web site, where some images of the design are posted. We kept looking for an American flag or some patriotic symbol and just couldn’t find any. Perhaps we missed it. We hope so. The revolt on Flight 93 is going to go down in American history as one of the great moments, and “Let’s roll” is going to rank with the retort that General McAuliffe, surrounded by the enemy en route to Bastogne, delivered to the Nazi demand for surrender, “Nuts.”

There is, incidentally, a museum in Bastogne known as the “Nuts Museum,” a modest place commemorating the spirit of General McAuliffe’s soldiers. Imagine if it had been built in, say, the shape of the German eagle…

…The right thing for the Park Service to do would be to take its time and think this through. If the memorial is purely a private matter, it can do whatever it wants. But if it is a public site and involves public money and an agency like the Park Service is involved, then the American people deserve to have a say in the decision of how the heroes of Flight 93 are memorialized.

Rep. Tom Tancredo has sent a letter to the National Park Service. The AP reports that the memorial must be approved by not only the NPS director, but also the Secretary of the Interior Department.

Via LGF, CAIR has already mobilized in defense of the memorial:

WASHINGTON, Sept. 13 /PRNewswire/ — The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) today dismissed Rep. Tom Tancredo’s (R-CO) comments on the design of a memorial to those aboard a plane that crashed in Pennsylvania on 9/11 as a cynical political ploy designed to gain national attention…

A “plane that crashed?!” That’s a rather telling description of the flight that fought back against Islamist terrorists. A “plane that crashed?” No, CAIR, this is “a plane that crashed.” Flight 93 didn’t just “crash.” It was hijacked by al Qaeda followers under the banner of the red crescent, the very same symbol that may soon be implanted at the Islamists’ crime scene outside Shanksville, Pa. It crashed there because brave men and women forced the hijackers’ hands and refused to allow the terrorists to complete their deadly mission in Washington, D.C.

Never, never forget.

***
The next step for those wishing to object to the memorial design–partially funded with your tax dollars, and wholly belonging to all of us–is to contact Interior Department Secretary Gale Norton, who along with Congress, has final approval authority over the design.

Her e-mail address is gale_norton@ios.doi.gov.

Her phone: 202 208-7351.

Her mailing address: Department of Interior 1849 C St, NW, Washington DC 20240.

1035am EDT Update: A reader says Interior doesn’t want to take calls about the design and is directing citizens to an out-of-order NPS number. Nice. Meantime, here are Gale Norton’s own words about what the memorial should do:

“As I look around this field, there is little that we can do or say or build that can be equal to the courage and sacrifice of the heroes who died on Flight 93, two years ago today,” Norton said. “Our hearts tell of a need to honor and memorialize their heroism and to distinguish and identify the importance of this site and what happened here for future generations.”

1100am EDT update Several readers also inform me that the fax number for the NPS Superintendent of the Flight 93 Memorial is not working. Here’s other contact info:

National Park Service
109 West Main Street, Suite 104
Somerset, PA 15501-2035

Superintendent – Flight 93 NMEM
(814) 443-4557

And fyi, Public Law No: 107-226 is the law that established the Flight 93 Memorial. Its main sponsor was Rep. John Murtha, R D-Pa. Contact info for Rep. Murtha here.

***

Captain Ed sums it all up:

This memorial offends on multiple levels, again whether the offense was intentional or not. It simply does not meet the occasion. While the verdict of the families should have some weight in the approval process, the entire point of this memorial is the national implications of the event, which is why the government will run the memorial and is in charge of its construction and maintenance. A great many of us do not want the Islamic symbolism as a centerpiece for the Flight 93 memorial, but more importantly, we want a memorial that evokes the courageous and inspiring example that they provided with their last breath of life. They didn’t teach us to sit around and do nothing, and a memorial that encourages that simply gets it wrong.

If you haven’t yet seen the other finalists’ designs, you should. My favorite is “Disturbed Harmony,” which pays stark and moving homage to the bravery and heroism of the passengers and crew of Flight 93. It’s a memorial with strength and spine.

***
Previous:

(Dis)honoring the flight that fought back
Flight 93 memorial: Seeing is believing
Flight 93 memorial: controversy

Technorati: Flight 93 memorial

9/14 840pm EDT update: The design will be altered.

Did you weep and curse and cheer?

And do you wonder how this memorial design–benignly passive at best, offensive and inexplicably clueless at worst–possibly passed muster as the best representation of the spirit, courage, and resilience of the 40 passengers who saved countless American lives?

Is this the best we can do?

Sissy Willis and Dean Esmay, both conservative bloggers I like and link to regularly, dissent from those who are troubled by the “Crescent of Embrace.” Do read their critiques. Sissy Willis thinks the issue can be resolved with a name change. Dean Esmay dismisses the controversy as a “kerfuffle.” Both describe critics, myself included, as “shrill.”

Go back and read my initial post on the subject. Read Tom Bevan’s at Real Clear Politics. Tell me what is “shrill” about politely, but directly, questioning the design and soliciting others’ input–and then coming to the clarion (a synonym for…shrill) conclusion that whatever the intentions of the architects were, the proposed memorial simply does not do the heroes of Flight 93 justice.

Wretchard at The Belmont Club, eloquent as always, observes:

[M]emorials are what we perceive them to be; they rarely have an intrinsic value. They “remind” us of things, and it so happened that a design which was probably innocently conceived triggered certain unfortunate associations. Symbols are powerful and dangerous to the unwitting. During the Stalin era, one man was sent to the Gulag because he hung his hat over Stalin’s picture. It didn’t matter that he was blind. It was the symbolism of his act that counted then. Perhaps years from today no will object to Red Crescents displayed in conjunction with the victims of September 11, just as someday people may remember that Swastikas were widely employed as ancient religious symbols. One day, but probably not in 2005.

***

FYI, the memorial is being funded with both public and private money, including
a $500,000 grant from the Heinz Endowments, chaired by Teresa Heinz.

***

Scott Ott spoofs.

***
A sample of reader e-mails:

It’s funny, because no matter how you slice it, the red crescent makes no sense here! I mean, you could turn this around 180 degrees, and say that the architect is _blaming all Islam_ for Flight 93 – after all, the red crescent could be seen as “sinisterly enveloping” the site “in blood”. Not to say I think
that – the architect is probably just a loopy lefty. But the point is, a religious symbol of this nature is too easy to misinterpret. It would be like painting a cross on top of a picture of Nuremberg – does it mean “Christians sympathize” or “Christians did this”?

God preserve us from idiots with government grants.

Alvaro Fernandez
Vicksburg, MS

—

It is clear the design of the Flight 93 memorial is state sanctioned religion. The Red Crescent is a universally recognized religious symbol and as such violates separation of church and state. Someone needs to call the ACLU and have them file suit. They only need to take one of their old cases and replace cross with red crescent. This should be a slam dunk for them.

Paul Schulte
Gilbert, AZ

[Ed. note: Heh.]

—

[Ed. note: Sample of letters sent to architect Paul Murdoch, who is unavailable for comment until Sept. 19, according to his office.]

Mr. Murdoch,

A crescent? If it were for anything else, it could easily be considered a simple, aesthetic and appealing design. But I’m not quite ready to express any enthusiasm because I’m not so sure the primary symbol of Islam is appropriate here. I would like to ask, was this a consideration in your design or in its selection at all? How many of those on the panel that selected your design were aware of its uncanny resemblance to (or the irony of) the Muslim crescent?

I suppose even more curious was your stated idea for the crescent as being ‘a gesture of healing and bonding’. I truly hope that this language is not couching another politically correct sermon on religious tolerance, nor any imaginary cultural/religious reconciliation with fanatical Islam, nor the equally disturbing yet phony lie of Muslim solidarity with the victims of Flight 93, or Americans in general.

I would kindly ask for clarification on your statement of using this crescent as ‘a gesture of healing and bonding’, and whether or not your intentions mirror any of the above. Either way, I believe the families of the victims of Flight 93, and those footing the bill for this memorial, have a right to know.

Best regards,
Chris Weil

–
Dear Paul,

As gently as I possibly can, let me express my profound shock at your design for the Flight 93 Memorial. Please understand that the apparent coincidence of your design, with the Islamic Crescent is simply going to be too much for the American people to accept.

We are not anti-Islamic, and whether or not this symbol is what you had in mind when you put together this design, is entirely beside the point. Because of how it will be perceived, the design will simply never, ever be acceptable to us.

The heroic actions of the people on that flight will become, and perhaps already have become mythical. Those passengers stopped fanatically religious radical Islamists from destroying one or another of the great foundational institutions of our free society, and of killing more people on the ground. In doing what they did, they collectively sacrificed their lives for us, and for what we cherish as a people.

We will never know the full details of the story, but we do know enough of that sad and wonderful tale, for it to live forever in our minds. Our children will tell their children, and theirs will tell theirs, for generations to come. They were just citizens, those folks . . . not soldiers or sailors . . . they did not volunteer, nor were they ever asked for any sacrifice, or impressed into this duty they undertook. But undertake it they did. They rose to the occasion, my friend, in a manner, and with a courage that strikes the rest of us speechless. Tears, mixed with some anger, but bursting with an immense pride, well up in the eyes of Americans everywhere, each time our thoughts turn to what they did for us.

So, perhaps you can understand why we simply cannot accept the ground zero location of their sacrifice, to nevertheless be forever stamped with an unmistakable symbol of Islam, one recognized throughout the world. It was no doubt a familiar symbol, perhaps one embraced by the vile, fanatical destroyers who came at us that day, and who hijacked that plane to do their horrible deed. As such, it would become the central, indelible characteristic of the memorial, and would inevitably be seen by many as a mockery or belittling of the sacrifices on Flight 93, and of all of us who cherish the actions of those who said, “Let’s roll,” that day, just four years ago.

Please, please withdraw this design, and save us all the harsh struggle that will inevitable ensue from its pursuit.

Steve Robbins

—

The picture, from this aspect, also suggests the old Soviet sickle, minus the hammer. Pretty unfortunate design, at least.

John Fleming

—

First, I agree the crescent is an inappropriate shape for the memorial. The shape is a religious symbol for islam and even though we aren’t fighting a holy war on behalf of Christianity in the War on Terror the terrorists who hijacked flight 93 and who continue to fight us today are fighting a holy war on behalf of
Islam. So the crescent symbol is inappropriate because it threatens to memorialize the terrorists who lost on flight 93 rather than the Americans who
sacrificed themselves while achieving a victory.

Second, the official description touts the winning design as having a theme of healing. The time for healing is after we have won the War on Terror. Until
we’ve won we have to maintain a fighting anger. We can heal when the last Islamist enters the gates of hell.

Third, “Disturbed Harmony” is a more appropriate entry and should be the winner. Its themes of bravery and heroism are better suited to the flight 93 memorial. We should push that entry as an alternative.

Dave Rankin

—
I had intended to support the Flight 93 memorial, but will be withholding my donation in protest.

I am writing to object to the Flight 93 memorial, “Crescent of Embrace”.

It is clear to me that the architectural team that designed the memorial had as a central theme a crescent (hence the title of the memorial). The crescent is also a prominent image and central to the Islamic faith.

If the architects who designed this memorial deny the relationship, or say that it is a mere coincidence, then they are being less than truthful. It is my understanding that concerns were raised about the imagery early in the judging process. Public concerns, such as mine, were anticipated.

At this point, if the park service or the designers deny the obvious link to the Islamic faith, they are being disingenuous, or worse, taking the general public as fools. Are we being tested, to see if we have the right degree of tolerance, or sensitivity?

In our hypersensitive, no offense, tolerance at all cost society that we are trying to achieve, please, this one time, be sensitive and tolerant to those that were attacked and killed on September 11th.

It is our turn to be respected.

Patrick Hunter, MD

Tons of you are stunned, outraged, and sickened by the new Flight 93 Memorial, the “Crescent of Embrace.” I called the architect responsible for the redesign, Paul Murdoch of Los Angeles, yesterday for comment. He did not return my call, but he did speak with the Johnstown, Pa., Tribune Democrat, as quoted in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette.

Neither Murdoch nor his supporters see any problem with the red crescent wrapped around the crash site near Shanksville, Pa., where 40 innocent people were murdered at the hands of Islamic terrorists:

“This is not about any religion per se,” Murdoch said in a telephone interview with the Tribune-Democrat in Johnstown. “It’s a spiritual space, and a sacred place, but it’s open to anyone.”

The word “crescent,” he said, was used as a generic architectural term for a curved line.

“Sure, there is an Islamic crescent,” Murdoch said. “Theirs is a lunar crescent. Ours isn’t based on that.”

Per se.

The Post Gazette attempts to marginalize and minimize critics:

Almost immediately upon seeing the design, online bloggers suggested that it is inappropriate to use a red crescent in the memorial.

To many, that shape represents Islam, and the symbol is used on the flags of several Muslim countries, including Turkey, Pakistan and Uzbekistan.

The four men who hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 on its way from Newark, N.J., to San Francisco were Muslim.

But the architects who created the winning design say their design has nothing to do with Islam.

The article states that family members of the Flight 93 victims do not find the crescent objectionable. And how’s this for fair and balanced: Five people who support the memorial are quoted, including one who calls the criticism bigoted, disgusting, and repellant. By comparison, only two opponents are quoted, including a “street evangelist” who is described as a “self-proclaimed bishop.”

So, the plan is dismiss those of us whose eyes are not blinded by political correctness as racist cranks with imaginations run wild. But we’re not the only ones objecting. The Tribune-Democrat article quotes a professor of Middle East studies and a local Muslim leader who see the obvious–and reports that jury members who chose the winning design were cognizant of the offensive overtones.

“Given the political ramifications, it’s not an apt name,” Professor Bernard Haykel said Friday, a day after a Somerset County street preacher declared he is considering filing for an injunction to stop the design.

“I could see a Muslim taking offense to this by saying this could be a slight to Islam. It could cut both ways.”

…In Islam, the crescent moon symbolizes the beginning and end of a calendar month. Crescents are prominent on mosques and are used on ambulances similar to red crosses in America.

“It is the symbol of ritual and religious life for Muslims,” Haykel said.

“The name (of the memorial) itself is not bad, but people can read into it all kinds of things.”

Murdoch has said the word is used generically in an architectural sense to describe the walkway around the bowl-shaped depression surrounding the plane’s point of impact. He maintains no religious implications were intended.

But even the second-stage jury that selected the design recommended changing its name to steer clear of religious overtones. Rather than crescent, the jury suggested using circle or arc of embrace instead.

Fouad El Bayly of Somerset, leader of the Islamic Center of Johnstown, has said Muslims immediately would recognize the symbolism in the design.

The crescent is a symbol of Islamic faith, El Bayly said.

“You pick something to be identified with,” he said.

The gentlemen at Junkyard Blog and an astute commenter at Captain’s Quarters cut through the architectural b.s., too. Rich at CQ writes:

This was not mere ham-fistedness. There is no group more attuned to symbolism and the “meaning” of structures than architects. It is their business to take drawings and, ultimately, wood, glass, and stone, and create meaning out of it. That this design is in some way accidental or coincidental is preposterous.

Bryan Preston at JYB cuts to the chase:

Look, this was almost surely conceived innocently by an idealistic liberal as symbolic of “peaceful Islam” healing and bonding with those slaughtered for Allah, but this shifty artiste doesn’t want to say that outright. He may think that’s a noble cause, but he would also think think CAIR has a noble cause. By not admitting any honest intent here, it raises the possibility that the mockery is intentional. It does almost feel like a big practical joke.

And a very sick one.

***

Reader Simon Tan writes:

Dear Michelle,

The winning design for the Flight 93 memorial ‘Crescent of Embrace’ is extravagant, wasteful and ultimately does not convey the spirit of the resistance and defiance of the passengers who made the ultimate sacrifice that their plane would not be used to attack their own countrymen. Surely that is the enduring legacy of the men and women of Flight 93, that there will be no surrender in the face of terrorism.

How would you stop this travesty of a memorial from blighting the Pennsylvania landscape? This is the intellectual masturbatory fantasy of an architect for the benefit of his peers.

I propose a single block of unfinished granite, representing the enduring and unvarnished legacy of Flight 93 with the immortal line, “Let’s Roll” hewn into it in 5’ high letters. A panel below should be smoothed and polished and the names of the fallen engraved there along with a description of their actions that day. In front of this would be a simple paved plaza with one flagpole facing the monument in their honour. Let the memorial be simple and straightforward, uncluttered by the baggage of others and with a clear and unambiguous message for all who would stand before it.

Ace and Allahpundit cheekily propose their own redesign.

***

Write the National Park Service, which must approve the final design here.

Call the Superintendent of the Flight 93 National Memorial at (814) 443-4557. Or fax (814) 443-2180.

***

Update: Mark S. says the NPS contact page isn’t working:

Thanks again for your and other bloggers efforts to spread the word about the design for the Flight 93 monument. I tried to send the following message to the National Park Service via the link provided from your site, but received a “URL not found” error–after several attempts–when I confirmed my e-mail address and tried to submit the message. So it looks like phone or fax are our best bets at this point.

The Flight 93 Memorial design, titled “The Crescent of Embrace,” was unveiled this week.

Take a close look:

Remind you of anything?

Tom Bevan at the indispensable Real Clear Politics gently raises some questions about the design.

Charles at Little Green Footballs asks: “Is this a coincidence, an example of amazing cluelessness, or something more deliberate?”

Zombie has more.

What do you think?

FYI:

A 15-member jury made up of family members, community members and design professionals was tasked with making a final recommendation on the design. Five finalists were selected from 1,011 designs.

[Architect Paul] Murdoch’s design still must get the approval of the director of the National Park Service and the secretary of the Interior.

By unveiling the design in Washington, organizers hope to garner more publicity for their campaign to raise $30 million in private money for the project. The fundraising campaign is being co-chaired by former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, who was the first Homeland Security Secretary, and retired Gen. Tommy Franks, who oversaw operations in Afghanistan and Iraq after the terrorist attacks.

The state of Pennsylvania has already donated more than $10 million for the memorial. A projected date for the opening has not been set.

Bryan Preston: “What next–a holocaust memorial in the shape of a swastika?”

Ed Morrissey: “Can you imagine the outcry from the multiculturalists and the ACLU had the design incorporated a cross or a Star of David in honor of the victims? Why should we tolerate the Crescent that, inadvertently or deliberately, honors the terrorists?

As long as that crescent remains in the design, I’m not donating a red cent to the memorial. I urge you to tell the National Parks Service and the Secretary of the Interior to rethink their plans.”

Update: Here’s more info on all five finalists in the design competition. And here’s the official Flight 93 Memorial website.

Here’s the website of “Crescent of Embrace” designer, Paul Murdoch. His statement of philosophy:

“A primary task of this generation is to create new patterns of development that sustain human habitation on this planet. Towards this end, the principles adopted for our practice are intended to ensure that each project contributes to an overall goal of environmental responsibility while striving for design excellence.

As architects, we are uniquely qualified to help formulate and translate policy into tangible form; mitigating pressures of urbanity with the need to heal the natural environment. Each design solution is seen as a contribution to the human condition; as it exists today and evolves into future generations.

Our goal is to define and study problems both in terms of clients’ direct needs and relative to long term effects on natural and man made surroundings. More than problem solving however, we aspire to emotionally affect and uplift our lives through poetry and beauty.

It is through these transcendent qualities that we optimistically strive for ways to enrich life and fulfill our original purpose for engaging in the practice of architecture.”

Update II: Reader Jim K. writes: “Looks like a memorial for the hijackers–not the victims! Incredible!”

Arthur Chrenkoff reviews “The Flight That Fought Back”–a Discovery Channel documentary airing on Sept. 11 that properly commemorates the brave passengers of Flight 93.

Related post 7/22/04: “Shall we finish it off?”