Ground Zero Apologia

[Annie]

http://www.buzzmachine.com/archives/2005_06_08.html#009820

Using the innocents

: We should be ashamed of ourselves. The great tragedy of 9/11 is almost three years gone and still the hole stares at us because we are too political and incompetent to fill it and, worse, we are allowing the innocents and heroes of that day to be used to fulfill political agenda. The latest:

Yesterday's Wall Street Journal carried an op-ed by Debra Burlingame, sister of a pilot of one of the 9/11 jets, that paints an enraging picture of the work behind the so-called International Freedom Center being planned for the site.

I smelled something bad there when The Times -- in a review of the plans filled with the writer's own political agenda -- revealed that a picture of Iraqis holding up their purple fingers of freedom -- a picture worth well more than a thousand words about freedom and democracy -- was taken out of the presentation.

Burlingame says that the center is practically being turned into what Bill Maher has wanted: a Why They Hate Us Pavillion.

The organizers of its principal tenant, the International Freedom Center (IFC), have stated that they intend to take us on "a journey through the history of freedom"--but do not be fooled into thinking that their idea of freedom is the same as that of those Marines. To the IFC's organizers, it is not only history's triumphs that illuminate, but also its failures. The public will have come to see 9/11 but will be given a high-tech, multimedia tutorial about man's inhumanity to man, from Native American genocide to the lynchings and cross-burnings of the Jim Crow South, from the Third Reich's Final Solution to the Soviet gulags and beyond.

Why? And why here?

On my grave, please do not build a memorial to the mistakes of my neighbors and ancestors. Don't stand on the grass above me and flagellate. Just let me lie there in peace, please.

Oh, and by the way, when you build this center, will you include the atrocities of the Saudis and Saddam Hussein and the PLO and all the tyrants of the Middle East? Will have you have an exhibit about the women there who do not have the freedom to vote or even drive?

Will you build a special wing for the special sickness that is suicide terrorism -- in Israel and in Iraq and at the World Trade Center? Or will you be afraid of offending Muslims?

Well, I'm offended.

The World Trade Center is a place for remembrance of the innocents and victims of that day and for a return to life.

: Burlingame has problems with many of the people behind the center but here is the gem:

Eric Foner, radical-left history professor at Columbia University who, even as the bodies were being pulled out of a smoldering Ground Zero, wrote, "I'm not sure which is more frightening: the horror that engulfed New York City or the apocalyptic rhetoric emanating daily from the White House." This is the same man who participated in a "teach-in" at Columbia to protest the Iraq war, during which a colleague exhorted students with, "The only true heroes are those who find ways to defeat the U.S. military," and called for "a million Mogadishus."

: Michele Malkin is also angry. More blog ire under Burlingame at Technorati

On the International Freedom Center, it's part of the Soros group:

http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cach...l+Freedom+Center+Soros&hl=en&client=firefox-a
International Policy Fellowships

The International Policy Fellowships (IPF) program was launched in April 1998 as a program of the Open Society Institute-Budapest to identify and nurture the next generation of open society leaders in the countries of the former Soviet Union, Central and Eastern Europe, Mongolia, and countries of the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and North Africa. IPF joined forces with the Center for Policy Studies when it was established in late 1999 and began offering training to Policy Fellows to develop their capacity to write professional policy documents, identify appropriate policy instruments, and effectively advocate policies – skills that remain underdeveloped in countries where the Soros foundations work.​

 

[Annie]

Roger Simon has a suggestion for Soros, links at site:

http://www.rogerlsimon.com/mt-archives/2005/06/suggestion_for.php

June 08, 2005: Suggestion for Soros - Double Down!

George Soros has been taking some hits across the blogosphere for the plan for turning the Ground Zero Memorial into an advertisement for post-modern, pseudo-liberal cant. Debra Burlingame, sister of 9/11 victim Chic Burlingame, is justifiably appalled.

But I have a suggestion for Mr. Soros. When attacked by a hail storm of criticism, do what others do and double-down. Why do this in half measures? Why not turn Ground Zero into something that would really make you proud - A Memorial to the Victims of the American Gulag in Guantanamo? And it wouldn't even put a dent in your billions. All you'd need is some barbed wire, some salsa music and a half-way decent copy of the Mannekin Piss in Brussels.

UPDATE: Maybe PowerLine already has the design.

 

[Annie]

It feels like nothing makes a difference, but just look at the threads today on MSM and universities:

http://www.gopbloggers.org/mt/archives/001284.html

Reclaim the September 11 Memorial

We noted earlier the travesty of the September 11 memorial in New York, and so have Powerline and Little Green Footballs. The last line of the column is this:

Ground Zero has been stolen, right from under our noses. How do we get it back?

Well, here's how. The board of directors of the International Freedom Center are:

Tom A. Bernstein (Chairman) - President of Chelsea Piers, President of the Board of Human Rights First

Paula Grant Berry (Vice-Chair) - Member of the Board, World Trade Center Memorial Foundation

Stephen B. Heintz - President of the Rockefeller Bros. Fund

Daniel T. Tishman - President of Tishman Construction Corporation

Tom Bernstein is an avowed liberal; I suggest calls to Daniel Tishman (212-399-3600). The International Freedom Center was selected by the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. to be at the 9/11 memorial, and the chairman of the LMDC is John Whitehead (212-962-2300). The LMDC board was appointed by New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg (311 in NYC or 212-NEW-YORK outside NYC) and New York Governor George Pataki (518-474-8390). These people probably aren't aware of what travesty is about to take place on hallowed ground, so let them know.

Posted by Jonathan R. at June 7, 2005 05:03 PM

 

[Annie]

Surprising what squeaky wheels get, links at site:

http://takebackthememorial.com/

"Ground Zero has been stolen, right from under our noses. How do we get it back?"

Take Back The Memorial

Don't let them hijack the memorial to the victims of 9/11.

Don't let the memory of those that died on that day fall victim to those that would excuse their murderers.

Excerpts from The Great Ground Zero Heist by DEBRA BURLINGAME From the Wall Street Journal, June 7, 2005.

"The World Trade Center Memorial will break ground this year. When those Marines return in 2010, the year it is scheduled to open, no doubt they will expect to see the artifacts that bring those memories to life. They’ll want a vantage point that allows them to take in the sheer scope of the destruction, to see the footage and the photographs and hear the personal stories of unbearable heartbreak and unimaginable courage. They will want the memorial to take them back to who they were on that brutal September morning.

Instead, they will get a memorial that stubbornly refuses to acknowledge the yearning to return to that day. Rather than a respectful tribute to our individual and collective loss, they will get a slanted history lesson, a didactic lecture on the meaning of liberty in a post-9/11 world. They will be served up a heaping foreign policy discussion over the greater meaning of Abu Ghraib and what it portends for the country and the rest of the world."

[...]

"The public will have come to see 9/11 but will be given a high-tech, multimedia tutorial about man's inhumanity to man, from Native American genocide to the lynchings and cross-burnings of the Jim Crow South, from the Third Reich's Final Solution to the Soviet gulags and beyond. This is a history all should know and learn, but dispensing it over the ashes of Ground Zero is like creating a Museum of Tolerance over the sunken graves of the USS Arizona."

[...]

"...the IFC’s list of those who are shaping or influencing the content and programming for their Ground Zero exhibit includes a Who’s Who of the human rights, Guantanamo-obsessed world:

• Michael Posner, executive director at Human Rights First who is leading the world-wide “Stop Torture Now” campaign focused entirely on the U.S. military. He has stated that Mr. Rumsfeld’s refusal to resign in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal is “irresponsible and dishonorable.”

• Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU, who is pushing IFC organizers for exhibits that showcase how civil liberties in this country have been curtailed since September 11.

• Eric Foner, radical-left history professor at Columbia University who, even as the bodies were being pulled out of a smoldering Ground Zero, wrote, “I’m not sure which is more frightening: the horror that engulfed New York City or the apocalyptic rhetoric emanating daily from the White House.” This is the same man who participated in a “teach-in” at Columbia to protest the Iraq war, during which a colleague exhorted students with, “The only true heroes are those who find ways to defeat the U.S. military,” and called for “a million Mogadishus.” The IFC website has posted Mr. Foner’s statement warning that future discussions should not be “overwhelmed” by the IFC’s location at the World Trade Center site itself.

• George Soros, billionaire founder of Open Society Institute, the nonprofit foundation that helps fund Human Rights First and is an early contributor to the IFC. Mr. Soros has stated that the pictures of Abu Ghraib “hit us the same way as the terrorist attack itself.”

[...]

"The so-called lessons of September 11 should not be force-fed by ideologues hoping to use the memorial site as nothing more than a powerful visual aid to promote their agenda. Instead of exhibits and symposiums about Internationalism and Global Policy we should hear the story of the courageous young firefighter whose body, cut in half, was found with his legs entwined around the body of a woman. Recovery personnel concluded that because of their positions, the young firefighter was carrying her."

[...]

"Ground Zero has been stolen, right from under our noses. How do we get it back?"

"Ms. Burlingame is a member of the board of directors of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation and the sister of Charles F. “Chic” Burlingame III, pilot of American Airlines fight 77, which was crashed at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001."



Ms. Burlingame's full commentary can be found here here.

Bill Bennett's radio interview with Ms. Burlingame is here.

How You Can Help Take Back The Memorial

Contact America's Mayor

Giuliani Partners LLC
5 Times Square
New York, NY 10036
Tel: 212.931.7300
Fax: 212.931.7310

Contact the International Freedom Center Board of Directors & Staff

120 Broadway, 31st Floor
New York, NY 10271
Fax: (212) 336-6727
IFC Chairman Tom Bernstein 212-336-6200 (Chelsea Piers Complex)
IFC President Richard Tofel

Contact the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation

Contact Your US Congressional Representative

Contact Your US Senator(s)

Contact NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg

Contact NY Governor George Pataiki

Contact The White House

Do YOUR part. Use this contact information, NOW.

For more information: [email protected]

 

[USViking]

Charles Rangel is nothing but a little pipsqueak, whose sick, mousey voice will be forgotten.

These IFC bastards, however, are threatening permanent desecration of holy ground.

It has never before occurred to me to advocate mob violence. If the IFC and their apes, parrots, and fellow travellers get their way, I may not only advocate it, I may take part in it.

 

[musicman]

I'm sorry - I am stunned into uncharacteristic speechlessness.

How? Why? WHAT???!!!

Is there no decency left in these bastards? Is their hatred of America bottomless??!!

 

[Annie]

I'm sorry - I am stunned into uncharacteristic speechlessness.

How? Why? WHAT???!!!

Is there no decency left in these bastards? Is their hatred of America bottomless??!!

MM, we already KNOW where they stand, now it's time to try and take some of our own power back.

 

[Annie]

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110006795

FOR THE RECORD

A Fitting Place at Ground Zero
The International Freedom Center will respect the victims of 9/11.

BY RICHARD J. TOFEL
Thursday, June 9, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

A year ago tomorrow, a new institution called the International Freedom Center was formally designated by the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. as one of the four cultural institutions for the World Trade Center site, all to be operated under the aegis of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation.

But some ask why such an institution--including museum exhibition spaces, an educational and cultural center already boasting commitments from nine of New York City's, the nation's and the world's leading universities, and a robust service and civic engagement program all devoted to advancing the cause of freedom--should be placed at Ground Zero. It is a serious question, and it deserves a thoughtful response.

The answer can be found in our society's proudest traditions and its deepest aspirations.

First, of course, the World Trade Center site must include a fitting and powerful memorial. And so it will. Michael Arad and Peter Walker's "Reflecting Absence" will transform the footprints of both of the Towers into "voids," each nearly an acre in size, and including perhaps the largest continuous man-made waterfalls in the world, surrounded by a veritable forest in the middle of the nation's third-largest business district. The Memorial will dominate the site, and provide its soul.

Then there will be the Memorial Center, a museum devoted to the events of September 11 itself, with exhibit space roughly equal in size to that at the International Freedom Center. The Memorial Center will tell the stories of the day--of heroism and sacrifice, of rescue and service, of courage and resolution, of memory and loss. It is the Memorial Center that will contain the iconic artifacts of September 11.

That is necessary, but not sufficient.

As envisioned in Daniel Libeskind's master plan for the site's redevelopment, the International Freedom Center's building will serve as a buffer between the sacred Memorial and the hustle and bustle of the surrounding city, including the thousands of people who will move each day in and out of Santiago Calatrava's spectacular new transit hub.

But the International Freedom Center itself will do much more than that. It will serve as a complement to the Memorial, bringing a universal "narrative of hope" to a place where hope is imperative.can anyone say 'hubris?'

In a world awash in so-called watershed moments, September 11, 2001, was the beginning of a new era, the end of what President Bush called the post-Cold War "sabbatical." Many of the meanings and lessons of September 11 will not be fully clear for years, but as the president reminded us in his second inaugural address,

"We have seen our vulnerability--and we have seen its deepest source. For as long as whole regions of the world simmer in resentment and tyranny--prone to ideologies that feed hatred and excuse murder--violence will gather, and multiply in destructive power, and cross the most defended borders, and raise a mortal threat. There is only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred and resentment, and expose the pretensions of tyrants, and reward the hopes of the decent and tolerant, and that is the force of human freedom."​

Freedom, we have learned time and again, is not a gift from our parents to be put on a shelf and admired. It requires work in our own time, work each of us can do and all of us must do.

Nor is the story of freedom one which began in America--or one that can end here. Ambassador Martin Palous, who fought for freedom in his own Czechoslovakia, now serves the free Czech Republic, and is also one of the more than 35 scholars of freedom who have advised the International Freedom Center, put it this way:

"9/11 is a story of courage, hope, and freedom: the courage to make the decision to go into the buildings to save someone, the hope to start anew after disaster, the wish to base our society on free will in the context of a pluralistic public sphere. It was a moment of truth in the story of freedom, and it connects the United States with democratic revolutions around the world, which share this quality of believing in the possibility of new beginnings." Out of the tragedy of September 11 came a renewed civic spirit, and the International Freedom Center will work to sustain that. This is work that can unite people of goodwill everywhere.

To be sure, the International Freedom Center will host debates and note points of view with which you--and I--will disagree. But that is the point, the proof of our society's enduring self-confidence and humanity. Moreover, the International Freedom Center will rise above the politics of the moment. It will not exist to precisely define "freedom" or to tell people what to think, but to get them to think--and to act in the service of freedom as they see it. And it will always do so in a manner respectful of the victims of September 11.

Judge Learned Hand may have put it best in the speech he gave in a New York City park during one of freedom's darkest hours, in the midst of another generation's greatest test: "The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the mind of other men and women."

Ground Zero is precisely the right place to make this stand and leave a legacy for our children and generations to come. No less than Abraham Lincoln told us so, and at no less a place than Gettysburg. One hundred and forty-two years later, many Americans remember what was done there, but nearly all know what was said there. Lincoln did not speak at Gettysburg of Little Round Top or Pickett's Charge. He talked about the future, and here is what he said:

"It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain--that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom."

Mr. Tofel is president of the International Freedom Center.

 

[Annie]

http://discoverthenetwork.org/moonbatcentral/2005/06/soros-network-defiles-ground-zero.html

Many more links and background on the organization:

Wednesday, June 08, 2005
Soros Network Defiles Ground Zero

It seems that the Soros network is determined to keep pushing until America pushes back. Their latest project is the defilement of one of our nation's holiest sites -- Ground Zero of the World Trade Center attack.

A group of Soros-funded "human rights" organizations have hijacked the planning process for The World Trade Center Memorial which will nestle among the footprints of the fallen towers. The cabal plans to use the memorial as a pulpit for leftwing propaganda.

Visitors to the memorial, "will be served up a heaping foreign policy discussion over the greater meaning of Abu Ghraib," writes Debra Burlingame in yesterday's Wall Street Journal (read the full text on David Horowitz's blog, here). Burlingame continues:

"The public will have come to see 9/11 but will be given a high-tech, multimedia tutorial about man's inhumanity to man, from Native American genocide to the lynchings and cross-burnings of the Jim Crow South, from the Third Reich's Final Solution to the Soviet gulags and beyond. ... The public will be confused... Where, they will ask, do we go to see the September 11 Memorial? The World Trade Center Memorial Foundation will have erected a building whose only connection to September 11 is a strained, intellectual one."

Miss Burlingame's brother Charles F. "Chic" Burlingame III piloted American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11. She serves on the Board of Directors of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation.

Spearheading the Ground Zero memorial atrocity is the International Freedom Center (IFC), a recipient of "generous" funding from George Soros's Open Society Institute (OSI). Two other Soros-funded groups, Human Rights First and the ACLU, have also played leading roles in radicalizing the memorial.

Don't miss Michelle Malkin's new column today, which rips into the "Blame America Monument" planned for Ground Zero.

Posted by Richard Poe

 

[Bonnie]

by Michelle Malkin
Posted Jun 9, 2005

Most Americans have not been paying attention to the bureaucratic wrangling and political jockeying that has plagued the construction of the World Trade Center Memorial at Ground Zero in lower Manhattan. But it's not just New Yorkers and developers and 9/11 families who should care.

A good portion of the project is federally subsidized. All of us have not only a financial stake, but also a moral stake, in protecting the honor of the victims -- and the dignity of our country.

A Blame America Monument is not what we need or deserve. But it looks like one is already in the works.

In a startling op-ed printed in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, Debra Burlingame exposed the "Great Ground Zero Heist." Burlingame is on the board of directors of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation and the sister of Charles F. "Chic" Burlingame III, pilot of American Airlines flight 77, which terrorists crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11. She reports that the World Trade Center memorial will encompass a "cultural complex" whose primary tenant will be something called the "International Freedom Center."

According to an IFC fact sheet, the project "will be an integral part of humanity's response to September 11." An educational and cultural center will host exhibits, lectures, debates and films "that will nurture a global conversation on freedom in our world today." Tellingly though, as Burlingame notes, early plans for the center that included a large mural of an Iraqi voter were scratched in favor of a photograph of Martin Luther King Jr. and Lyndon Johnson when the designs went public. So much for nurturing that global conversation.

The center's "civic engagement network" will connect visitors to "service" opportunities. Translation: Left-wing activist recruitment center. As the fact sheet notes, "leading NGOs (non governmental organizations) will be offered outposts at the Center to reach out to its visitors."

On its face, the project may seem fairly unobjectionable enough (putting aside how far afield it all seems from the task of remembering the victims and heroes of 9/11) -- until, that is, you take a closer look at the chief movers and shakers behind the project.

Tom Bernstein, a deep-pocketed Hollywood financier and real estate mogul, is the primary driver behind the IFC. Bernstein's longtime friendship and business partnership with Yale classmate George W. Bush gives cover to his radical activism as president of Human Rights First. The group opposed Bush Attorney General Alberto Gonzales over the administration's preventive detention policies and has joined with the ACLU in mau-mauing the Pentagon over alleged prisoner abuse.

Among the many supposedly respectable scholars consulted on the project is Eric Foner. He's the unhinged Columbia University professor who reacted to 9/11 by griping: "I'm not sure which is more frightening: the horror that engulfed New York City or the apocalyptic rhetoric emanating daily from the White House." The IFC's list of scholars and advisers also includes left-leaning elites such as Henry Louis Gates at Harvard University; Stephen B. Heintz, IFC secretary and president of the Rockefeller Bros. Fund; Walter Isaacson, CEO of the Aspen Institute; and Michael Posner, executive director of Human Rights First.

more
http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=7692

 

[Annie]

This goes with the Opinionjournal link, post #8:

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/web...Responds_to_Ground_Zero_Memorial_Outrage&only

IFC Responds to Ground Zero Memorial Outrage

The president of the International Freedom Center, Richard Tofel, tries a little sleight of hand and misdirection in today’s OpinionJournal: A Fitting Place at Ground Zero.

This article is an attempt to soothe the critics, by tossing out a bunch of happy-sounding phrases about memory, loss, courage, etc. — without once confronting the appallingly simple fact that America was attacked on September 11. Instead, Tofel sees 9/11 as a chance to learn lessons, a tragedy, anything but the atrocious mass murder it really was.

And he has the utter gall to quote Abraham Lincoln.

The most outrageous statement in Tofel’s piece, cloaked in tones of reasonableness:

To be sure, the International Freedom Center will host debates and note points of view with which you—and I—will disagree. But that is the point, the proof of our society’s enduring self-confidence and humanity. Moreover, the International Freedom Center will rise above the politics of the moment. It will not exist to precisely define “freedom” or to tell people what to think, but to get them to think—and to act in the service of freedom as they see it. And it will always do so in a manner respectful of the victims of September 11.​

Tofel doesn’t even mention the involvement of the ACLU and Human Rights First, or radical leftists like Columbia professor Eric Foner and ubermoonbat George Soros; let’s just ignore the America-haters behind the curtain, shall we?

After reading Tofel’s “nothing up my sleeve” column, I’m more convinced than ever that this memorial will be a complete travesty, and a disgrace to the memories of 3,000 murdered people.

Contact information for the parties that are involved in the International Freedom Center is in this post.
7:39 AM PDT

 

[Bonnie]

One of the worst aspects of this is that federal dollars are paying for this.

 

[Annie]

another voice of the chorus, with some good links:

http://www.buzzmachine.com/archives/2005_06_09.html#009838

« June 08, 2005 | Main
June 09, 2005

Using the innocents, continued

: Following Debra Burlingame's devastating attack on the International Freedom Center's plans for the World Trade Center, its head, Richard Tofel, writes about it in today's Wall Street Journal -- but does not answer one of her (or my) issues. I challenge anyone to read Tofel's drivel and tell me what the center will do, what it will have, what it will say, unless its walls will be covered in platitudes like his.

: Michele Malkin continues the attack on the center.

: Oliver Willis, in turn, attacks me for agreeing with Malkin on this. But, unfortunately, that's the high-school mentality Oliver brings to such matters: He doesn't address the issues but instead judges people merely by their associations. Malkin and I have met and agreed that we don't agree about many things. But we most surely agree about this. We will not tolerate seeing the construction of a Why They Hate Us Pavillion, a Selective Sin Center at the World Trade Center.

: Kathy Shaidle isn't suggesting what could happen at the new Center -- and neither am I -- but she can imagine what it might be.

: The big question is what we can do about this. We the people had some small input into the decision on the memorial -- we at least got to submit our own and saw all the submissions. That process was transparent. This is opaque. As Wizbang says, Tofel merely tells us to trust him. But I don't.

This mess at the World Trade Center falls -- once again -- squarely at the feet of Gov. Pataki. We need to demand that Pataki and Bloomberg open up the process and assure us that this will not turn into the International Flagellation Center.
Comments (19)

 

[Bonnie]

I have heard a few interviews with Debra Burlingame, so she is certainly making this known every chance she gets.
I hope she has an impact on stopping this ludicrous project.

 

[Annie]

I have heard a few interviews with Debra Burlingame, so she is certainly making this known every chance she gets.
I hope she has an impact on stopping this ludicrous project.

I don't think I missed the article that started this discussion being posted, so I thought I'd add it here:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110006791

MEMORY FAILURE

The Great Ground Zero Heist
Will the 9/11 "memorial" have more about Abu Ghraib than New York's heroic firemen?

BY DEBRA BURLINGAME
Wednesday, June 8, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

On Memorial Day weekend, three Marines from the 24th Expeditionary Unit who had been wounded in Iraq were joined by 300 other service members for a wreath-laying ceremony at the empty pit of Ground Zero. The broken pieces of the Twin Towers have long ago been cleared away. There are no faded flags or hand-painted signs of national unity, no simple tokens of remembrance. So why do they come? What do they hope to see?

The World Trade Center Memorial will break ground this year. When those Marines return in 2010, the year it is scheduled to open, no doubt they will expect to see the artifacts that bring those memories to life. They'll want a vantage point that allows them to take in the sheer scope of the destruction, to see the footage and the photographs and hear the personal stories of unbearable heartbreak and unimaginable courage. They will want the memorial to take them back to who they were on that brutal September morning.

Instead, they will get a memorial that stubbornly refuses to acknowledge the yearning to return to that day. Rather than a respectful tribute to our individual and collective loss, they will get a slanted history lesson, a didactic lecture on the meaning of liberty in a post-9/11 world. They will be served up a heaping foreign policy discussion over the greater meaning of Abu Ghraib and what it portends for the country and the rest of the world.

The World Trade Center Memorial Cultural Complex will be an imposing edifice wedged in the place where the Twin Towers once stood. It will serve as the primary "gateway" to the underground area where the names of the lost are chiseled into concrete. The organizers of its principal tenant, the International Freedom Center (IFC), have stated that they intend to take us on "a journey through the history of freedom"--but do not be fooled into thinking that their idea of freedom is the same as that of those Marines. To the IFC's organizers, it is not only history's triumphs that illuminate, but also its failures. The public will have come to see 9/11 but will be given a high-tech, multimedia tutorial about man's inhumanity to man, from Native American genocide to the lynchings and cross-burnings of the Jim Crow South, from the Third Reich's Final Solution to the Soviet gulags and beyond. This is a history all should know and learn, but dispensing it over the ashes of Ground Zero is like creating a Museum of Tolerance over the sunken graves of the USS Arizona.

The public will be confused at first, and then feel hoodwinked and betrayed. Where, they will ask, do we go to see the September 11 Memorial? The World Trade Center Memorial Foundation will have erected a building whose only connection to September 11 is a strained, intellectual one. While the IFC is getting 300,000 square feet of space to teach us how to think about liberty, the actual Memorial Center on the opposite corner of the site will get a meager 50,000 square feet to exhibit its 9/11 artifacts, all out of sight and underground. Most of the cherished objects which were salvaged from Ground Zero in those first traumatic months will never return to the site. There is simply no room. But the International Freedom Center will have ample space to present us with exhibits about Chinese dissidents and Chilean refugees. These are important subjects, but for somewhere--anywhere--else, not the site of the worst attack on American soil in the history of the republic.

More disturbing, the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. is handing over millions of federal dollars and the keys to that building to some of the very same people who consider the post-9/11 provisions of the Patriot Act more dangerous than the terrorists that they were enacted to apprehend--people whose inflammatory claims of a deliberate torture policy at Guantanamo Bay are undermining this country's efforts to foster freedom elsewhere in the world.

The driving force behind the IFC is Tom Bernstein, the dynamic co-founder of the Chelsea Piers Sports and Entertainment Complex who made a fortune financing Hollywood movies. But his capital ventures appear to have funded his true calling, the pro bono work he has done his entire adult life--as an activist lawyer in the human rights movement. He has been a proud member of Human Rights First since it was founded--as the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights--27 years ago, and has served as its president for the last 12.

The public has a right to know that it was Mr. Bernstein's organization, joined by the American Civil Liberties Union, that filed a lawsuit three months ago against Donald Rumsfeld on behalf of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was Human Rights First that filed an amicus brief on behalf of alleged "dirty bomber" Jose Padilla, an American citizen who the Justice Department believes is an al Qaeda recruit. It was Human Rights First that has called for a 9/11-style commission to investigate the alleged torture of detainees, complete with budget authority, subpoena power and the ability to demand that witnesses testify under oath.

In fact, the IFC's list of those who are shaping or influencing the content and programming for their Ground Zero exhibit includes a Who's Who of the human rights, Guantanamo-obsessed world:

• Michael Posner, executive director at Human Rights First who is leading the worldwide "Stop Torture Now" campaign focused entirely on the U.S. military. He has stated that Mr. Rumsfeld's refusal to resign in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal is "irresponsible and dishonorable."

• Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU, who is pushing IFC organizers for exhibits that showcase how civil liberties in this country have been curtailed since September 11.

• Eric Foner, radical-left history professor at Columbia University who, even as the bodies were being pulled out of a smoldering Ground Zero, wrote, "I'm not sure which is more frightening: the horror that engulfed New York City or the apocalyptic rhetoric emanating daily from the White House." This is the same man who participated in a "teach-in" at Columbia to protest the Iraq war, during which a colleague exhorted students with, "The only true heroes are those who find ways to defeat the U.S. military," and called for "a million Mogadishus." The IFC website has posted Mr. Foner's statement warning that future discussions should not be "overwhelmed" by the IFC's location at the World Trade Center site itself.

• George Soros, billionaire founder of Open Society Institute, the nonprofit foundation that helps fund Human Rights First and is an early contributor to the IFC. Mr. Soros has stated that the pictures of Abu Ghraib "hit us the same way as the terrorist attack itself."

While Gov. George Pataki, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and LMDC are focusing their attention on the economic revival of lower Manhattan, there has been no meaningful oversight with respect to the "cash cow of Ground Zero." Meanwhile, the Freedom Center's organizers are quickly lining up individuals, institutions and university provosts with this arrogant appeal: "The memorial to the victims will be the heart of the site, the IFC will be the brain." Indeed, they have declared the World Trade Center Memorial the perfect "magnet" for the world's "great leaders, thinkers and activists" to participate in lectures and symposiums that examine the "foundations of free and open societies." Put less grandly, these activists and academics are salivating at the prospect of holding forth on the "perfect platform" where the domestic and foreign policy they despise was born.

Less welcome to the Freedom Center are the actual beneficiaries of that policy. According to the New York Times, early renderings of the center's exhibit area created by its Norwegian architectural firm depicted a large mural of an Iraqi voter. That image was replaced by a photograph of Martin Luther King and Lyndon Johnson when the designs were made public. What does it mean that the "story of humankind's quest for freedom" doesn't include the kind that is fought for with the blood and tears of patriots? It means, I fear, that this is a freedom center which will not use the word "patriot" the way our Founding Fathers did.

The so-called lessons of September 11 should not be force-fed by ideologues hoping to use the memorial site as nothing more than a powerful visual aid to promote their agenda. Instead of exhibits and symposiums about Internationalism and Global Policy we should hear the story of the courageous young firefighter whose body, cut in half, was found with his legs entwined around the body of a woman. Recovery personnel concluded that because of their positions, the young firefighter was carrying her.

The people who visit Ground Zero in five years will come because they want to pay their respects at the place where heroes died. They will come because they want to remember what they saw that day, because they want a personal connection, to touch the place that touched them, the place that rallied the nation and changed their lives forever. I would wager that, if given a choice, they would rather walk through that dusty hangar at JFK Airport where 1,000 World Trade Center artifacts are stored than be herded through the International Freedom Center's multi-million-dollar insult.

Ground Zero has been stolen, right from under our noses. How do we get it back?

Ms. Burlingame is a member of the board of directors of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation and the sister of Charles F. "Chic" Burlingame III, pilot of American Airlines fight 77, which was crashed at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.