Saturday, November 07, 2009

Flight 93 Memorial to Break Ground Despite Protest Over Crescent

By Douglas V. Gibbs

United Airlines Flight 93 was intended to fly from Newark, New Jersey to San Francisco, California on September 11, 2001. Three other planes were hijacked by Islamic Terrorists and flown into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. United Flight 93 never reached its intended target. After phone calls to the outside world, the passengers of Flight 93 learned of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, and the Pentagon in Washington. Realizing their flight had been hijacked by similar terrorists, the passengers decided to mount an assault against the hijackers and gain control of the aircraft. The battle for control of United 93 proved to be successful in the sense that the aircraft never reached its target. The plane crashed in a field near Shanksville, in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, killing all aboard.

Passenger Todd Beamer, and his final words, "Are you guys ready? Let's roll!" have become synonymous with heroism, and has since become widely appropriated as a battle cry.

Crackpot theories emerged shortly after that the FBI shot down Flight 93, or that the passengers never made it to the cockpit and the terrorists decided to nose dive the plane because they realized they had lost control. Honestly, we will never know the exact happenings on that flight before it crashed into that field. But regardless of the details, it makes me proud that those passengers did not just cower in their seats. They took action. They were willing to sacrifice themselves to protect countless others. The only word I can muster for such an acts is Heroism - Heroes, each and every one of them.

The site of the crash houses a temporary memorial that has brought together the residents of the surrounding area, the families of the victims, and the Americans that visit the site to pay their respects. To replace the temporary memorial, a permanent memorial site has been in the planning, and they are breaking ground for the construction of the memorial that will encompass 2,200 acres surrounding the crash site today. The $58 million permanent memorial to the 40 victims of Flight 93 includes a 93-foot tower with 40 wind chimes. The chosen design of the memorial, however, has been the subject of criticism, but despite the protests against the design, the ground-breaking will go on as scheduled, and the completed memorial is scheduled to be dedicated in 2011.

Listening to flight attendant CeeCee Lyles' message she left on her answering machine for her husband to let him know her plane had been hijacked serves as a grim reminder of what happened. Listening to the audio my eyes welled with tears, and I ask myself, what kind of monsters could do such a thing? The Islamic Jihad was behind those attacks, despite what all of the conspiracy theorists are suggesting, no different than the fact that the Islamic Jihad mentality drove an Army Major to kill 13, and injure another 30, at Fort Hood, Texas.

The outrage over the design stems from the fact that the design of the permanent memorial memorializes the terrorists as well, even placing the terrorists above the 40 Americans with symbolic images that damn the 40 while elevating the Islamic Jihadists.

The Tower of Voices, which will be a tower with 40 wind chimes in it, will be capped with an Islamic shaped crescent. The symbolic nature of the Tower of Voices, according to Alec Rawls, by hanging the 40 chimes under the Islamic crescent and star depicts the 40 heroes as damned, cast out of the symbolic Islamic heavens. The Tower of Voices quite literally has an Islamic shaped crescent soaring in the sky above forty symbolic souls that literally dangle below. The "Forty symbolic souls, never to rest in peace, gonging for eternity in their symbolic damnation, strung like fish as they hang down from the symbolic Islamic heavens projected in the sky above."

A circle of trees lines the edge of "The Bowl," but the circle is broken. Upon closer inspection the broken circle is a giant Islamic-shaped crescent (that just happens to point to Mecca, like the Mecca direction indicator around which every mosque is built). The symbolic nature of this depicts an al-Qaeda victory.

The Flight 93 Memorial is designed, quite literally, to be the world's largest mosque.

Coincidentally enough, you will find little, or no mention of the controversy regarding the design of the memorial, in the mainstream media.

A memorial needs to be at the crash site. The memorial should be a dedication to the heroism of the crew and passengers of United 93, solely designed in their memory, with no symbolism that could be construed as Islamic. The hijackers were not victims of a misunderstanding. As individuals they were fully capable of making their own decisions, and they chose to be Jihadists, and murderers.

I don't know what the reasoning is behind the Islamic symbolism at the Flight 93 Memorial, but I do know this: any Islamic references in the design, regardless of what we think, will be recognized as a symbol of Islamic Victory over the lives of those 40 Americans that died when United 93 plowed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, by the Muslim world. That is unacceptable, and should not be tolerated. The site needs to be redesigned, and the memories of those heroes should not be tainted.

Let's Roll.

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary

Groundbreaking Saturday For Permanent Flight 93 Memorial - WJACTV

Pa. Locals, Flight 93 Families United by History - ABC News

Moral Muslims don’t want a memorial to the terrorists on the Flight 93 crash site - The Political Octagon

Flight 93 Memorial Ground Breaking - National Park Service

Petition drive now underway: Stop the Flight 93 memorial! - Crescent of Betrayal

Construction drawings released: Flight 93 crescent now points less than 3° from Mecca - Error Theory

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