Victory! - Flopping Aces

The power of the blogsphere rears its head once again. The International Freedom Center is officially dead!:

Governor Pataki pulled the plug yesterday on the International Freedom Center, the museum planned for ground zero that aimed to weave the events of September 11 into a historical movement toward freedom around the globe.

The governor asked the state agency in charge of the site, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, to work with the freedom center to locate other potential sites outside of its previously designated home in the World Trade Center site’s “memorial quadrant.”
But freedom center officials abruptly terminated their project after learning of the governor’s decision.

“We do not believe there is a viable alternative place for the IFC at the World Trade Center site,” read the freedom center’s statement. “We consider our work, therefore, to have been brought to an end.”

The alliance of 15 9/11 families who have been so instrumental in this victory released a statement also:

Alliance of 15 Major 9/11 Family Groups Says: Thank You, Governor!

New York, N.Y.?September 29, 2005?The alliance of 15 major 9/11 family groups applauds the decision by Governor George E. Pataki to remove the International Freedom Center (IFC) from the World Trade Center Memorial site. Responding to concerns voiced by 9/11 families and New York City?s first responders that the IFC would dilute and detract from the history of the 9/11 attacks and engage in controversial programming which would dishonor the victims on a site dedicated to their memory, the governor demanded that the IFC be moved elsewhere.
We are deeply grateful to Governor Pataki for taking this decisive action after the IFC issued its latest report on their plans for the center. We believe he did so after giving its organizers a fair opportunity to demonstrate that their institution would respectfully fulfill the memorial?s mission.

We also appreciate the important bi-partisan support of Senator Hillary Clinton, Congressmen Peter King, Vito Fossella and John Sweeney, as well as the support of the UFA, FASNY, UFOA, PBA, Rudy Giuliani and others who all understood that this memorial belongs to all Americans, and that we have a public trust to future generations who will come to this site hoping to pay their respects and learn the important story of that day, a day of heartbreaking loss, uncommon valor and the coming together of a nation.

We look forward to their continued support as we pursue our common goal of ensuring that from the ashes of the World Trade Center site rises a 9/11 Memorial and Museum on a Memorial site dedicated solely to the stories of September 11, 2001 and February 26, 1993 and their aftermath with enough space to accommodate visitors safely and tell the story fully. As the future of the Memorial site is honed, the tactic of portraying the 9/11 families as divided must end. The goal is clear. The mission joined by the majority. We sincerely hope that the LMDC and the WTC Memorial Foundation will not ignore these voices as we attempt to resolve the outstanding issues in unity.

We and the tens of thousands of supporters who fought for this memorial did so, not because we wish to turn these few acres in Lower Manhattan into a cemetery or convert the site into one of enduring sadness. We did so because of our unshakable belief that this is Sacred Ground, that the truth should be told there, and that the core values of our nation will be amply demonstrated by the lives remembered, the deeds done and the spirit reawakened.

What is interesting is the reaction from the morally bankrupt IFC. They were offered to relocate within the memorial “quandrant” but instead they acted like little 5 years olds, the result of which shows their true motives even better then we could: (via Ed Morrissey)

The IFC could easily find a home elsewhere, but its backers have decided to act petulantly and disband. It calls their mission into question even further than Debra Burlingame and other critics have done in the past. Pataki did not ban the IFC from the entire 9/11 memorial site, after all, merely from the site of the Towers themselves. If the IFC feels that its message holds value as a component of the 9/11 memorial, the relocation should make little difference to its function. However, their reaction makes clear that they intended the IFC not just to present an alternative viewpoint espousing a why-do-they-hate-us exploration, but that they wanted to ensure that their approach supplanted the memorials that would directly recall the barbarity of the acts themselves.

Their intention all along was to espouse the usual leftist mantra “America is eeeeviiiillllll” and that we deserved 9/11. Thankfully the “Take Back The Memorial” organization and the rightwing blogosphere helped to get the message out about the lies the IFC was telling. I mean even a avowed communist such as Hillary came out against it.

They were obviously counting on spillover from the crowds visiting the WTC, which they could then claim as proof that they were relevant. Once they found out that they could not put their terrorist loving center up smack dab in the middle, which would mean much smaller crowds since people would have to actually plan and make a separate trip to see it, they quit.

One person we should not forget it Debra Burlingame, who fought the good fight unlike the “jersey girls” and came out on top. Her brother would have been proud.

One person who we should not be so quick to praise is Gov. Pataki in my opinion. It was under his direction that the LMDC sought out groups such as the IFC and had no problem with them being at Ground Zero until Burlingame called him on it. He let this thing evolve into this mess and his only reason for shutting it down because of growing pressure politically. Hundreds of family members of those slain at Ground Zero could not sway Pataki, but once Queen Hillary states that the IFC is wrong then he jumps to stopping it. You will not find me praising this guy one bit.

Onto the MSM where we find a typical response by the NYT once again where not once do they mention WHY we were against the IFC being there, instead they whined:

But the notion of a freedom museum was one of the earliest elements considered for ground zero. And it was one the governor endorsed. In an April 2002 blueprint for downtown, the development corporation said one possibility was “a new museum dedicated to American freedom, tolerance and the values that the World Trade Center represented,” referring to a proposal by Tom A. Bernstein, the president of Chelsea Piers, and Peter W. Kunhardt, a documentary filmmaker. …

Now the question is what else in the master plan is open for revision. If ground zero is too hallowed for a freedom museum, how much longer will a performing arts center be considered appropriate? Or a million square feet of retail space? Or four office towers? Especially if one of them is named Freedom.

Wretchard makes a great point about the left’s love of symbols and why they are crying now:

According to Michelle Malkin, the moving spirits behind the IFC were Michael Posner, Anthony Romero, Eric Foner and George Soros. If the International Freedom Center had been built it would have been the companion to the Crescent of Embrace, the proposed memorial to the Flight 93 victims in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

The effort illustrates the extraordinary importance that the Left places on the control of symbols. By preference, a good Marxist symbol should represent the very opposite of its counterpart in reality because its foremost goal, in common with unscrupulous Mesmerists, is to emasculate the mind. It was no accident that in Orwell’s 1984, that the Ministries of War, Rationing, Propaganda and Repression were called the Ministries of Peace, Plenty, Truth and Love by the Party. Christopher Hitchens, who wrote a book on Orwell, has not forgotten the penchant for inversion. In Anti-War, My Foot, featured in Slate, Hitchens criticized the NYT’s characterization of Ramsey Clark and his adherents as “anti-war”. If they were anything, they were its opposite.

We won this battle, many more battles to fight.

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