Sunday, February 22, 2009
The imagery of a monument or memorial evokes proud and sometimes painful memories. Monuments and memorials serve to remind us of important historical events and heroic people in our nation’s history, ultimately to be sure we never forget valuable lessons.
From the Lincoln Memorial to the Vietnam Wall to the Washington Monument, Washington, D.C., is home to many of our most poignant and deserved monuments. One of the newest memorials is the 9/11 Memorial at the Pentagon.
The 9/11 Memorial at the Pentagon is maybe a half-acre in size. No formal memorial yet exists at the Twin Towers location or in the Pennsylvania field where brave and heroic passengers forced Flight 93 to the ground instead of letting voodoo terrorists fly the plane into the White House.
It is a national disgrace that new sky-rise office buildings and a memorial have not been built on the site of the Twin Towers in New York City.
Dozens of Fedzilla agencies, other bureaucrats and numerous contractors are tied up in a bureaucratic scramble of squabbling. Consequently little has been done. It has been over seven years since the 9/11 attack and all that exists is a hole in the ground. No surprise there. That’s how Fedzilla operates.
Interestingly, it took a little over a year to build the Empire State Building.
While monuments and memorials are important to our national fabric, building a 2,200-acre memorial near Shanksville, Pa., at a cost of $58 million is beyond excess. In fact, it is bizarre. Equally as bizarre is Fedzilla paying out roughly $1 million to each of the immediate family members of the 9/11 victims, as if taxpayers were responsible for the 9/11 attack.
Wrong to pick, choose
This is wrong and unprecedented. Fedzilla cannot and should not compensate every victim of every tragedy. To pick and chose is unfair, and unconstitutional.
Now some of the relatives of Flight 93 actually want the federal government to seize private land to build the 2,200-acre memorial/national park so that it will be finished by the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attack. Fat chance.
A plot that size of land is larger than the entire area in Washington, D.C., where the Lincoln, Washington, Vietnam Wall, Korean War, World War II memorials, the Smithsonian museums and the U.S. Capitol are located.
I doubt America has a combined 2,200 acres of Revolutionary War battlefield memorials. The Alamo in San Antonio? Maybe two acres? The USS Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor? The same.
Make no mistake, something needs to be done for those who perished on Flight 93. But we don’t need a 2,200-acre memorial/national park at $58 million to remember them.
A one-acre memorial in the Pennsylvania countryside would be sufficient — a beautiful marble stone with the names of those who perished.
Fly an illuminated American flag over the Flight 93 memorial site. Less is more.
Victory in the war on terror is the ultimate memorial to those who died on 9/11, not another Fedzilla-bloated boondoggle.
Ted Nugent is a Waco-based musician and television show host. Contact him directly at tednugent.com.
