(no subject)

[jenk]

Thank you zoethe:

The collapse of the WTC towers shocked the whole country, and much of the world. It staggered us. It deserved outrage and grief and anger.

But a staggered USA should not have stopped at that stage. This is not the worst loss of innocents, the worst destruction at the hands of enemies the world has ever known. In World War II The Blitz killed over 43,000 Brits, half of them Londoners. They lived under a reign of terror that wasn't just an abstract possibility. It was repeated night after night.

And when it was over, they rebuilt. Because that's what you do. Or what you should do.

Instead, we have been so paralyzed by this one attack, and so willing to believe that our grief is unique in the history of the world, that [...] we have turned the damaged site into a continuing monument to fear.

Stop worrying about the mosque three blocks away being some kind of victory for the jihadists; the gaping hole of Ground Zero is the best victory monument we could possibly build for them.
[...]
We do not honor the fallen dead by surrendering the heart of New York City to the effects caused by the hijackers. We instead hand victory to the jihadists by fostering that wound into a cultural stigmata. It's time to defy them by rebuilding and refusing to live in terror.

The entirety is worth reading too.