Let's Get Ready To Wharrgarbl!

Headline: Owners of Park51 project apply for $5,000,000 in Federal redevelopment funds designed to encourage development in downtown Manhattan after 9/11.

Reaction: Wharrgarbl!

Examples of resulting wharrgarbl may be found in all the predictable places, like here, and here. And the outrage can really die down -- the chances of this money actually being awarded are low, low, low.

But for the record, I think we have better things to do with Federal money than this. Not out of any particular distaste for Islam on my part, but rather out of a particular dislike for Federal money being used to help build any house of worship, anywhere, whether directly or indirectly.

That, and the fact that we don't have a budget surplus with which to enjoy questions of which private projects deserve public support. Our government can't afford to be doing things like this right now, for anyone.

America Is The Measure Of Herself

A clear-eyed blogger has pointed out (in a post that I can no longer locate) that much of the ongoing sturm und drang over the mosque community center that includes a mosque presently in construction nearly tragically underfunded right on top of two blocks away from Ground Zero is really all just so much pornography of opinion. As I've mediated on before, what may really be going on is a massive miscommunication resulting from the poverty of the English language -- "should" there be a mosque at this location can imply either a normative assessment of the social appropriateness about this proposal, or it can imply a legal assessment of whether the government possesses the power to prevent it from going forward. My initial take was the second facet of the question, but I'm not so sure that many of the objectors to the mosque project aren't simply being foggy about the distinction between the two issues because either they aren't able to intellectually distinguish between the two concepts or because they are motivated to prefer not to do so for, among other possible reasons, political advantage.

But there is a class of mosque-project protestor who clearly does understand the difference between the normative "should" and the governmental "should," and that class includes the editorial board of the Washington Examiner, Newt Gingrich, and Andy McCarthy. They have all made the point that there are no Christian churches in Saudi Arabia, but there are plenty of mosques in the United States and even in New York City. There is some ill-defined boundary of good taste within which mosques ought not exist, they claim, sometimes rather gruesomely (but nevertheless illogically) claiming that because debris from the 9/11 attacks fell on Park Place, this mosque project is nevertheless still on "sacred ground." By pointing to a nation where the government actively prohibits religious diversity and imposes a state religion, these authors are squarely addressing the question of whether the government should intervene in this increasingly vapid issue.

I think the comparison with Saudi Arabia is insulting. Insulting to the United States. Since when do we evaluate our own Constitutional standards of the limits on governmental power against those set by a monarchy? Since when do we judge our own measure of social tolerance against a yardstick created by a nation with a fanatical, barbarous, and murderous state religion?

America is the judge of herself. The Constitution of the United States is the ultimate yardstick against which we should measure ourselves. I don't give a damn how the King of Saudi Arabia governs his subjects. We don't have kings here, we don't have subjects. We are self-governing citizens in a nation ruled by law and administered by a Constitution whose core function is to limit the powers of the government. We are more than capable of judging and evaluating ourselves; we have an active marketplace of ideas and opinions in which to do that; we are possessed of higher ideals than the rest of the world and we do better than the rest of the world when we aspire to fulfill our own ideals.

As to the second question, whether the project is in good taste, I'll reserve judgment. I'm willing to give the guy a chance to actually say what he wants to say (if he can raise the money to do it) before I evaluate it one way or the other. But mainly, they have exercised their rights and said what they choose to say. After all, this is a free country.

In Saudi Arabia, I'd likely be deported for saying this -- and if I were a Saudi citizen I'd be gambling with my life to say it -- but the King of Saudi Arabia can suck it because he and his nation don't matter to this debate. In America, the owner of private property may put that private property to any lawful use he chooses, even if that means a house of worship for an unpopular religion; in America, a citizen may express whatever opinion he wishes, even a political opinion that Sharia law ought to become the law of the USA and the government has acted immorally; in America, we draw strength, power, and our communal identity from the differences among us. This is not Saudi Arabia.

Notwithstanding the efforts of religious fanatics to impose the phrase "In God We Trust" on their fellow citizens who do no such thing, our national motto has always been E Pluribus Unum. Nineteen religious fanatics with box cutters who committed mass murder ten years ago aren't worth giving that up.

Only $99,981,745 To Go

Thanks to Reader Maxwell James for pointing out this article, which lends a remarkable perspective to a matter which has caused so many people so much anguish recently.

If the Maggie Halberman/Ben Smith article is right, the Park51 project to build a mosque community-center-including-worship-area right on top of two blocks away from Ground Zero has so far raised a grand total of $18,255 towards its fundraising goal of a hundred million dollars.  A hundred million dollars sounds to my admittedly untrained ears like about the right amount of money to build a thirteen-story tower in lower Manhattan (including the land).  Eighteen thousand dollars sounds like it's enough to buy a refrigerator box on the upper West Side.

Opponents of the Park51 project would be better off just staying quiet about it and letting the project die an underfunded and unvetted death, instead of offering it free publicity.  Ah, but what fun would that have been?

The Manufacture Of A Controversy

Allow me to point you Readers to an article at Slate Salon chronicling the evolution of the "Mosque right on top of two blocks from Ground Zero" controversy.  From its inception until less than four months ago, Cordoba House project was an interesting topic, non-controversial and accepted by the conservative punditocracy, until Pamela Geller and the New York Post ran stories with inflammatory headlines on May 6, 2010.  Particularly interesting is an interview in December of 2009 with Laura Ingraham:

I have to join Doug Mataconis in calling this a manufactured controversy, and a wildly successful one at that -- one which has trapped even the President in a political volte-face, despite the intellectual tenability of his position, and sparked false rumors, bought by formerly credible news sources, that the backers of the project have decided to move it elsewhere in the city.

If they could have been persuaded to relocate their project, well, that would be their decision and a victory for real dialogue.  Dialogue, however, is not what this sort of thing is about.  We are in the world of demagoguery, and the point of this issue is to make as much noise as possible.  Changing anything isn't the point, attracting eyes and ears is.

American citizens should be able to do what they like with their own property as long as they comply with pre-existing laws.  Period.  These people have complied with the law and should be able to build whatever they want on land they own.  Americans mostly recognize this, as Nate Silver points out:

Essentially, public opinion on this issue is divided into thirds. About a third of the country thinks that not only do the developers have a right to build the mosque, but that it's a perfectly appropriate thing to do. Another third think that while the development is in poor taste, the developers nevertheless have a right to build it. And the final third think that not only is the development inappropriate, but the developers have no right to build it -- perhaps they think that the government should intervene to stop it in some fashion.

Alas, we come up against the poverty of language when phrases like "should a mosque be built here" are used.  But let us not forget how the "middle" position came to exist -- at the hands of a small number of people, hungry to attract eyeballs, who decided to attack something that up until then had been non-controversial, an attack based on half-truths, xenophobia, and intentional ignorance of factual nuance -- one which turns a law-abiding American who cooperates with law enforcement officials and whose intent by all objective appearance is to guide his co-religionists down a meaningful path of peace into a fanatic Islamist sleeper agent and triumphalist intent on helping overthrow our government.  What we have really learned from all is is that Pamela Geller has better Kung Fu than Laura Ingraham -- and we have learned, once again, that fear is more powerful than love.

A Gay Bar. Really?

First off, there's money to be made selling overpriced alcoholic drinks to gay men looking to socialize in Manhattan.  And in fact I've no doubt there are a lot of gay Muslim men in Manhattan.  So Greg Gutfeld's proposal to set up a gay bar catering to Muslims in close proximity to the proposed "Park51" mosque may actually be a not-out-of-this-world business proposition -- although I don't take him seriously when he insists that the idea is anything other than sour joke made in questionable taste.

And the principle is sound -- assuming that the bar would meet pre-existing zoning restrictions, which I assume it does.  Granted, there are restrictions on these sorts of establishments being located near houses of worship but given that there is already a gentleman's club called Babeland within a few blocks of this location (how do I know that?  The internet told me!) and the mosque isn't established yet, there would be time to get in the plans for the club now.  More importantly, living in a free society means having to tolerate people near you who say and do things that you find distasteful as long as they aren't harming you directly.  If Gutfeld is upset by a mosque on Park Place but has to tolerate it anyway, then the Imam may well also have to tolerate the gay bar.

In any event, even though I find Gutfeld's proposal to be a joke made in questionable taste, hey, I'm not always opposed to jokes made in questionable taste.  I've got a lot of good mileage recently out of recycling the "rattlesnake" joke and the "Seamus the bridge-builder" joke and both of those are in questionable taste too.  I put a poll up on the front page of the blog, using the names picked by readers of Andrew Sullivan's blog -- if anyone would know the name of a good gay bar in Manhattan, it would be Sully -- because I think that Readers here could make a better choice from the list of options given to them.

More On The Mosque Two Blocks From Ground Zero

I've heard and read a lot of arguments about why it's in bad taste for a mosque to be built right on top of two blocks away from Ground Zero, and about how it would be hurtful to the survivors of the people killed on that day if the mosque is built -- even if we distinguish between the Sufis who want to build the mosque and the Sunnis who made the attack happen, because the Sufis and the Sunnis have common religious beliefs.

I've heard and read some arguments to the effect that if a mosque is built right on top of two blocks away from Ground Zero, the Muslims will have "won," it would be a "statement" that Sharia law is coming to America, or it demonstrates "weakness" by America.

I've heard and read a lot of arguments about why it's going to set interfaith relationships back for years if a mosque is built right on top of two blocks away from Ground Zero.  I've heard and read claims that mosques can be built elsewhere than right on top of two blocks away from Ground Zero, although I notice that people are trying to stop mosques from being built in places like Murfreesboro, Tennessee; Temecula, California; and Sheboygan, Wisconsin, too -- and these are not places well-known to have been the sites of conflict between Islam and the United States.

I've heard and read some discussion about why the imam who would preside at the mosque to be built right on top of two blocks away from Ground Zero has said some questionable things about Islam and America, and about 9/11 (he's also said some rather commendable things that seems worthy of support).  I've also heard and read a lot of speculation and fear about where the money to build a mosque right on top of two blocks away from Ground Zero is going to come from.

But what I haven't read or heard, anywhere, is an argument about how, consistent with the United States Constitution, any of the above matters one tiny little bit.  The legal issue is: "Can the City, County, or State of New York, or the United States of America, prohibit the building of a mosque at this site?"  The closest thing I can get to an anti-mosque advocate addressing this issue is something like this comment:

I also find myself getting annoyed with pundits on the Libertarian right who are sanctimoniously hiding behind an absolute freedom of religion argument and refusing to acknowledge any other concerns or factors, sometimes to the point of accusing those of us opposed to the mosque of being bigots or knee-jerk Islamophobes. They also ignore the nature of Islam and what the mosque symbolizes: not just a place of worship, but also the dominance and superiority of Islam and sharia law. In a place where thousands were murdered in Islam’s name, that is unacceptable, and it is not protected by the 1st amendment.

Maybe this commenter isn't a bigot or a knee-jerk Islamophobe. Now, there are plenty of bigots and knee-jerk Islamophobes out there objecting to the building of mosques (whether they be in Manhattan or Murfreesboro or Sheboygan or Temecula) but let's apply the principle of charity here and look only at the argument made, not make unfounded presumptions about the motivation of the person making the argument.  (My doing so requires that the arguer cease using words like "sanctimonious" to describe those who, like me, claim the contrary result, by the way.) 

The substantive claim is that Islam is subversive to American values and law ("the nature of Islam," "what the mosque symbolizes: .... the dominance and superiority of Islam and sharia law").  This is a viewpoint-specific restriction on a First Amendment freedom -- either of free speech or free exercise.  So the rule is, and can only be, "Would you also restrict Christianity in this way?"  Obviously not.  Now, one might ask, what Christians have engaged in acts of unprovoked mass terrorism, and are there any churches of the same religion as the terrorists located near the site of their terrible attack?  After all, we wouldn't let, for instance, the LDS church build a site commemorating a brutal attack by Mormons on Native Americans, coincidentally also occurring on September 11, would we? 

America is full of sites of people motivated by religion who have done terrible things, and we don't blame their coreligionists for the bad things people have done while claiming to act in the name of God, and if they God they were acting in the name of happens to be the Christian God, well, the religion itself seems to get a pass, where Islam does not.  And lest we claim that "Islam is a violent, cruel religion," and back that up with citations from the Koran, let us not forget that the Christian Bible, too, has many cruel, violent passages -- maybe more, depending on how you count them.

The question is not whether we as a people like Christianity or Islam more.  The question is, can the City, County, or State of New York, or the United States of America, prohibit the building of a mosque at this particular site?  The answer is "no."  The Constitutional case is simple, open-and-shut, with the inevitable and predictable conclusion being that we have no choice but to allow and tolerate the mosque at this location.

Nothing I have said here would prohibit someone who thinks a mosque at this location would be a bad idea from engaging in peace protest outside the mosque once it is built, or its construction site while it is being built.  Nothing I have said here would prohibit someone who thinks a mosque at this location would be a bad idea from boycotting businesses owned by people who patronize the mosque, from refusing to work on the construction of the building, or encouraging people to refuse to work on the construction of the building.  Nothing I have said here would prohibit someone who thinks a mosque at this location would be a bad idea from trying to raise money of their own to buy the site (if the owners are willing to sell) or a site near it so as to build something they think would be more appropriate. 

Finally, nothing I have said here would prohibit someone who thinks a mosque at this location would be a bad idea from trying to persuade the owners of the site to go about pursuing their goals in a different way or at a different location.  Because nothing I have heard or read anywhere seems to be addressed to the owners of the property.  It has all been addressed to the general public or to some level of the government.  What we're talking about here is the First Amendment.  The First Amendment gives everyone the power to try and persuade each other of the correctness of their point of view, and the government has to keep its hands off that sort of persuasion.  What bugs me most is the appeal -- either explicit or implicit -- to use the power of the government to stop American citizens from peacefully using their own property as they see fit.

Ground Zero Mosque

There is a building near the corner of Broadway and Park Place in New York City, occupying a spot either two or three blocks north of the edge of the World Trade Center reconstruction site depending on how you count it (it’s on the north side of the street two streets away from the northern edge of Ground Zero).  It has recently been the home of Burlington Coat Factory, which four or five stories tall, it is dwarfed by taller building surrounding it.  The building is owned by Soho Properties (possibly Inc. or possibly LLC; the use of multiple business entities for a single enterprise is a common and legal strategy for high-capital ventures such as buying and selling real estate in Manhattan.)  Soho Properties, in turn, is controlled by a man named Sharif El-Gamal, one of its principal owners and its CEO.  El-Gamal is also affiliated with a group called the Cordoba Initiative.  Cordoba Initiative describes its mission as follows:

Cordoba Initiative aims to achieve a tipping point in Muslim-West relations within the next decade, bringing back the atmosphere of interfaith tolerance and respect that we have longed for since Muslims, Christians and Jews lived together in harmony and prosperity eight hundred years ago.
Solving some of the most intractable conflicts in the world today requires innovative strategies for cross-cultural engagement. Cordoba Initiative tackles this mandate with forethought, expertise and the ability to leverage contacts in influential positions within the Muslim World and the West. Thinking outside the box about international and intercultural conflict resolution also means thinking introspectively about each side's place within its own historical narrative with a view to devising internally oriented solutions.

Cordoba Initiative would like to build a thirteen-story building at Park Place and Broadway.  The proposed project, “Cordoba House,” as a thirteen-story tall community center which will include a worship space for Muslims.  The first link in this paragraph is a CNN article describes it as a 15-story project, but later reporting says it would be 13 stories.  It hardly matters for our purposes because this is not an architecture blog, I’m interested here in the political, social, cultural, legal, and economic issues raised by the project.  Whether it’s a 13 or 15 story building is something that architects, engineers, financiers, and zoning commissioners can tackle later, if the project ever goes forward.

The principals of the Cordoba Initiative, which presumably includes Mr. El-Gamal, are Sufi Muslims.  Sufism is a sect of Islam which has a highly spiritual, mystical component and is separate from the better-known Muslim sects of Shi’a and Sunni; it is the same sect that gave rise to the famous whirling dervishes (more formally called the Mevlevi) and avows that its doctrines are of infinite tolerance; there are some people who claim to be Sufis but deny being Muslim, which is a matter of some theological controversy among religious scholars and others who care about such things.  Point is, people are pissed.

The proposal to build Cordoba House is, unsurprisingly, controversial.  Those who find the proposal offensive and in bad taste – including on the one hand a conservative or GOP-related group I’d never heard of before called “the Republican Trust PAC,” which unsuccessfully tried to run advertisements on TV to use the issue for fundraising, and on the other hand angry atheist (really anti-theist) “comedian” Pat Condell (who tries to be preachy and is therefore not funny in his video blasting the idea) – dwell on the fact that the terrorists who hijacked the planes and flew them into the World Trade center nearly nine years ago were not only Muslims, but motivated by a fanatical belief in Islam.

So it is not surprising that there is an effort underway to, regardless of the merits of such a proposal, slap “landmark” status on the existing building so as to prevent its being torn down and rebuilt as Cordoba House.  There is even a proposal to build something called “The 9/11 Christian Center At Ground Zero,” which strikes me as just a little bit tacky (especially considering that there is already a rather famous Christian Church, Trinity Church in Manhattan, which is already literally across the street from Ground Zero and boasts of George Washington having worshipped within its historically-significant walls.  Rick Lazio (amusingly described to me as “a punk” during my visit to New York City ten years ago by a self-identified Republican back when then-Congressman Lazio was running for Senate against Hillary Clinton) is making the source of its funding a campaign issue; which is good for him because Lazio’s campaign appears to be pretty much out of dough.

In response, the Cordoba Initiative has decided to rename their project “51 Park Place.”  As if that matters at all to anyone at this point.  It seems pretty clear that no matter what they call it, if there is a Muslim house of worship there, a certain group of people are going to whine about it.

I say "whine" rather than "object," because the building of this community center, mosque, house of worship, or whatever else you want to call it, does not appear to violate any laws of the United States of America, or those of the State, County, and City of New York.  The appropriate local governmental board and the Mayor have given their blessing to the project.  So it’s a legal use of the property and that is what the owner wants to do with it.  If it’s not illegal, people should be able to do what they want with their own property.  Respecting the freedom of others means tolerating it when they make decisions you would not have made.  You might not choose to be a Muslim, but you’ve got no choice in the matter of your neighbor deciding to become one.

Are the whiners bigots?  Well, if I – an atheist who thinks that Christianity and Islam are simply two different kinds of the same nonsense – can distinguish between fanatic Sunnis who hijacked the airplanes and the quasi-hippies of the modern-day Sufi movement, then surely others can do the same.  (Stipulated that historically, Sufis have been as violent as pretty much any other religious sect you care to name.)  These aren’t the same Muslims. Both of the whiners I cited -- Pat Condell the atheist "comedian" and the Republican political group I've not heard of before -- present a monolithic view of Muslims, which is that all Muslims are the same as the ones who flew the planes into the buildings or who odiously celebrated that attack after it happened. But such a monolithic view of Muslims is erroneous; Muslims are no more monolithic in even their religious views of the world than are Christians and imputing similar politics to them based on their purportedly similar views of the divine is as much a mistake as saying that all atheists are politically liberal. It's just not so. Condell in particular warps history by condemning even the name of the Cordoba initiative as one which celebrates the Muslim conquest of Spain; I would challenge him to find an alternative example of a place and time in which "Muslims, Christians and Jews lived together in harmony and prosperity" other than the Umayyad Caliphate.*

By either deliberately or ignorantly failing to see these people for what they really are, they are portraying the sponsors of the building as evil when they are not.  Ignorance, or worse, deliberate misrepresentation, are hallmarks of bigotry.  A sometimes blogger of whom I am a big fan would likely go further and call the attempts to stop the mosque from being built "dog-whistle racism;" I'll say that many of the opponents of the mosque may not think of themselves as bigots, but if so, they ought to take a step back and try to look at their actions and statements from a more objective perspective.

And then there’s the issue of a mosque going right there.  “Why can’t it be built somewhere else?” is the question.  Having it close to Ground Zero may well be the point – locating a center dedicated to portraying Islam as having a peaceful, tolerant side near the site of a great atrocity committed in the name of Islam may well be the focus of the idea behind the center in the first place.  Perhaps you disagree with the notion that Islam can be a religion of peace (and indeed, there is ample evidence that people use Islam to justify horrific acts of violence and war).  But you can’t stop someone from saying something just because you disagree with what they have to say.

So, how far out from the “sacred ground” of Ground Zero do we have to go, anyway, before a mosque’s presence would be tolerated?  Presumably, those folks who say that it is an insult to the memories of the more than 3,000 people who died on 9/11 and argue that a mosque “right there” is inappropriate must concede that such an argument implies that it would be appropriate to build a mosque somewhere else.  So two blocks away is too close.  How about Chambers & Church, five blocks away?  Still too close?  Maybe not in Manhattan at all, so how about Brooklyn?  (Too bad, because there’s already a mosque in the East Village, about one and one quarter miles from Ground Zero.)  My suspicion is that the sort of person who objects to a mosque being built in Manhattan is going to disapprove of a mosque being built pretty much anywhere, at least anywhere in the U.S.A., but that result is also unacceptable in a country whose ideological roots are as permeated as ours in the idea of freedom of religion.

Another objection is that this somehow symbolizes a triumph of Islam over America.  But I don’t see that in the presence of a mosque at all.  I see the presence of a mosque near a place so important to our national memory as a triumph of American values – values of tolerance, of liberty, of property rights, of people of different backgrounds coming together to form a new culture – dare I use the word “diversity,” charged as it is with the weight of political correctness?  Yes, I dare.  Diversity is better than its opposite, and the idea of America as a "melting pot" of global cultures inherently involves diversity.  The "melting pot" idea also involves assimilation into the larger culture here, but the avowed ideals of the Cordoba Initiative fit very well into both halves of that dynamic.

My personal preference might be that there be no houses of worship at all in downtown Manhattan at all.  But even so, I’d concede along the way that some of the churches there are historically significant, some are beautiful buildings, and they provide outlets for the residents of those neighborhoods to engage in the religious activities of their choice.  My personal preference can’t be what’s happening because my preference infringes on the freedom of others.  Your personal preference might be that there be no mosque there, but Christian or Jewish houses of worship are okay.  But such a preference also infringes on the freedom of those who want there to be a mosque, and moreover that preference favors one religion over another.  It is our own rule, our own ideal, that the government may not favor one religion over another.  And, whatever rule is made should be one that maximizes freedom to the extent that is reasonably possible.

Therefore the result must be, let Cordoba House, I mean, 51 Park Place, be built.  Not to appease the Muslims or permit them a "victory," but rather in fulfillment of our own national ideals of freedom.  When we fulfill our own ideals of the rule of law, especially in so poignant a place as this, that will be our victory, a victory more profound than a military conquest.  It will be a victory for liberty.


*  Cordoba itself is ambiguous from the standpoint tolerant diversity, peace, and prosperity.  If you lived in Cordoba in, say, the year 1000, you would much rather have been a Muslim than a Christian or a Jew.  The dhimmi paid higher taxes and faced restrictions on their ability to own property or pursue a career in the government or the military.  Nevertheless, they were not enslaved, free to practice other professions, able to access education, buy and sell property, pursue justice in the courts, and were allowed to worship as they chose and maintain their own houses of worship.  The Umayyads conquered Iberia from 711 to 718, and Christian leaders, initially based in what are today regions of Aquitaine and Languedoc began the reconquista in 722, which was not completed until nearly eight hundred years later.  So it's not like the Christians of the era were universally happy with being ruled by the Muslims -- but since King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella implemented the Inquisition so soon after expelling the Moors from Granada, the completed Christian reconquista can hardly be seen a step towards greater tolerance.  What's more, even the Muslims of the era cannot be seen as monolithic; while the Umayyads practiced a relaxed form of Islam, one which permitted interfaith marriages, the drinking of wine, and did not enforce daily prayers, they were eventually displaced by the Almoravids and the Almohads, who were more culturally similar to the stricter observances pervading in the Arabic and Iranian areas of Muslim dominance and who also fragmented the political unity of Iberia that the Umayyads had achieved.  So there were intolerant Muslims who came to rule the Caliphate of Cordoba after a time, too.  I can and do accuse the sponsors of the Cordoba initiative of idealizing the Caliphate of Cordoba, but the point here is that despite the ambiguity and flaws that came out of the nearly eight hundred years the Muslims ran the show south of the Pyrenees, there was for a substantial period of historical time a degree of interfaith tolerance actually practiced, combined with a degree of economic prosperity and cultural achievement, that had not been known anywhere on Earth since the fall of the Roman empire.  And yes, I'm including China, India, and Byzantium in making that claim.

Senator Giuliani

So it appears that Rudy! Giuliani will run for Senate in 2010 and not Governor of New York.  This, I think, is not a good use of his skill set.  Rudy! is an executive; he has no experience in a deliberative body, no experience with the give-and-take logrolling that is inherently a part of legislative compromising.  I understand a desire to not be in Albany -- the New York Legislature is thoroughly controlled by someone who isn't Rudy! and there's no practical way to break in to that.

The Senate is, ultimately, a poor proving ground for grooming future Presidents.  It's not a partisan issue -- it's that the skill sets necessary for success in the Presidency are different than the skill sets necessary for success in the Legislature.  If Rudy! is thinking the Senate is a fine coda for his career, then fine.  But I can't believe he isn't thinking about challenging Obama in 2012.  Rudy! has charisma and is very smart, but his personality is ill-suited for the job.

On The Good Ship USS New York

The USS New York is paying a call to the city for which she is named.  This newest addition to the Navy is a San Antonio class amphibious assault launch craft, which means she will be packed to the gills with Marines ready to fulfill their core mission of amphibious assaults.  Her keel was cast from seven and a half tons of steel recovered from the fallen towers of the World Trade Center.  It looks like her mast just barely made it under the Verazzano Narrows bridge, but she's docked near Battery Park now, saluting the site of the World Trade Center and giving her sailors a little bit of time in the big city.

After Veteran's Day, she will sail to Norfolk, Virginia, and could see action as soon as her shakedown and training is completed in mid-2010, joining her sister ships the San Antonio, New Orleans, Green Bay, and Mesa Verde, replacing literally dozens of outmoded, smaller-capacity vessels.  Makes you proud to be an American.

It's Illegal In Some States To Pose As An Attorney

Problem:  You're in custody for multiple armed robberies.  This kind of sucks.  You'd much rather be out at your liberty in the big, big city of New York.

Solution:  Wear a nice suit, politely and calmly ask a deputy where the exit from the courtroom is, and then walk out like you know what you're doing.

What's Important Now

I offered the previous post because I found all the 9/11 rememberances popping up on my blog reader this morning morose and depressing, focusing on the violence of the attacks, the tragic loss of life, and the horror of that terrible day. I don't want to minimize or even forget those things. But what we can do about it now is either whip ourselves back into the state of panic and fear that gripped the nation that day while re-mourning our dead, or we can be smart about what to do with our futures.

More After The Jump -->

Is Osama bin Laden Dead?

It seems cruel and evil to wish another person dead. But in this case, I'll make an exception. Pakistani intelligence suspects that the leader of al-Qaeda is dead, and if they're right, that is frankly cause for celebration. Especially on a day when a low-flying replica of Air Force One scared the crap out of Manhattan -- reminding us that there are bad guys out there, even if this turned out to really just be a photo opportunity without the benefit of, you know, telling anyone that they could take photos. As we continue to debate the best way to deal with bad guys, it would be nice to know that they had lost their figurehead and benefactor. Sadly, we may not know for sure for quite some time.

Pride Of The Yankees

I am more than a little bit aghast at reading about the caloric and financial excesses chronicled at the New Yankee Stadium. Yet the author is right -- this is somehow the very essence of what New York is about. 1,400-calorie nachos, the old baseball field seemingly transplanted into the middle of the swankiest mall in the Bronx, which sells not only $150 hoodies but also raw beef and three varieties of fresh pears, and front-row tickets costing over $2,600 per seat.
The Yankees are apparently reveling in it all, quite unapologetically, despite the fact that Cleveland beat the crap out of them out on the diamond one their first day playing in their new home.

Successful Water Landing

When I travel by plane, I do not pay all that much attention to the part of the safety briefing about a water landing. Frankly, I've always assumed that if a plane went down in the water, it would simply sink -- it's a big, heavy, metal object and it has never seemed to me that it could possibly displace enough water to keep afloat. So if the plane goes down in the water, I figured, your chances of surviving are effectively zero.

Well, it seems I'm wrong. A US Airways flight from New York to Charlotte went down in the Hudson River today after apparently taking two bird strikes on takeoff. (Um, no, the birds did not survive.) The pilots, displaying remarkable coolness in a tense situation, basically landed the plane on the river, bringing it slowly in contact with the water and keeping it up as long as possible so the plane wouldn't get caught and flip or submerge. It didn't. The picture on CNN shows the nose and the top half of the fuselage floating above the surface of the water.

All 148 passengers and the entire crew escaped with only minor injuries and a few cases of hypothermia (it was 20 degrees today in New York and the river water had to have been seriously cold.) And a Big Brass Ones Award to the pilots and crew for guiding their passengers to safety in an extraordinary and difficult situation.

Not Just A Pack Of Lies...

But some laughably bad ones, at that. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke today at Columbia University in New York, having previously been denied permission to go to Ground Zero and lay a wreath there, ostensibly to pay respect to the victims of the attacks on September 11. That was probably a good call, at least from a security perspective – it’s quite likely that someone would have taken a potshot at the guy, which would have been an unmitigated disaster. And frankly, I feel good about it happening, anyway.

Lee Bollinger, the President of Columbia University, introduced Ahmadinejad by saying that he "exhibit[s] all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator." Yet however correct those comments might be (that would be “very”), Bollinger nevertheless gave Ahmadinejad a forum at his campus anyway. This seems very odd to me. Would Bollinger have done the same for Augusto Pinochet? I rather doubt it.

Now, okay, I know that the U.S. ought not to deny a travel visa for foreign diplomats and other officials traveling to New York on official United Nations business; it defeats the point of having a forum like the U.N. unless it is open to all comers. I also know that there have been no direct links between 9/11 and Iran – although there are some indirect ones. And finally, I know that we cannot hope to engage, contain, transform, or otherwise achieve any kind of foreign policy success with Iran unless we have some kind of dialogue with that nation, on some level.

But bear in mind the legal principles, oft repeated at trials throughout this nation of ours, that “Failure to explain or to deny unfavorable evidence may suggest that the evidence is true,” and that “When a witness is willfully false in one are of his testimony, the other areas of his testimony are to be looked at with skepticism.” Now, among the remarks made by President Ahmadinejad at Columbia were:

1. "Women in Iran enjoy the highest levels of freedom." (Really? Tell that to this girl. She's being half-buried alive, in order to prevent her from running away while the men of her village stone her to death for going out on a date. She would not need access to an abortion should she have become pregnant -- she would need a forged passport and travel visa to escape her country in order to survive.)

2. "Over and over again the [IAEA's] reports indicate that Iran's activities are peaceful, that they have not detected a deviation." (Really? Read the IAEA's report on September 17, 2007, on Iran's nuclear program. Highlights include: "Iran has not suspended its enrichment related activities, and is continuing with its construction of the heavy water reactor at Arak." and "the Agency so far has been unable to verify certain important aspects relevant to the scope and nature of Iran's nuclear programme." The Iranian government said that it needs to make heavy water, not for breeder reactors that will produce weapons-grade plutonium, but rather because heavy water cures cancer and AIDS.)

3. "In Iran, we don't have homosexuals, like in your country." (This last remark earned both lengthy guffaws and sustained boos from the audience at Columbia. Too much even for that crowd, I guess.) (LATE LINK ADD: The statement that there are no gay people in Iran is laughable, but the way Iran treats gay people is not. Hat tip to Andrew Sullivan.)

4. When the President of the University asked, "Why is your government providing aid to terrorists? Will you stop doing so and permit international monitoring to certify that you have stopped?", Ahmadinejad did not answer the question but instead implied that the U.S. does the same sort of thing.

Ahmadinejad is a Persian blend of David Duke and Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, the former Information Minister of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. He denies that the Holocaust took place, and questions the academic freedom of people who are criticized for doing the same in the West. Never mind the hundreds of thousands of pages of meticulous records kept by the Nazis of the millions of Jews (and others) they exterminated. And never mind that academic freedom is a pipe dream in Iran, where academics critical of the government, the mullahs who really lead it, Islam or Shari’a law, or Ahmadinejad himself, are routinely jailed and tortured indefinitely.

Another reason I feel good about Ahmadinejad not going to Ground Zero is that Iran is the guiltiest of all parties in the Middle East and Central Asia of fomenting hatred towards the United States, as a means of consolidating the internal political power of the ruling autocracy. Even if Iran had nothing whatsoever to do with the events of that day, Iran did and continues to have a lot to do with hurting the U.S. Ahmadinejad, in particular, is not an ambassador of peace or reconciliation – he proposes wiping our staunchest ally in the world off the map and remains likely to have had a history as one of the pistol-men involved in the holding of U.S. Embassy personnel hostage in 1979 and 1980.

No good would have come of letting Ahmadinejad in to Ground Zero, and he would have netted himself valuable political cover for denying Iran’s well-documented complicity in sponsoring terrorism by crying his crocodile tears over what has become the most expensive construction site in American history.

He and the rest of the world should, however, marvel that we permit such a man to be here and to tolerate his spleen-venting as we do. Would similar tolerance be exhibited to someone traveling to Tehran or Qon and directing such criticism at the Republic of Iran? Laughable. Yet it is not even a close question that we should tolerate him here – such tolerance is a source of strength, not of weakness, for a country as great as ours.

After all, by letting him take the stage in this fashion, we Americans have now allowed him to reveal himself for what he is – an insecure, ill-informed, ignorant bigot who suffers from an extreme veracity deficiency in his public speech, and a man who should not be trusted with control of a military armed with pointy sticks, much less nuclear weapons.

Proof That Giuliani Is The Front Runner

Rudy Giuliani has quickly, and without formally declaring his candidacy, become the front-runner for the Republican nomination for President in 2008. How do I know this is true? Because the New York Times has run its first hatchet job of the election cycle on him, and not on John McCain or Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich.

As Marc Schulman at Donklephant points out, the Times' analysis of the Giuliani Exploratory Committee's website provides only positive information about the candidate. Well, imagine that. The article points out that some New Yorkers had grown weary of Mayor Giuliani's "combativeness" and abrasive style, that the decline in crime which Giuliani takes credit for had begun prior to his taking office, and that the city had not become a utopia after eight years of his administration. Nor does the website discuss, as does the Times, Giuliani's personal life which does a few non-Ozzie and Harriet kinds of episodes. Now, these are certainly things one might say to criticize Giuliani. But they are most certainly not things that one would expect Giuliani to say about himself in a website designed to encourage people to support his candidacy for President.

For some reason, the Times is not taking Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton to task for failing to disclose possible negatives about Senator Clinton -- her campaign website does not mention a thing about Hillary's craven tolerance for her husband's very famous infidelities either before or during their White House years, or rumors of her verbal abuse of White House and Secret Service staff when she was First Lady (rumors which, for the record, I do not believe since they make no sense), or her involvement in shady real estate deals and other kinds of quasi-corruption when Bill Clinton was Governor of Arkansas, or the fact that America was not a paradise when her husband left office after having had all that critical policy and political support from his undeniably influential and powerful wife. The point is, you wouldn't expect Hillary to mention these things, and the New York Times doesn't see anything wrong with her failure to mention them on a website she created to promote her candidacy for President.

Why, then, is Giuliani's candidacy held to a different standard? Because this is the New York Times we're talking about here. It's the Paper Of Record, perhaps, and certainly a rich source of information about politics and national affairs. Smart people work there and I'm sure that they do try hard to get their facts right and exercise some care about filtering news out from non-news. But all the same, the product seems incurably left-wing and one-sided; they like Hillary better than Rudy, and in the judgement of these very smart, politically aware, and liberal people, Giuliani is the most prominent Republican candidate in the field and campaign season is officially underway.

They probably also feel that since both Clinton and Giuliani have links to New York, they are in a better position than most media outlets to opine on what's going on since they are, after all, the New York Times. So it's apparently time to start sharpening the axes.

More Visions of the Future

All of this week (and much of last) has been spent in reflection and rememberance of the attacks on America five years ago. It's preferable to think about the future, however; certainly we should not forget but we also should look ahead and make things better.

So with that in mind, and with a futuristic focus (variously optimistic and pessimistic depending on the subject) in the past several posts, here is a vision of downtown Manhattan in 2012, at what today we call Ground Zero:


I like it.

The tallest of the new buildings, the Freedom Tower (officially named World Trade Center Tower 1), will be 1776 feet tall and will shoot a beam of light up into space. Its next-tallest companion, World Trade Center Tower 2, has a very distinctive look to it, with its four diamond faces appear to be many buildings combining into one. World Trade Center Tower 3 will have a diamond-shaped lattice which reflects from WTC 2. The profile of World Trade Center Tower 4 is not as remarkable but it will still be taller than the New York Life Tower and nearly as tall as the Empire State Building, and its lower stories, more visible from the street level, promise to be elegant and graceful.

Hopefully the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation comes up with some better names for WTC 2-4. But now that I think about it, LMDC will probably sell the naming rights for those buildings, so they will become the T-Mobil Tower or the FedEx Building or the AIG Tower or things like that. Still not terribly interesting but better than "World Trade Center Tower 4."

The four towers will gather around a large memorial park with the footprints from the original towers kept intact, like so:



Whatever the buildings are called, the World Trade Center will once again rule New York's skyline. The old towers were, while overwhelmingly impressive feats of engineering, not terribly beautiful. These new towers add an artistic element befitting one of the world's great cities.

I would see tremendous significance in the new site being dedicated by President Rudolph Guiliani, but it's still a little early to make a prediction of that nature with any degree of plausibility.