Open Thread: September 11th
It’s been 12 years since a group of Saudi men took two planes and flew them into the World Trade Center Towers. It’s sparked two wars in the Middle East, over five thousand dead Americans, and hundreds of thousands of Afghans and Iraqis. Bin Laden was killed… eventually. Now with drones flying in the sky over Yemen, dropping bombs on sheepherders and JSOC killing wedding parties, we stand at the precipice of a new war – one with Syria – yet another Middle Eastern country. We considered an attack by commercial aircraft an act of war, but our Secretary of…
“Refudiating” Palin’s Racist Tweet
It feels strange weighing in on a house of worship thousands of miles away, well, at least for me. A proposed mosque two blocks from Ground Zero has Palin tweeting on a Sunday afternoon. According to Politico: Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s City Hall hit back at Palin, first tweeting “@SarahPalinUSA mind your business.” The aide, policy hand Andrea Batista Schlesinger, followed that up with: “@SarahPalinUSA whose hearts? Racist hearts?” Bloomberg has defended the plan for the mosque, arguing that blocking it would impinge on religious freedom This is a local issue for New Yorkers. I’m weighing in on Sarah Palin. She’s…
Open Thread – Ground Zero
On my recent trip to New York City, I stopped at the Ground Zero site. It was hard. I’d been in the towers many times. Some of my favorite memories of New York were eating at the restaurant Windows on the World, in the World Trade Center. I remember clear as day sitting by those huge windows, looking out over the Hudson River across to New Jersey and realizing with wonder that you could actually see the curve of the Earth. Many people who worked there never made it out alive on 9/11. I stood on the street by a…