My feelings about the terror attacks three years ago are as fresh as the day after. My palms still sweat when I think about it. When I saw the first images on TV, before the second Tower was struck, my mind was on the ground in Manhattan, where I had a dozen friends working and making their homes. I felt that sick choking feeling until I knew each of them was okay. Then I felt raging anger.
Even though the attacks weren't personal, I felt as though they were. My friends being in Manhattan was just part of it. The World Trade Center was a personal favorite of mine. I thrilled to the sight of them from any angle, but especially when viewed from atop the Empire State Building, or from the Statue of Liberty. I am a capitalist, and no place on earth defines capitalism better than Wall Street and southwestern Manhattan.
So, try as I might to like the proposed designs for the memorialized World Trade Center site, I still absolutely detest them. The memorials fail to memorialize what the Towers were about.
They were selected for destruction by the terrorists for being symbols of capitalism. The Twin Towers were the defining skyscrapers in the defining skyline of the world's definitive financial center. To stand today at the Statue of Liberty and look across the River is to feel the void like a lost love as much as to see the void.
There was a lot of talk in the days following the attacks that the American people must not allow the terrorists win, that we must proceed in the spirit of that hated capitalist mantra, 'business as usual'. How right that common wisdom was.
Well, THE TERRORISTS HAVE WON. It isn't that they ended business as usual. Thankfully, that has resumed. But the premier symbol of capitalism is gone and won't be replaced.
Article comments
1 - SFC SKI
The WTC was a feature of the NYC skyline from my earliest memories as I looked across from NJ. In school we read of its construction. Like many who live in the area, I did not actually go to the top of the WTC until friends came visting and we had to do the "tourist trips". That all being said, I don't miss the buildings, architecturally, I prefer the Empire State and Chrysler buildings.
IT was the point that we were attacked, on our own soil, and we should never forget that, nor should we stop fighting abroad, nor let our guard down at home, to protect our citizens and our way of life.
2 - Eric Olsen
excellent Mike, I hadn't thought of it that way before
3 - Mike Kole
Think about the other obvious potential targets of terrorist destruction. Heaven forbid that it should happen, but play 'what if'. Wouldn't we want these significant landmarks rebuilt if they were struck:
The Statue of Liberty
The White House
Washington Monument
Lincoln Memorial
Golden Gate Bridge
or even the Gateway Arch
I think we would want them rebuilt. I cannot see us throwing up our hands and placing a memorial on the former site of the White House, leaving satisfied that our dignity was restored.
4 - Mike Kole
My sentiments on this are 100% unchanged today.