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Repairing A Tainted 9-11 Memorial
A 9-11 terrorist attack memorial was installed at Wesley Bolin Plaza across the street from the Arizona State Capitol after the attack, with several anti-American and offensive phrases included in it.This happened because the committee that designed the memorial was half appointed by the outgoing Republican governor, and the other half by incoming Democrat governor Janet Napolitano, who appointed leftist radicals that tried to blame America for the attacks. It included phrases such as: "Erroneous U.S. air strike kills 46 Uruzgan civilians," "Terrorist organization leader addresses American people", "09 15 01 Balbir Singh Sodhi, a Sikh, murdered in Mesa," "Foreign-born Americans afraid," "You don't win battles of terrorism with more battles," and "Fear of foreigners." Causing considerable public outrage at the time, Democrats in the State legislature were able to block and sidetrack efforts to have the offensive phrases replaced with more appropriate statements. Likewise, Janet Napolitano refused to call a special session of the legislature to deal with the problem. Six years later, the Democrats finally agreed to a change of two of the least offensive of the phrases, while retaining most of the others. But a Republican legislator from the Fountain Hills retirement community, Rep. John Kavanagh, hadn't forgotten. He has been waiting for a Legislature and a governor willing to remove nearly a dozen phrases he calls "political, controversial, offensive and disrespectful to the memories of those who died on 9/11." Now with a strongly Republican State House and Senate and governor, Kavanagh this year has sponsored a measure to remove 11 phrases from the steel memorial. "I believe that speculation about the causes, conspiracies, reactions might be fine in a 9/11 museum or 9/11 study center, but that memorial is a memorial, like a gravestone, and should be a place where people come to reflect and mourn, not argue. "It's part of a myth that, following 9/11, Americans went into a xenophobic rage against foreigners," said Kavanagh. "That's not true. America's reaction towards foreigners was commendable." Phoenix Democrat State Senator Steve Gallardo, opposes the bill. "This was a product of free speech," he sniveled. "And you are not seeing an outcry by the public in terms of this memorial. The only ones you see making a big fuss is a handful of legislators." And a lot of patriots... Senate President Russell Pearce, then a state representative, asked governor Napolitano for a special legislative session to "fix" what he called "insensitive, absolutely left-wing, drive-by statements." Posted by: Anonymoose 2011-04-24 |
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