Tag: september 11

Osama Bin Laden, Dead

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Typing this, I hesitate.  Is this a mere death?  An assassination?  A murder?  And if not the latter, why not?  Mass murderers and perpetrators of genocide have been brought to trial, yet the U.S. now abandons established paths of justice.  They’ve “taken him out.”  Have we already tried bin Laden in our media, determined him guilty beyond doubt, not worthy of justice except the justice that we see in death? Continue Reading →

What is Sacred Ground?

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Never ones to let a potential controversy get past them (today’s cover headline reads, “Scarlett [Johanson] may be getting a new ‘tattoo'”), The New York Daily News has helped to make the “Ground Zero Mosque” a noisy conversation with emphatic sides.  Today I happened to pick up a copy of the paper while waiting for the clerks to ring me up at the local deli — two Yemenis who were good enough to make me a sandwich while fasting for Ramadan — only to find a blue border at the top of page 4 that reads, “Center of Controversy.” Columnist Mike Lupica writes:

…this debate isn’t abut correctness.  Or freedom of religion.  Or even the idea that if this mosque doesn’t get built, it will mean we are now deciding about religious freedom in this country one neighborhood at a time.  It is about common sense.

More than that, it is about the constitutents of Sept. 11.

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