The Museum of American Achievements in Aviation in Hiroshima

Ace of Spades responds to a "Rightie Suggesting We Support the Ground Zero Mosque":

It would never even occur to me, or any decent person, to erect a Museum of American Achievements in Aviation in Hiroshima.

This is not a joke -- I am not saying a museum celebrating the bomb. I am saying a museum that does exactly as I said -- notes American achievements in aviation. Not the Enola Gay, but the Wright Brothers, etc.

The museum I am talking about, hypothetically, would not be baiting, nor celebratory of the bomb, in the least. It would just be a museum of American advancements in aviation.

But of course no sentient being could possibly fail to see how Japanese would take it as a direct provocation, and a nasty reminder of the bomb that fell on Hiroshima 6 August 1945.

And if I were so stupid, tasteless, and Asperger's-afflicted to have suggested such a museum in the first place, if Japanese then told me "That brings up horrifying memories," I wouldn't then arrogantly double-down and begin explaining to them how intolerant they're being, how irrational they're being, how unfair to my enthusiasm for American airpower they're being.

I would say, "Damn, I didn't think of that! I intended this as just a museum of aircraft, but I can in fact understand how you, a Hiroshima survivor, would even 50 years later have a rather more negative feeling about American airplanes in the sky that I do. Thank you for informing of this -- my bad. I'll put it up somewhere else."

Because -- why wouldn't I put it somewhere else.... unless my intent all along was in fact to remind Hiroshima residence of what happens when you defy the Big A? (A as in America.)

If I didn't have that in my heart, why would I want to visit such unwelcome and painful reminders on a population that experienced an awful tragedy 50 years ago at the hands of my fellow Americans?

Not me, mind you -- I didn't fly the plane. I didn't build the bomb. I didn't even vote for war. I wasn't even alive.

But they were Americans, thus my kin, and certainly I would not want to further traumatize the Japanese over reminding them of what my fellow Americans did to them that day.

(Which isn't to say I disagree with the decision -- it's to say I have enough respect and courtesy to not wish to remind them of the bombing every day as they walk to work.)

And because we all would understand that such a feeling is not only inevitable but perfectly reasonable, of course no American -- no nobody -- would ever dream of erecting such a museum in Hiroshima.

Such a museum is fine in and of itself-- there's a good one, I'm told, at the Smithsonian in DC.

But in Hiroshima? Utterly insensitive, inappropriate, cruel, triumphal, offensive, demeaning to the memory of the dead of Hiroshima, provocative, disrespectful, arrogant, shameless.

Mark that last word because that's the one that I think is most important. People keep saying what this debate is about, or isn't about. It isn't about this, it isn't about that. It's not about freedom of religion, it's about sharia. Etc.

What it's about is the utter shamelessness of this. The utter refusal for anyone involved in this grotesquerie to exhibit the sense of decorum and taste that even animals possess and evaluate what impact their designs may have on other people, including the direct victims of radical, triumphant Islam.

Shamelessness.

I would suggest that Cordoba House fixate itself less on selling Islam to the West and more on selling Western values of anti-terrorism, render-unto-Caesar, and tolerance to Islam.

Were they actually doing that, I would support this-- wholeheartedly!

But they're not. Next to a hole in the ground created by Muslim excess and Islamic equivocation over the rightfulness of murdering the infidel, they want to erect and advertisement -- not for peace, not for understanding, not for dialogue, not for anti-terrorism -- but just for Islam.

And they didn't bother to ask if anyone would have a problem with this, and that's because they never cared. It was never about that -- it was about, just as suspected, erecting a trimuphal tower to the might of Islam.

And they didn't ask about that, and now that people have -- since they weren't asked in private, we have to tell them in public -- they still don't care.

So don't tell me this is about tolerance and moderation and building bridges.

This is about a shameless attempt to grab up a piece of property on the cheap, a piece of property in downtown Manhattan that is only on the market at all because of the actions of some Muslims, and the shamelessness of other Muslims in plunking down cash of dubious sourcing to purchase the land at jet-fuel fire-sale prices.