New York Times Slams Mosque Opponents in Report on 'Tangible Progress at World Trade Center'

It's obviously something worth cheering enthusiastically. After years of delays and political infighting, dramatic progress is being reached on construction and rebuilding at the site of the World Trade Center. I can only imagine how New Yorkers must feel, but as an American who's paid close attention to the city's post-9/11 developments, it makes me happy to see great strides in restoring the WTC complex — and I'm especially excited that the National September 11 Memorial & Museum is expected to be completed in time for the 10th anniversary of the attacks. I'm less pleased that the New York Times decided to use its major story in today's edition to hammer critics of the proposed Victory Mosque at Ground Zero. Indeed, the Times basically argues that it's time to bury the hallowed terminology of "Ground Zero" altogether. I guess that's just so much Bush-era jingoism in the new age of fealty to Islamist jihad. See, "World Trade Center Complex Is Rising Rapidly" (with bold italics added):

THIS article about the new World Trade Center is already out of date.

The pace of construction is so swift that any status report these days gets overtaken rapidly by the arrival of new beams and columns, rebar and concrete, pipes and conduit ....

Two years ago, it was difficult to imagine how the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the site of the trade center and is building most of it, could ever finish the eight-acre memorial in time for the 10th anniversary of the attack, on Sept. 11, 2011. Today, it is difficult to imagine what would stop them (though, given the site’s tortured history, the possibility shouldn’t be completely dismissed).

The great square voids in the plaza marking where the twin towers stood are fully formed and almost entirely clad in charcoal-gray granite. Enormous pumps are standing by to send thousands of gallons of water cascading into the voids, creating what memorial officials say will be the largest human-engineered waterfalls in the United States. A metal fabricator in New Jersey is incising bronze panels with the names of all 2,982 victims of 9/11 and of the trade center bombing in 1993. And last weekend, 16 swamp white oaks began to take root on the plaza. Four hundred more will follow.

But in the public’s mind, it is still “ground zero” — as in, “When are they ever going to build something at ground zero?” Or as in, “ground zero mosque,” the shorthand reference for the Islamic community center planned two blocks to the north. While much of the nation has been debating who should be allowed to build what on that site, a former Burlington Coat Factory store, little attention has been paid to the fact that things really are being built on the spot where something actually happened.

A recent editorial cartoon in The San Diego Union-Tribune depicted the Islamic center as a giant salt shaker on the “wound” of ground zero, drawn as an empty expanse of earth. Apart from the issue of the Islamic center, the cartoon stoked frustration among those working at the site. Just at the moment they have something to show for nine years’ effort — 300,000 square feet of underground space, the shell of New York’s third-largest train station and two skyscrapers on the rise — the image has been resurrected of a barren, silent pit.

There was some truth to that image as recently as 2008. The trade center site was a dust bowl in summer and mud pit in winter. The only visible sign of progress was the silvery 7 World Trade Center tower across Vesey Street ...

No doubt we can all applaud the progress and development at the WTC complex. But knowing how the editors thought it appropriate --- just a couple of days ago --- to dismiss the large majority of New Yorkers who oppose the mosque as intolerant ("playing to people’s worst instincts"), it's no surprise now to see that slams on opponents have made it into the front-matter copy.

Curiously, ABC News didn't seem to have druthers on describing the location as "Ground Zero" as recently as last June. That's when the NYC Medical Examiner released a report on the remains of 72 human body fragments recovered from recent excavations and the subsequent sifting operations at Fresh Kill Landfills in Staten Island. See, "More 9/11 Human Remains Found At Ground Zero: Search Yields 72 More Fragments; Remains Of About 1,000 World Trade Center Victims Are Stil Unidentified." This reminds me of the left's constant harping about how Cordoba was "blocks" away, i.e., it's "not even at Ground Zero." The logical follow-up was to ask how far away would the mosque have to be for folks to accept it? It's the same thing here: How much time has to pass before we can stop calling it "hallowed ground"? The New York Times has already decided. Unless you've got some "barren, silent pit" you just can't continue to revere the area as a one-time war zone. You just can't consecrate it emotionally as a final resting place for grief.

What's so especially troubling to me is that the Old Gray Lady is supposed to be our "unofficial newspaper of record." The editors clearly have a different historical record in mind than the great majority of Americans holding out for a bit of sensitivity. Thank God we haven't been hit again since September 11, 2001 (and thank the Bush administration as well). I don't know if folks could very well handle the idea that we'd "overreacted to 9/11." I certainly don't think we've been chasing phantoms for 9 years, although I'm troubled by the hollowing out of our national consensus on what constitutes the national security. We've been lucky that folks like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab have failed. But luck only holds out for so long, and it's gonna be a real bitch when America hits a losing streak in the not-so-completed war on terror.