The Travesty of the Towers
Nicolai Ouroussoff (writing for The New York Times) has an opinion about the newest proposal for the replacements for the World Trade Center.
It, in a word he was too gracious to use, sucks.
I’m not certain what some of the metaphors he uses are intended to do (they appear to be backhanded slurs at the US as a fading empire, but I’m not entirely certain how to interpret them. I’ll let them stand on their own) - but his main point, that the redesign of the so-called “Freedom Tower” is an exercise in capitulation is perfectly on target.
Making a building that is stated to be virtually bomb-proof is one of two things. It is either admitting that you expect it to be bombed, and are afraid of that possibility, or that you WANT it to be bombed so you can say “I told you we’d piss them off if we rebuilt it!”
I think I much prefer the Trump solution. Rebuild the towers pretty much exactly as they were, at least aesthetically. And none of this 20-story bomb-proofing shit either. Pataki needs to take his head out of his ass and realize that the message he sends to the Islamist Jihadi world wide by insisting on this crap is “You win - we are perpetually afraid of your superior culture.”
There should be but one message that the new WTC sends to the Jihadi: “Fuck you. We will continue to dominate because you are a culture stuck in the 13th century. If you destroy it, we will rebuild it. If you strike us again, we will smite you and crush you as the sand of the earth.”
Anything less is surrender.