More on the 9/11 Families

[UPDATE: There is a report from Haaretz that “Sources in New York said on Monday that Muslim religious and business leaders will announce plans to abandon the project in the next few days.” Why Haaretz would have inside information on this matter I do not know, and I hope it isn’t true. I hate it when the bullies and thugs win.]

Josh Marshall, yesterday (emphasis added):

Also very worth noting is that none of the 9/11 Families groups who actually seem to be membership organizations made up of families of the victims seem to have taken positions on the mosque issue at all. I looked at the websites of several such organizations. And they each contain ‘about’ pages with some information about the organization, its membership and in most cases boards of directors. The website of Burlingame’s group, 9/11 Families for a Safe & Strong America, contains no such information. But it’s statement of purpose does give some sense of viewpoint: “The war against sharia is a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity.”

Since almost three thousand people died as a result of the attacks, many thousands count as family members of the dead. And given that the public at large is at best divided over mosque question and likely on balance against it, it stands to figure that there’s a similar spectrum of opinion among these families. Yet I have not seen any clear evidence that as a group these people are against the Cordoba House project.

The website of Burlingame’s “organization,” “9/11 Families for a Safe and Strong America,” really does give no indication that anyone actually belongs to it. Maybe there is an organization, but it seems weird to me that there is no board of directors, no “about us” page, no place to sign up for membership. Some guy named Tim Sumner writes most of the blog posts, but we don’t know if he’s a member or an employee.

Compare/contrast with the “about us” page of Families of September 11. This organization, btw, is acting as an advocacy group for the many people who worked on “the pile” after the atrocity and are now suffering terrible health problems as a result. So this group is doing something useful and beneficial. They’re also still steering clear of the “ground zero mosque” issue.

So whether Burlingame even leads anything remotely resembling an “organization,” or whether her site is pure astroturf, is anyone’s guess. Really, someone should check this out, although I don’t even know where to begin. Would there be tax documentation somewhere?

See also: Hendrik Hertzberg, “Zero Grounds“; Daryl Lang, “Hallowed Ground.”

Pam Geller: Osama’s Handmaiden

At Salon, Justin Elliott explains how the phony “ground zero mosque” issue was fired up by pathological whackjob Pam Geller and Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post. The article begins,

A group of progressive Muslim-Americans plans to build an Islamic community center two and a half blocks from ground zero in lower Manhattan. They have had a mosque in the same neighborhood for many years. There’s another mosque two blocks away from the site. City officials support the project. Muslims have been praying at the Pentagon, the other building hit on Sept. 11, for many years.

In short, there is no good reason that the Cordoba House project should have been a major national news story, let alone controversy.

There really isn’t. But now that it’s been jacked up into a Big Bleeping Deal, the Right is determined to continue Osama bin Laden’s dream of terrorizing America into destroying itself. As Michael Daly writes at the New York Daily News, blocking the building of the Islamic center is exactly what Osama bin Laden wants.

And it’s way past time to say plainly that Pam Geller is Osama bin Laden’s tool, agent, and spokesperson. Plus some other things I don’t say because I don’t care for vulgarity.

At Time magazine, Mark Halperin asks the GOP to not exploit the emotions fueling the “ground zero mosque” controversy as they campaign for the midterm elections. “Do the right thing,” he says. However, Halperin doesn’t make an argument that the issue won’t work for the GOP politically, so he’s whistling in the wind. Decency? Respect for human values? From today’s GOP? On what planet?

Halperin also repeats the assumption, and the fiction, that blocking the building of Cordoba House is “backed by the families of the 9/11 victims, in their most emotional return to the public stage since 2001.” One more time: No one has polled the families. We don’t know what they think. Yes, some of them have loudly denounced the project, while others have more quietly expressed support for it. Two major family organizations, Families of September 11 and the September 11th Families Association, have not taken a stand, one way or another.

Please, everybody, stop assuming that the survivors of the 9/11 victims are against the “mosque.” They are not all of one mind, and we have no way to know what a majority think.