THE 9/11 MUSEUM AND ITS PURPOSE

     Yesterday I read a most disturbing article on our national 9/11 museum. There were several visitors complaining that we have not done enough to explain or differentiate between Moslems and terrorist Islamists. We have not been PC enough. I shook my head in disbelief. Is that the purpose of this museum or are we not supposed to be honoring the memories of those who perished here in a dastardly terrorist attack, here and in Washington at the Pentagon and in the air over Pennsylvania?
     Asking the museum to do that is equivalent to asking that Yad Vashem or the U.S. National Holocaust Museum or any other Holocaust site be sure to explain away the Nazis and their eager followers in Germany, Austria, Holland, the Quislings in Norway, the collaborationists in France, etc., etc., etc. The business or purpose of a memorial museum is to do just that, not justify its perpetrators, those who caused this horrific event to take place. It is not our place to look for excuses for these same terrorists or for the background from whence they came. There are other places and times for that.
     As one who was in NY at the time of the attack, as one who had to deal with the consequences for the school and its student body, its faculty, for one who remembered driving by as the 1993 bombing of the WTC took place, as one who saw the gaping hole in the sky as we walked as close to it as we could several days later, in order to pay homage to these lost souls, I categorically deny any need for the museum to explain anything. It is there to remember those whom we have lost - a friend's brother, a neighbor, a family friend, a husband, father, brother, son, mother, daughter, wife, sister, unborn child - and be they Christian, Moslem, Jewish or atheist - they are all remembered, honored and mourned in our loss. Please, a little common sense here. A little honor and understanding of proper time and place.