The Lessons of 9/11

By Alan Caruba

October 29, 1929 is the day the stock market crashed and is generally regarded as the day the Great Depression began.

In the earliest days of that decade-long economic disaster, excavation for the building of the Empire State Building was begun on January 21, 1930. The building’s drawings and blueprint has been produced in two weeks by architect William F. Lamb who used earlier designs for another tower. On May 1, 1931, the iconic skyscraper was opened for occupancy.

On September 11, 2001, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were destroyed by Islamic terrorists sent by al Qaeda, almost all of whom were Saudis. A third plane crashed into the Pentagon and a fourth was brought down in Pennsylvania when passengers fought the hijackers. Presumably it was headed for either the White House or the Capitol Building.

Not counting the hijackers, there were 2,977 victims.

In an exhaustive article by Andrew Rice, “The Saving of Ground Zero”, the story of the long, anguished struggle to build a new skyscraper to replace the Twin Towers was told in the August 8-14 edition of Business Week. Unlike the Empire State Building, the Freedom Tower is still under construction a decade passed the destruction that killed three thousand innocent Americans who did not know Islam was at war with America in particular and the West in general.

The triumphalism of Islam was expressed in the intent of some Muslims to build a mosque within steps of Ground Zero. It evoked a national uproar, but both President Obama and Mayor Bloomberg said that freedom of religion meant that it could be built. Islam is not about freedom of religion.

Islam is not a religion of peace and not a religion of tolerance. The strangest outcome of 9/11 is the way too many Americans have steadfastly resisted the fact that Islam poses both an existential and actual threat to the nation and to Western civilization.

Since 9/11/2001, there have been 23,000 terror attacks worldwide and, once again, New York and Washington, D.C. are on alert for possible car bomb terrorist attacks.

Attacks on Americans have not ceased since 9/11, from Fort Hood to Times Square.

The 16 acres of the destroyed Twin Towers was hallowed by the murder of Americans who weren’t at war with anyone, but it was also extremely valuable real estate. As Rice wrote, “To the degree that it’s possible for a 102-story building to take a city by surprise, One World Trade Center snuck up on the New York skyline.”

“For years the project, conceived in the throes of tragedy, has been debated, negotiated, renamed, redrawn, hailed as a beacon, and maligned as a boondoggle. It wasn’t until recently, though, that it presented itself as an immutable fact, beginning to replace the void above Ground Zero with steel and reflective glass.”

Consider the contrast between 1930 New York City and 2011. It took just over a year to build the Empire State Building, employing 3,400 workers. It has taken a decade for the replacement of the Twin Towers that were owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Meanwhile, the original developer, Larry Silverstein, has independently built three other office buildings to replace those destroyed on 9/11.

During the past decade, under the administrations of Bush and Obama, the U.S. has remained stuck in the quagmire of Afghanistan and Iraq. A third war, the effort to rid Libya of its dictator, has had U.S. involvement “leading from the rear”, and the whole of northern Africa’s Maghreb and Middle East is embroiled to some degree in conflict.

No one can say how the turmoil in these Muslim nations and others will turn out, but the odds are the Islamists, the jihadists, will end up in charge and their war on the West will continue.

There are lessons to be drawn from this decade and those that preceded it. Chief among them is that Islam remains at the heart of all the killing, the despotism, and instability of the Middle East and the threat to Western civilization, determined as ever to drag us back to the seventh century.

Skyscrapers can be built in a decade or less, but it takes centuries to create a civilization and to defend it against its enemies.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

A Mosque is Not a Synagogue, Church or Hindu Temple

By Alan Caruba

Despite the fact that former President G.W. Bush said we are at war with “terrorism” and Obama says the U.S. is “not at war with Islam,” it is more than apparent to anyone paying attention that Islam is at war with America and has been for several decades.

Take, for example, Obama’s endorsement of the Ground Zero mosque—formerly called the Cordoba mosque to honor the Muslim conquest of Spain for seven centuries and then renamed Park 51 to mask its true intent.

During his most recent press conference, Obama compared a mosque to a synagogue, a church, or a Hindu temple. In doing so he ignored fourteen centuries of Muslim history in which, wherever they conquered, they went out of their way to build their mosques where former churches or temples existed. In India alone, they did this more than two thousand times to obliterate Hindu temples or shrines.

The Muslim conquest of what was then known as Palestine resulted in the Al Aqsa mosque on arguably the most holy site in Jewish history. Its gleaming golden dome dominates the skyline of Jerusalem to this day.

There is an important reason why the proposed mosque should not be built near Ground Zero and that is because mosques around the world are often places where hatred of unbelievers is preached and where attacks are planned.

Obama counts on American’s general ignorance of Islam and on the nation’s long tradition of tolerance. By contrast, in practice Islam has no tolerance of religions other than Islam.

A case in point is the way "Cordoba House" changed its name to Park 51 which is odd since the address of the location is 45–47 Park Place, but look to the Koran, the battle plan for Islamic conquest, to understand the new name for this project. Koran chapter 51, verses 45-47 suggests the real story:

51:45 And they were unable to arise, nor could they defend themselves.
51:46 And [We destroyed] the people of Noah before; indeed, they were a people defiantly disobedient.
51:47 And the heaven We constructed with strength, and indeed, We are [its] expander.

Obama, a former student of Islam when he was a boy living in Indonesia, has never made a secret of his affinity for Islam and, as his first actions following his inauguration revealed, he was intent on “building bridges” to Islam in the Middle East.

His first television interview was with Al Arabia and his first major international speech was in Cairo. Recently we learned that the director of NASA was given a new priority that has nothing to do with the exploration of space, but rather as “outreach” to Muslim nations.

Little wonder, then, that many Americans believe Obama is a Muslim, especially since his first endorsement of the Ground Zero mosque occurred in a speech given at a White House dinner celebrating Ramadan.

There have been more terrorist attacks and attempted attacks in the United States during Obama’s first year and a half in office than in the preceding Bush administration.

The Ground Zero mosque is intended to be a demonstration to Muslims throughout the world that they achieved a great victory with the destruction of the Twin Towers.

Does New York City and its boroughs need another mosque given the fact that over a hundred already exist? More to the point should New York sanction a mosque near ground regarded as hallowed by the deaths of the Twin Towers victims and first responders?

So, to repeat myself, a mosque is not a synagogue, is not a church, and is not a Hindu temple. Those places are devoted to faiths that do not preach that unbelievers should be slain or enslaved. Those places do not represent an international campaign of terrorism.

If Obama does not know that, someone should explain it to him.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Imam Rauf, Ground Zero Huckster

By Alan Caruba

Why do we love the hucksters so much? Put a smooth talker in front of us and we are entranced. The latest in a long line of these charlatans is Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the face of the Ground Zero mosque project.

Soft-spoken, seemingly erudite, Imam Rauf moves in the power circles that even had the U.S. Department of State picking up the tab for his tour of the Middle East---presumably to promote greater understanding of U.S. policy as it affects that part of the world. No doubt this was a reflection of President Barack Hussein Obama’s directive to the head of NASA to make Middle East outreach a top priority. Forget about that space exploration stuff!

At a conference in Australia in 2005, the same Imam Rauf, said “We tend to forget, in the West, that the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than al Qaeda has on its hands of innocent non-Muslims.” He then went on to cite “documentation” by the United Nations that “a half million Iraqi children” died as the result of U.S. led sanctions against Iraq. Those sanctions, the "Oil For Food" program, also became a huge U.N. scandal that enriched many of its top executives, including the then Secretary General, Kofi Annan’s son.

People who trust the United Nations will quite naturally trust the likes of Imam Rauf.

Thanks to a group called the Investigative Project, we now know that one of Imam Rauf’s close associates on the Ground Zero mosque is Faiz Khan, a physician who serves on the advisory board of Muslims for 9/11 Truth.

To hear Dr. Khan discuss 9/11 is to be told that the destruction of the Twin Towers had nothing to do with al Qaeda and was all an inside job by the U.S. government that set up the Islamic militants who perpetrated it as scapegoats.

Aside from the absurdity of the so-called 9/11 “Truthers”, the notion that people would politely listen to Imam Rauf discuss tolerance and a huge multi-story mosque within sight of Ground Zero goes way beyond a lack of judgment or naiveté. That kind of malevolence cannot be excused as insensitivity.

The Imam has been gaming U.S. law for a very long time. A 1998 tax filing called a 1023 form, an application for tax exempt status from the American Sufi Muslim Association (ASMA) claimed that the group had established a place of worship in New York that was, in truth, an apartment on West 85th Street. The form claimed that up to 500 people congregants would gather there when there wasn’t a room large enough in the entire 17-floor building to accommodate that many. There were no public spaces. Period.

Real estate properties he owns in New Jersey are home to some very unhappy residents and there are problems regarding his financial and management responsibilities for them.

Muslims in the Middle East and elsewhere look at the United States and all they see is an enemy of Islam. They conveniently forget all the attacks on U.S. embassies, the U.S. Marine peacekeeping force in Lebanon, the USS Cole, and, of course, the attacks on 9/11. As Imam Rauf put it, the U.S. was an “accessory” to those crimes.

The big secret no Muslim will reveal is that Islam is at war with the United States, the West, and anywhere else in the world where it does not control the government of various nations.

The largest and most powerful collective in the United Nations is the Middle Eastern bloc of nations. And the greatest collection of abusers of human rights can be found among Muslim nations.

It was the sheer audacity of suggesting that a mosque be built near Ground Zero that caught the public’s attention that has waxed and waned since the news first broke.

It has become a vortex sucking politicians into a dark place where they are forced to say that Imam Rauf and his largely unknown associates have a First Amendment right to build, BUT it’s a bad idea. A few hardier politicians have had the good grace and good sense to oppose it.

Filmmaker, Michael Moore, that bell weather of liberal idiocy, actually opined that a mosque should be built as part of the 9/11 memorial site. This is six degrees of separation to the far Left of Mayor Michael Bloomberg who thought the recent Times Square terror attack was probably perpetrated by someone who didn’t like Obamacare.

Americans in their quest for hope and change have already embraced one Muslim who claims to be a Christian, Barack Hussein Obama. Under the concept of “taqiyya” this deception is permitted by Islam. It’s time to get over the illusion that Muslims mean us anything other than dhimmitude, a second class status in our own nation. Or death.

The bottom line is that no one with any good sense should believe a word that Feisal Abdul Rauf has to say on the subject of “tolerance” or the mosque. He is a Muslim stalking horse for interests that seek to impose Sharia law on America and the rest of the world. That is always the end game for alleged Muslim “moderates.”

© Alan Caruba, 2010

This is Ground Zero 2010

This open pit represents a level of incompetance that defies the imagination. It has been nine years since the Twin Towers were destroyed.

Ground Zero as Seen by Muslims

The U.S. Constitution protects freedom of religion, not freedom from religion, and there's nothing in it that says it's okay to kill 3,000 Americans in the name of a religion.

Cartoon Round Up

The White House Mosque

NYC Site for Ground Zero Mosque

There are over a hundred mosques in New York City, but this is where they want to build a new one.

Find Someplace Else to Pray

Selling Mayor Bloomberg the Brooklyn Bridge

One of my favorite bloggers is Burt Prelutsky. A veteran Hollywood comedy writer, he despises liberals and has even written a book about it. This week he holds forth on the popularity gap between Republicans and Democrats, but added the following at the end of his commentary:

"Finally, I’m annoyed but not surprised that New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg is on board for the 13-story mosque to be built adjacent to Ground Zero. But when you realize that New Yorkers keep re-electing this yutz, even allowing him to break the rule regarding term limits so that they could elect him a third time, I say they deserve to be forced to suck it up and live with the grotesque monument to Islamic barbarism.

Bloomberg, like most liberals, likes to think of himself as sensitive, wise, ecumenical, open-minded and compassionate, when in fact he is a world-class boob who just happens to be rich, and he richly deserves to be played for a sucker by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and his fascistic cronies in CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations), the public relations arm of Hamas and Hezbollah.

Next week, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Mr. Rauf has sold Bloomberg a controlling interest in the Brooklyn Bridge."

The Price of Submission

Saying No! to a Ground Zero Mosque

By Alan Caruba

In the August 3rd edition of The Wall Street Journal, in the Greater New York section, the lead article was “9/11 Memorial Pledged as Part of Mosque Plan.”

There already is a 9/11 memorial. It is called Ground Zero and will be incorporated into whatever structure that eventually gets built on the site.

If one continued to read the story, however, you had to jump to page A21 where side-by-side with the mosque story was one titled, “Verdict in JFK Bomb Plot”, subtitled “Jury Finds Two Guilty in Conspiracy Charges for Plan to Ignite Fuel Tanks.”

The two men found guilty were Abdul Kadir and Russell Defreitas. A third defendant, Kareem Ibrahim, was ill and didn’t go to trial with them and a fourth, Abdel Nur, took a plea deal and faces up to 15 years in prison. At no time in the body of the article is there any mention that these men are Muslims though that fact was critical to their plot.

It was noted that “the men tried to get help from al Qaeda operative Adnan Shukrijumah who was recently indicted in federal court in a plot to attack the New York City subway system with suicide bombers.”

How many Muslim plots to kill thousands of New Yorkers does it take before the plotters are identified as Muslims?

The reason why there should be no mosque built where the debris and dust of the Twin Towers showered down on the very spot is obvious to any American. It would be an obscenity.

It is obscene to wish to build a mosque within sight of where 2,700 people lost their lives in an act of Islamic terrorism, an act of war, a jihad.

How this simple fact escapes the notice of Mayor Mike Bloomberg defies understanding, but this same Mayor originally thought the failed Times Square bomb could have been placed by “somebody with a political agenda who doesn't like the health care bill or something. It could be anything.”

No, it could not be “anything”! Of the many plots hatched since 9/11, it is likely that 99.9% have been by Muslims, whether native born or immigrants.



This is not about tolerance. In New York, every Friday in several locations through the city where there are mosques that cannot accommodate all who wish to enter for prayers, the overflow fills the surrounding streets between 2 PM and 4 PM. They block traffic in ways no other group of religionists would ever be permitted. It is surreal.

There is something especially abhorrent about Mayor Bloomberg’s dazzling ignorance because as a Jew he seems to have not absorbed the lessons of history and, in particular, the Holocaust that killed six million Jews and five million Christians; nuns and priests, Lutherans, gypsies, and others swept up by the Nazi death machine.

Hannah Arendt attended the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi charged with rounding up and killing Europe’s Jews. Her book, “Eichmann and the Holocaust”, was published in 1963 and enshrined the phrase, “the banality of evil” in our modern lexicon.

For Arendt, Eichmann was a “new type of criminal, who commits his crimes under circumstances that make it well-nigh impossible for him to know or feel that he is doing wrong.” Not so new because the crimes of Islam against all who are not Islamic (and some who are thanks to the Shiite-Sunni schism) are very old and fill the headlines of today’s newspapers.

The Muslims who flew commercial airliners into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon did not think they were doing wrong. They were doing what the Koran and almost every imam with the breath to preach told them to do; they were killing infidels.

This is why a mosque within steps of Ground Zero is so inherently wrong. It says that the intended victims of Islamic domination are simply too blind to envision their fate, too fearful to confront evil, too ready to get on the next train to Auschwitz.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

The Protest the Media Ignored

On June 16th in downtown New York, close to "Ground Zero" where the Twin Towers once stood, a protest attended by an estimated 5,000 people went virtually unreported by the New York and national media.

Here are just two photos from the event.

The proposal to build a huge mosque within walking distance of Ground Zero is an insult to all Americans.

Some things cannot and should not be tolerated.

-- Alan Caruba

The Disgrace of Ground Zero

By Alan Caruba

9/11/2009 took a large psychic toll on Americans.

I am no exception. By early evening, I found myself profoundly angry watching the Mayor of New York explain why Ground Zero is still essentially a hole in the ground eight years after the destruction of the Twin Towers.

This nation fought and won World War Two in four years’ time and in two separate theatres of war in the Pacific and in Europe. By the time it was over, the major cities of Germany and Japan were rubble and both armies and civilians were among the dead because the only way to convince an enemy to stop waging war is to destroy their will to continue.

History tells us this over and over again. It is the reason the Romans laid siege to Masada.

We have been in Afghanistan since 2001 and in Iraq since 2003. What we’ve been doing there is more a police action than a war.

That’s why the Korean War is officially called a United Nations police action, not a war. We settled for a stalemate.

When there were riots in Los Angeles and Newark that was a police action using the military. What we are asking our troops to do these days in far off, dangerous places is not a war.

We have reached a point where the present administration will not even call it a war. It doesn’t get more pathetic than that.

So, as I looked at that hole in the ground in lower Manhattan, I wondered why, if the owner of that vast property, the developer, had been able to completely rebuild other structures and rent them out, why the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey had been unable or unwilling to rebuild the Twin Towers?

They have the blueprints!

What better way to tell America’s enemies, the fanatical al Qaeda—the spear point of the Islamic Jihad—that they could not and would not defeat us?

In World War Two we knew who the enemy was. We named them and we created a great war machine to utterly destroy them.

More than a half century later, our government will not say “terrorists”, cannot say “Islamists,” and all the while, the center of the Islamic Revolution, Iran, relentlessly works to acquire its own nuclear weapons.

There is a proper place for several “ground zeros” and they are the known sites where Iran is refining the fissionable material for nuclear weapons and building missiles.

Meanwhile, why must I watch interviews in front of a hole in the ground that is eight years old?

Ground Zero is an American disgrace.