The Ground Zero Land Mosque

Here’s an idea, let’s call all of Manhattan south of Canal Street down to and including Battery Park, Ground Zero Land.


Hearing about the Ground Zero Mosque was driving me crazy. Oh, the insipid vile crap from the usual right wing freaks, like Gingrich and Palin was not exactly unexpected. But then Obama, a man I truly admire, did his namby-pamby back-pedal after agreeing with Bloomberg. Bloomberg is a politician who has always given me the skeeves, yet his speech in support of the Mosque was the best political rhetoric I’ve heard all year.

I had to get my thoughts together about this issue and the first step was going down to 51st Park Place, the address of the Islamic Community Center and mosque, a former Burlington Coat Factory. I was trying to remember where this street was in relationship to Ground Zero. Like most Jersey City-ians, I’ve been down there loads of times, before and after the national tragedy. How can you avoid it, Ground Zero is also a PATH station. Many of us emerge out of this hallowed pit to some sort of computer station and cubicle. I remembered a Borders, but not a Burlington Coat Factory at the WTC. I always go to the one in Chelsea.

The so called Ground Zero mosque is not near Ground Zero. I guess it depends on what you mean by the word near. I never considered the WTC in Tribeca. Tribeca begins at Canal and ends at Vesey Street (Park is well north of Vesey). As the news reports indicate, it is two blocks but these are two long blocks, nearly a ten minute walk, which translates into nearly 40 New York Minutes! It is a little confusing, because one of the buildings damaged and imploded due to the 9-11 tragedy is at the western end of Park Place. No one died in this specific lot, although it looks a little like ground zero—its empty and a large building—not the TWIN TOWERS—used to be here.

Between this faux ground zero and the real ground zero is a little park and a large Chase Bank. The real ground zero is not visible from 51st Park Place. It doesn’t over look the scene. Clearly, the truth is that this is a Tribeca Mosque, not a Ground Zero mosque.

Quite a scene down there by the way. I saw two protestors, one against the mosque, the other for. Actually the for was a guy and a gal. Against, just a guy. I asked the two guys to stand close together for a picture, asked them to position their signs in the frame. I wasn’t the only one taking pictures of these two. Within a few minutes, there was more of a crowd, but they weren’t protestors, they were just coming to talk about this incessant news story. I talked to two young dudes with a video camera, I asked them to turn it off, I didn’t want to be on TV. They were from some media center in Virginia.

Notice what looks like Ground Zero in the background.

The background closer up.

The southeast corner of that same lot.

From that lot you can see Ground Zero, which is way in the horizon. That lot is not Ground Zero, and it is that lot, not Ground Zero, that is visible from the community center/mosque.

You could actually go into the building. There was a really tall and muscular security guard, Kamill. He was a big black guy, okay. He was also just a really nice guy, very courteous and patient. (I didn’t take his picture) To go into the area beyond the hall infront of the door, you had to take off your shoes, just like a real mosque. So, I guess it’s a mosque already. He said it’s been a media frenzy at 51 Park. There wasn’t much to see inside. We chatted some. He had gotten used to the attention. “Muslims are the new bogey man,” he told me. He was fun to talk to, competent and pleasant.

Look, Bush was the worst president in our History. Besides dismantling our economy, there was 9-11. Despite ample warnings and previous attacks, he failed to protect us from Bin Laden, he bungled the Afghanistan war by letting Al Quida and the Taliban escape at Torra Borra, regroup in Pakistan and launch an insurgency that continues to this day and is poised to suck Pakistan into the Afghanistan war. After the Torra Borra debacle, he lied to the American people and the world to support the Iraq invasion, igniting a civil war between the Shiite and the Sunni with our soldiers caught in the middle. But, Bush did one thing right, he suppressed the idea that this was a war against Islam. Maybe he could have done more to silence those in his camp who expressed bigotry against Muslims, but when an elephant flies you can’t criticize it for not soaring like an eagle.

I don’t like the term Islamophobia. Phobia means fear. What is being expressed in the protests against this mosque is sheer bigotry. Bigotry, no matter how justified it may seem, obscures the real problems and threats and is almost as destructive for the individual voicing and acting on that bigotry as it is for the object of the derision. The best support for that allegation comes from the Slave Narratives—the first person accounts of the South’s “peculiar institution”—many of these African Americans show how the constant hatred and distrust by the masters negatively impacted the master, and often they express a pity for the slave holder. An adversary is not worth hating on the basis of race or religion and by the same token, hating a race or religion for the actions of some means you have abandoned any moral or intellectual basis for your cause.

Bigotry sometimes seems so defensible, but starting with slavery and then our genocidal war against the Native Americans to the Japanese Internment camps, bigotry has been a major reason why America has more often than not fallen short of our ideals.

Bigotry is far from being an exclusively American sin. Look at Europe, the Holocaust had centuries of precedent and look the riots and the assimilation problems faced by African and Turkish immigrants. The Apartheid societies of South Africa and Rhodesia are just blatant examples, that continent is replete with examples of tribal and religious warfare, proving bigotry isn’t determined by skin color. It is a human failing we are all prey to. At least America tries to come to grips with bigotry, attempting legal and legislative means. It remains a work in progress.

Okay, first off, it is not a Ground Zero mosque. Second, opposing it is sheer bigotry. But a third way has come out of the opposition, a softer, gentler opposition. Not denying the “right” of the owners to build a mosque and community center here, but hoping they move it and show sensitivity. Relocate so instead of confronting our bigotry, we can avoid it and let continue to fester.

Move it to where? Where does Ground Zero land now end in New York? Where is the location that our feelings of grief will be spared? It’s an absurd proposal. Move it all the way to Canal Street—doesn’t half a mile from Ground Zero sound just as inflammatory as two blocks? Do you know there’s a mosque about a mile from Ground Zero—yes, it’s across the river and on Grove Street in Jersey City but still—about a mile!

I remember 9-11 too. I don’t really need sensitivity, what I need is a satisfying completion to the wars that resulted from 9-11. I want our soldiers home. I want those wounded cared for. I want to bind up our nation’s wounds. What do the pundits have to say about the effect of the Ground Zero Mosque on our troops and their mission? I haven’t heard a damn thing, and that is where the discussion must begin.

The fact of the matter is, in spite of all the failures and mis-steps of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the larger purpose of these wars – to establish sustainable, Democratic governments that allow the people a voice and determination over their own lives – is an honorable one. Debating that is now for the historians. We cannot pull out immediately, we have to get as close to achieving the legitimate government goal before we do leave. The other day the last of the combat troops had left Iraq, leaving 50,000 troops. Also, the parliamentary system of democracy struggling to take hold there has failed to form a government. Bigotry again—nobody likes the Kurds. It isn’t over in Iraq, particularly the war of ideas as nation building commences.

In both Afghanistan and Iraq, an insurgent war continues. I see it as we won the war, but winning the peace will be even harder. Fighting these insurgents – in Afghanistan, the Taliban – requires forces beyond just the military. U.S. commanders must also win the hearts and minds of society at large, at the local level, village by village, tribe by tribe. I recently read “A Question of Command – Counterinsurgency from the Civil War to Iraq” by Mark Moyar (full disclosure, his brother is a friend of mine), a military historian who teaches at the U.S. Marine Corps University. Moyar is a proponent of a leader-centric theory of counter insurgent battles, seeing their success or failure based entirely on the caliber of counter insurgent (that would be us) military officers. He points out that these leaders must possess specific attributes because in addition to leading their own soldiers, they have to interface with the society, recruiting and training native forces, winning hearts and minds as they overcome the insurgents. For Moyar, the main focus should be on the “elites” of a society, the theory being that they will persuade counterinsurgent support from other members of society and subsequently a majority of the population. Elite is an unfortunate term to be used, but his historical research (in a fascinating book) shows that the insurgents are also led by elites, and counter insurgents have to be better at recruiting elites than the insurgents. “Better” of course is a complex process.

Remember that Turkish Flotilla incident with Israel of a few months ago. What emerged in the news from that incident is that the Israel/Palestinian conflict was a major stumbling block to recruiting security forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yes, everybody supports a two state solution, but if Israel will not allow humane efforts from one ally (Turkey) while its other huge ally (that would be us) is indifferent, how can a Muslim in Iraq or Afghanistan believe the U.S. commander that fighting the insurgents—who are also Muslim—will lead to a better society?

Please sigh with relief, I’m not going to propose a solution to the Israel and Palestinian conflict here. I brought up that example because this general idea of “recruitment” as essential to us ending the war—and winning the peace—was indirectly highlighted by the Turkish Flotilla incident. Loudmouth bigots opposing the Ground Zero mosque, who want Tribeca to be Ground Zero Land, are really just exploiting our sincere sorrow and grief to persuade us that Islam is collectively guilty of perpetrating 9-11. They are appealing to the worst in our humanity. Once again, they are telling Americans to be less than our ideals.

Hate is easy. Thus it was, thus it always shall be.

Think about this. What if those elites (and the populations looking for leaders to trust) can say, Americans do stand by their ideals. We saw it on Al Jazerra that they support a mosque in Ground Zero Land (or in Tribeca, a neighborhood that borders the site of Ground Zero). They are tolerant. They respect Islam because they believe in Freedom of religion and stand up for what they believe in even when it isn’t easy. They even stand up against bigots who are popular in their own land!

See, this Ground Zero Mosque (that is really in Tribeca) could be a positive piece of propaganda in the war of ideas that is being waged along with the bloodshed of counter insurgent conflicts. It’s not just about dodging car bombs and IEDs and Suicide Bombers and exchanging gun fire. Recruiting societies to the vision of a legitimate government is not just about success in a battle. There’s a Ground Zero Mosque because the United States knows that Al Quida does not represent Islam. See, it's about hope after all.

Sounds like a pretty damn effective weapon in the war of ideas to me. Seems to have potential at least.

As of last month, U.S. fatalities in Iraq: 4,416; In Afghanistan: 1,233.

If it saves some lives of our soldiers, if it makes the successful completion of their mission easier, if it brings all of them home one day sooner, move that Islamic community center out of Tribeca and into the WTC PATH station.