Pool/Getty Images First responders to the Sept. 11 attacks walk to the stage during the opening ceremony for the National September 11 Memorial & Museum on Thursday. We paid the Native Americans $ 24 for Manhattan Island in 1626.
Today, we are paying $ 24 admission to the National September 11 Memorial & Museum to visit the artifacts of our honored dead on the darkest day in the history of Manhattan.
And America.
Even the 500,000 homeless veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars launched in reaction to 9/11 must pay a discounted $ 18 to get in.
For shame.
As we approach Memorial Day, we should be cringing that any vet has to pay to honor those who died on 9/11. This is like charging to enter Arlington National Cemetery.
The other day, a reporter asked former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, memorial and museum chairman, why it isn’t free. Bloomberg said that it should be free, like other national parks and monuments, and urged us to write to our representatives in Congress to secure the museum’s $ 60 million annual operating cost.
Bloomberg is right.
JUSTIN LANE/EPA An American flag that was raised at Ground Zero on display at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. The Washington Monument is free. The Lincoln Memorial is free. The Smithsonian, Vietnam Veterans Memorial, World War II Memorial and Tomb of the Unknown Soldier are all free. The Old Stone House in Park Slope, Brooklyn, where George Washington strategized during the Battle of Brooklyn, is free. The National Museum of the American Indian in Lower Manhattan, which might be justified in asking for $ 24, is free.
But we’re paying $ 24 to enter the 9/11 museum, which, before anything else, is a national cemetery holding some of the remains of America’s war dead.
The attack on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, was an act of war on the United States by foreign enemies who killed 2,753 innocent civilians and first responders.
This is a hallowed battlefield of American history that we and future generations have a solemn duty to visit so that we never forget. The 9/11 Museum is not an amusement park, a zoo, a Broadway show or a sports arena. You do not sell tickets to a site that holds the artifacts and unidentified remains of war victims.
We need our New York congressional delegation, Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, to unite around the issue of 9/11 and demand that the feds find an annual $ 60 million stipend to memorialize this savage act of war on America.
Don’t let anyone say we don’t have the dough.
After we invaded Iraq, the U.S. government spent more than $ 60 billion — with a “B” — to rebuild that country.
KEVIN LAMARQUE/REUTERS President Obama and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg look at the faces of those who died during the 9/11 attacks at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. More than $ 8 billion of the $ 60 billion reconstruction money simply disappeared. Nice.
We also deliver duffel bags stuffed with untold CIA-funneled millions to Afghan warlords.
But we can’t find $ 60 million a year to run a museum at Ground Zero commemorating a foreign attack on American soil?
“This museum should absolutely be free,” said Rep. Pete King (R-L.I.). “I’m speaking with the New York delegation about finding federal money without offsetting security funds. Because the 9/11 museum is a national treasure, a magnificent, nonpolitical museum that tells the story of 9/11 and its heroes and warns us to never let our guard down. There’s always resistance in Washington to giving New York funding for anything. But now that there’s a moving 9/11 museum instead of a hole in the ground, we’re working hard to find funding to make it admission-free.”
Yes, this is a nation that seems not to mind charging admission to our darkest history. Gettysburg charges $ 12.50; the Oklahoma City bombing museum, $ 12; the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza that chronicles President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, $ 16.
Dollars for horrors.
But Pearl Harbor’s USS Arizona Memorial, which also honors our dead from an enemy attack, is free.
And so should the heartrending and spirit-lifting September 11 Memorial & Museum to best honor the fallen of the land of the free.
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