Visit to World Trade Center Site

For me, Manhattan has historically been the southern tip of the island, where Wall Street and the World Trade Center are/was located. It is the traditional skyline presented in the media when referring to New York City, whether pre or post 9/11. When my son went to visit Manhattan with his middle school class a few years ago, the main thing I was interested in was his experience visiting Ground Zero, the site of the fallen WTC towers. So on our recent first-time visit here, I was keen on getting into Lower Manhattan and seeing the area firsthand. What I encountered was unexpected.

After roaming around through Chinatown and Little Italy on April 8 (Thursday), we walked the few blocks over to where the WTC site was. I expected some kind of visual presentation, but instead encountered high, covered fences shielding loud, heavy construction work. There were some signs pointing to a type of 9/11 memorial located away from the site. Which was all well and good, but I wanted to see Ground Zero. Well, the Ground Zero today is vastly different from the Ground Zero my son encountered in 2002. First, one of the new buildings has already been finished. Then, on the site where the North Tower once stood, a new, much taller single tower is now being built, ultimately to rise some five hundred feet higher than the original tower. All we could observe was through furtive peeks through the fence of the ongoing construction work and very, very loud noise. So I came away from our visit with some conflicting feelings. First I had a swelling up of anger as I took in firsthand the enormity and outrage of the horrible acts of terrorism that brought down the WTC and murdered so many people. And I was frustrated by not having a concrete visual point of reference, with the construction work taking the place of the essentially empty area. But then I felt hope that now we are beginning to put this behind us and are moving ahead with this new building. So ultimately, my visit was a positive one, although the good feelings took a little while in coming.

I noticed something else while walking around in Lower Manhattan: the pedestrian crowds had a much more tense and driven character to them than what I had become accustomed to Midtown (where people walked around fast enough anyway). It may have been my imagination, but it seemed to me that around the WTC site the mood of the people around me could be summed up by the words "extremely pissed off".

Speaking of "extremely pissed off", I wonder whether those running the Taliban overseas are stupid or just have a strong death wish. For with this recent Times Square attempt and their initial claims of credit for it, the Taliban has reduced itself in stature to simple terrorist thugs on the same order as Al-Qaeda. Before, there was a difference. Now, for all practical purposes as far as the USA is concerned, Taliban = Al Qaeda. Not a very wise move on their part, I think. It could be, though, that they see what's going down, since they have most recently backed off a bit from their earlier claims for this misdeed.