A Martyr Of Perspective

The planned museum dedicated to 9/11 is wisely including a display on the hijackers themselves and what motivated them eight years ago.

A museum dedicated to the September 11 attacks will display written quotations drawn from "martyrdom" videos made by the hijackers, along with witness testimonials that will be screened to prevent sympathizers from praising the perpetrators, museum officials said on Thursday.

Previous attempts to put into context the motivation of the men who used hijacked passenger planes to attack the United States on September 11, 2001, have been met with emotional public opposition, with politicians canceling plans for an "International Freedom Center" in 2005.

But the president of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum said photographs of the 19 hijackers would be displayed along with the quotes as part of the "witness testimony" in the museum.

The memorial and museum are planned for the World Trade Center site undergoing reconstruction in lower Manhattan. The underground museum should open by 2013.

Museum president Joe Daniels told reporters the exhibit would present the facts, focusing on "what happened on that day, why it happened, what does it mean to live in a 9/11 world."

"Let the perpetrators speak for themselves," Daniels said.

Good. That's a mature and intelligent response to this, which means of course that the Wingers will be demanding Joe Daniels be removed as director and the that the museum will never open with this planned display.

I'll tag this one and revisit it when the backlash comes.