Might as well be a parking lot.

Lower Manhattan will receive more retail space now that the planned International Freedom Center is no longer being planned for the WTC site. I'm not nearly as into the politics and particulars of whether this is for the best in terms of what Lower Manhattan needs, but I wanted to share this quote from the NYT article (registration req'd):

"The International Freedom Center was an obstacle not simply for the families, the first responders and all those who were personally affected by the events of Sept. 11," Ms. Burlingame said in a telephone interview, "but for all Americans who will be coming to the World Trade Center memorial to hear the story of 9/11 and that story only.

As a historian (as well as an American, a lover of peace & liberty, and a general man of letters), I take great offense to this. The story of 11 Sept. 2001 simply cannot be separated from the timespan of world events or the blanket of geopolitics and social issues that surrounds it, nor should it. If there is one thing that history teaches us, it is that no action takes place in a vacuum; events have both precursors and consequences. There was going to be a museum already dedicated solely to what happened that day; that we have lost what may have been an exquisite venue (and perhaps the only one of its kind) to bring about an increased understanding of why and how is to me just a further continuation of the tragedy.