At 3 this afternoon, one of the local newspapers posted a story saying that these children had backed out of doing the show with me because I’m an anti-Semite and the show is all about hatred blahblahblah, which was a lie. These kids didn’t back out of anything; it was the mayor who called the organization partly funded by the city and said, “Your kids cannot perform in the show.”
I asked Waters to respond to those who were already complaining to me that I should not be affording him a platform on CNN.
“I’m not an anti-Semite, obviously,” he said. “To call me anti-Semite is malicious propaganda.”
The interview went viral. Within days it racked up nearly half a million views. And the show went on. Somehow, by the time he hit the stage a little more than an hour later, Waters had recruited another dozen kids, who did a fine job performing “Another Brick, Part 2”. The show was amazing. People might disagree about the very few numbers that got very political, but no one could dispute the sound and production values.
Afterward, I joined the band for what they called the “Golden Trough” celebration back at the hotel. I was seated at a dinner table next to Waters, and we had a very spirited conversation about U.S. politics and international affairs. The following day I flew home to Philadelphia, and that Saturday, my interview aired. I didn’t hear from Waters or anyone on his team immediately after and thought he must not have liked his treatment. But the following month, DeFeo contacted me when Waters came to Philadelphia for three shows at the Wachovia Center. I had already planned to take my youngest son to the first show. He was 17, a Waters/Floyd fan, and this would be his first concert. He loved it. The next day, Mark Fenwick, Waters’s manager, called and said Waters had asked to see me after the second night’s performance. I didn’t go to that show, but I met him afterward in the bar of Lacroix at the Rittenhouse Hotel, which had been closed to all but a handful of the band and support staff. Waters walked in and motioned me to join him at a table for two. This was not a working meeting—the CNN interview was long over and had already aired. Over my beer and his wine we had an animated discussion touching on music and politics, with me wanting to talk mostly about the former and him mostly about the latter. By now I was much more familiar with the new album than I’d been when I first saw him in Miami. I told him that “Wait for Her” was my favorite song on the new recording. We ended up closing the place. I left only when the bartender flicked the lights. Three hours later I got up to deliver my daily radio program and did so without so much as mentioning what I’d done the night before.
THE GARDEN
OF ETERNAL VIGILANCE
Philadelphia Daily News, Thursday, October 5, 2006
IT’S AMAZING WHAT NEIGHBORS can do when united in purpose. On Saturday, in Lower Makefield Township, Bucks County, several thousand gathered in what used to be a nondescript field to rechristen the Garden of Reflection, a tribute to 9/11 victims. Fellow citizens spent five years planning and fund-raising to bring to life what is now a showpiece for the nation.
Bucks was the hardest hit of Pennsylvania’s counties on September 11, and Lower Makefield bore a particular brunt because it’s a commutable distance to New York City. Seventeen Bucks Countians died that day, a statistic that enabled state representative David Steil to get the commonwealth to designate the garden as the official Pennsylvania memorial.
From the outset, the garden was a collaborative effort of neighbors united by tragedy whose mission seemed guided by divine purpose. How else to explain that on a cold day in January 2002, family survivors Grace Godshalk, Fiona Havlish, Ellen Saracini, and Tara Bane went looking for a site and found a lonely American flag wedged in some bushes on Woodside Road. They knew at once they’d found the spot. Two years later, Lower Makefield named the proposed site Memorial Park.
When it came time to review potential designs, they flowed in from all over, but it was a local woman, Yardley’s Liuba P. Lashchyk, who conceptualized the final plan. The level of her deliberation is readily apparent.
Visitors to the garden are first confronted with a several-ton piece of twisted steel from the wreckage of the Twin Towers. This remnant of Ground Zero intentionally faces the direction of New York City.
Symbolism is everywhere. Seventeen maple trees on an outer berm acknowledge the Bucks County residents lost in the attack, and 42 lights along the spiral labyrinth walk remember each of the Pennsylvania children who lost a parent that day.
The names of all 2,973 victims are etched in a glass semicircle leading up to the inner sanctum.
At the heart of the garden is a reflecting pool where two recessed squares represent the footprint of the Twin Towers and serve as the basis for dual ascending fountains that rise as a metaphor for the soaring spirit of the victims.
I’m not a message kinda guy, but even I get the garden. It’s a special place, worth the drive from anywhere in the region.
The dedication befitted the creation. Local firefighters and American flags lined the approach. Valerie Mihalek, a local woman, coordinated the event with military precision. Literally. How else to explain the C-17 that dropped out of the sky and tipped its wing, flown by yet another local, U.S. Air Force major Samuel Irvin III of Wrightstown.
The ceremony was appropriately devoid of politics. Representative Mike Fitzpatrick, in a tough re-election battle, was the emcee. His role was deserved, given his procurement of $750,000 to build the garden. But he just did his job and was never formally introduced. It was that kind of low-key day.
The speakers were emotional. They included Tara Bane (who lost her 33-year-old husband), Grace Maureen Godshalk (who lost her 35-year-old son), and Ellen Saracini (whose husband, Victor, was the captain of United Flight 175). The Commencement Brass played “Holy, Holy, Holy,” and the Pennsbury High choir sang “You’ll Never Walk Alone.”
We all had goose bumps.
Go see the garden. It’s just five minutes from the New Hope–Yardley exit of I-95. When you get there, you will see that the site is ringed with athletic fields where children will play for future generations, which reminds me of the most significant aspect of what these neighbors created.
We’ve all heard it said that, with regard to the events preceding that fateful day, the most important failure was one of imagination.
Well, sitting at the dedication on Saturday, it occurred to me that for more than 99 percent of the country, September 11 was a day never experienced directly. To be sure, we were all witness in a way and everyone now has images and ideas based on the film footage, but only a few experienced directly the ramifications of what occurred.
The garden not only honors the dead, but offers their sacrifice as a way of protecting against any failure of imagination in the future. It’s a living reminder of what occurred so that never again will there be a similar lapse of attention.
Long after we’re all gone, the Garden of Reflection will form images and ideas in the minds of those who follow us of a horrific event that will not have been seen or experienced directly by anyone then living. So let’s hope that, in that way, it will safeguard future generations against a repeat failure of the imagination.
AFTERWORD
All the proceeds from my first book, Flying Blind: How Political Correctness Continues to Compromise Airline Safety Post 9/11 (2004), went to the Garden of Reflection, where I remain an active supporter and benefactor. It’s just two turns off of I-95. Make the trip if you’ve never been. And read more about the Garden here: www.9-11memorialgarden.org.
MANHUNT FOR OSAMA
DROPPING ON U.S. AGENDA?
Philadelphia Daily News, Thursday, October 26, 2006
HAVE THE BRAKES been put on the hunt for Osama bin Laden? Just back from the CENTCOM region, that is my hunch.
The effort to find bin Laden was one of the many questions I had about the war on terror as I joined a Pentagon-sponsored military immersion program called the Joint Civilian Orientation Conference.
This was to be a unique opportunity for
45 civilians to learn about CENTCOM, a geographical territory encompassing the most dangerous spots in the world, and I was looking forward to being a mental sponge on a subject that has preoccupied me since 9/11.
I have done thousands of hours of talk radio and written numerous columns and two books about the war on terror, but never before had I seen it being waged.
The weeklong activities did not disappoint. The daily agenda was packed and the presenters were stellar. We heard from the defense secretary, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the vice admiral of CENTCOM, and other high-ranking war commanders.
Our days began at 5 or 6 A.M. and didn’t end until 10 or 11 P.M. We traveled 15,000 miles and spent time in four nations. We ate meals with soldiers, fired the best of the Army weaponry in the desert, toured classified Air Force surveillance aircraft, and were educated about the latest in efforts to counteract the dreaded IEDs (improvised explosive devices).
I came home with the utmost of respect for men and women throughout the ranks of all five branches of the service who are committed to eradicating the forces of radical Islam.
There was only one area of disappointment. I refer to the hunt for bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri.
I began to think of it as the Lord Voldemort of the trip—which Harry Potter fans will recognize as the individual whose name shall not be uttered. The search for bin Laden and al-Zawahiri was not part of the agenda, and when I did ask questions looking for a status report, there was no information forthcoming except a generic assertion that, indeed, the hunt continues.
For example, when we were briefed at Andrews Air Force Base by Vice Admiral Nichols—the No. 2 to Army general John Abizaid—I asked him whether the hunt for bin Laden was, at this stage, completely dependent upon Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf. He told me we respect national sovereignty and described the search as “difficult and nuanced.”
I took that as a confirmation of my concern about outsourcing.
When, in Bahrain, I put the same question to Marine brigadier general Anthony Jackson, he told me that the search was the equivalent of finding one man in the Rockies, an analogy that I heard repeatedly from men I met overseas. He also said that “no one is giving up” and that my question was better put to the guys in special ops.
So when we got to the special ops headquarters, in Qatar, I raised the matter yet again, this time with Colonel Patrick Pihana, the chief of staff to the Combined Forces Special Operations Component Command. He offered nothing substantive on the issue. There were other places we visited that I am not at liberty to discuss where one would expect it to be a focal point, but it wasn’t in our briefings.
I want to be clear here: Nowhere did anyone ever tell me the search for bin Laden is over. But I am worried that the days of aggressively hunting him have ended. I say that based on the lack of response to my repeated questions in the context of other sensitive briefings, the fact that the CIA reportedly closed its bin Laden desk, called the Alec Station, and the agreement reached between Musharraf and tribal leaders in the northwestern part of his nation wherein he has agreed to give them continued free rein.
I might be wrong. The prospect certainly exists that the hunt continues and yours truly, a blowhard from Philadelphia, was deemed unworthy of any information. That would be fine with me—I am not one who believes Americans have a right to know secrets—but I would have hoped that along the way, someone would have said so. In light of a great deal of sensitive information that was shared with my group, and the total absence of anything about bin Laden, I don’t think this is the case.
I may be right. To be sure, if we catch a break I am certain we will grab him and kill him, but maybe our Special Forces have repositioned their precious resources. And why might this be the case? Well, for starters, because our limited manpower is desperately needed in Iraq. Perhaps they’re hiding in Pakistan and we are respecting their borders, even with the knowledge that Musharraf is limited in what he can or will do to find him.
Why would we respect Pakistani borders to the exclusion of finding and killing the most wanted man in the world? Because as weak as Musharraf might be in assisting us in finding bin Laden and al-Zawahiri, he is probably the best we can hope for in Pakistani leadership. Forcing his hand might lead to his undermining, and end up with a friend to radical Islam running the country.
There is another consideration. More than one individual with whom I spoke—and no one that I have named here—raised with me the question of what would happen to public support for the war against radical Islam if we were to find and kill bin Laden and al-Zawahiri. Would the American people then expect the military to pack up and go home? they wanted to know from me, who spends 17.5 hours a week answering phone calls from the public.
Again, I need to be blunt. No one ever told me that we are not hunting bin Laden because killing him would cause Americans to want to close up shop in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But this possible ramification is absolutely on the minds of our warriors as support for the war in Iraq dissipates.
I pray my gut is wrong. I hope that somewhere in Pakistan there are some bad-assed special ops guys wearing veils and burkas moving through villages, cutting deals, using sophisticated spy gear, and doing whatever is necessary to bring the bastards’ lives to the most heinous of endings. Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri are mass murderers responsible for 6,000 deaths—3,000 on 9/11, and another 3,000 from events tied to that. The search must never end.
AFTERWORD
It would be six more years until Osama bin Laden would be killed, on Monday, May 2, 2011. Like many Americans, I remember exactly where I was when I heard the news. That night I was at a Neil Young concert at the legendary Tower Theater with my buddy “Liberal” Paul Lauricella. As we drove home, Twitter began exploding with tidbits about something big that had happened. We went back to my house at midnight and watched as President Barack Obama announced the news to the nation:
Good evening. Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al Qaeda, and a terrorist who’s responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women, and children.
I remember going on radio the following day and saying I wish that I knew who killed him so I could buy him a beer, prompting several callers to say we would never know the names of the heroes. A few years later, I was able to interview two members of Seal Team Six who played critical roles in the mission: Matt Bissonnette (aka “Mark Owen”) and Robert O’Neill (the guy who actually killed bin Laden). Both were memorable. I still hope to buy each that beer.
SHOULD FREE SPEECH ALLOW
HOLOCAUST DENIAL?
Philadelphia Daily News, Thursday, January 11, 2007
“IF WE REALLY WANT to know the truth about history, we need to allow freedom of speech.”
So I was told by David Duke in an interview three weeks ago via a scratchy connection from Tehran. He was in Iran to participate in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust conference.
I’ve followed Duke’s career and find his repeated condemnation of Israel and its supporters to be abhorrent. And I knew that accepting an invitation to interview the former Klan Imperial Wizard would cause a stir. But I was willing to speak to him because I was on the verge of visiting the most deadly of all Nazi extermination camps, and I wanted to hear what a self-described revisionist had to say.
The fringe represented by Duke argues that laws in Europe prohibiting Holocaust denial inhibit an analysis that could otherwise reveal the Holocaust to be a historical exaggeration that exists to justify the legitimacy of Israel. No Holocaust, or exaggerated description? Then there’s no justification for the creation of the state of Israel in the minds of these few.
Now that I’m back from my visit to Auschwitz, I find that I agree with Duke that Europeans should be free to debate the Holocaust, but not for reasons he would agree with. Having seen the ghastly evidence, I believe it
’s far easier to defeat the deniers with fact and logic rather than risk fostering the skepticism that comes from making those views illegal. It is through the clash of truth and falsity that the truths of the Holocaust are most readily seen.
My trip had been planned for nearly a year. I’m one of a half-dozen Philadelphia friends, three Jewish, who regularly travel after New Year’s to historic sites.
We began in Berlin at the Wannsee villa where, on January 20, 1942, 15 officials of the Third Reich plotted the “final solution.” In their meeting room, we read the protocol written by Adolf Eichmann that set forth the plan to murder European Jews.
Then we visited Track 17 in the fashionable Grunewald section of Berlin, at the former station that was the point of departure for Jews from the area being sent to the camps. Listed next to the tracks are the dates, number of passengers, and destination of the railcars.
Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right Page 14