No change to 9/11 memorial this year

Arizona lawmakers won't tinker with the phrases on the state's 9/11 Memorial - at least not this year. On a tie vote, the Senate Appropriations Committee killed legislation that would have mandated the removal of 12 phrases that Rep. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, said are too controversial to be on a state monument.

Kavanagh, who managed to get House approval for the changes two weeks ago, said he will leave the issue alone, at least for the time being.

Tuesday's vote came after pleas from some members of the commission that designed the memorial.

They pointed out that two of the 54 phrases already are being removed after it turned out the statements were inaccurate. And they told lawmakers that others are being added, including "Let's roll" and "God Bless America."

But legislators who voted against altering the memorial said they believe it needs to represent various viewpoints and feelings about the events leading up to and following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. And that, according to Sen. Karen Johnson, R-Mesa, includes the still-open possibility that Americans have yet to learn the full story.

"There's many of us," she said, "that believe there's been a cover-up," ranging from who was really behind the attacks to questions about whether what flew into the World Trade Center towers were pilotless drones and the passengers had been taken off beforehand.

"And there's a lot of statements on that 9/11 memorial that reflect a lot of our views that we have about it," Johnson said. "And I think all of those need to be represented."

That is a sentiment clearly not shared by Kavanagh. He said the monument, a ring-shaped disc across from the state Capitol, is meant to be a memorial to those who died that day. He said the monument is meant to be a memorial, not a museum designed to provoke discussion and debate.

The latter, he said, would be like having a section of the library of former President Richard Nixon include a discussion of the Watergate break-ins that eventually led to Nixon's resignation. But he said this should be more like the memorial at Pearl Harbor over the submerged wreckage of the USS Arizona, sunk in the attack by the Japanese on Dec. 7, 1941.

"It doesn't mention that we (later) bombed Hiroshima," Kavanagh said.

One of the phrases HB2700 would have removed reads, "You don't win battles of terrorism with more battles." Kavanagh said many people believe that's an insult to the troops who went to Afghanistan to knock al-Qaida terrorists out of that country. And he said a reference to a 2002 congressional hearing about why the FBI and CIA did not prevent the attacks is "politically charged."

Others, Kavanagh said, reflect poorly on Arizonans, such as "Foreign-born Americans afraid."

But Sen. Albert Hale, R-Window Rock, opposed excising those kinds of phrases.

"We are short-changing our children by giving them only a partial (view) of that day, a partial of what the feeling was and the sentiment was and the emotion was and the state of the people and the nation was on that day," he said.

Hale said he is sensitive to the issue because "it happens all the time" when people refer to events in American Indian history. For example, he said non-native people refer to the "massacre at Little Big Horn," where Gen. George Custer and his unit were killed.

"It wasn't a massacre, in my opinion, because it was a battle that was won by Indians," said Hale, a Navajo. "So, to me, it should be a battle that was lost by Custer and the United States."

Hale said all viewpoints need to be represented to "give the full, true, factual picture of that one day."

Johnson said she agrees there is more than one way for Americans to view the events leading up to the attacks.

"To me, history is still being written on this tragedy, and it is still an ongoing controversy," she said. Johnson said there never would have been a special commission to investigate what happened, including the lapses in intelligence, if the wives and mothers of some of the victims had not "pressed and pressed and pressed to get a commission finally convened."

But Sen. Jake Flake, R-Snowflake, said some of the phrases are "totally un-American." He also said that the memorial, as unveiled in 2006, lacked any context: Anyone who visited the memorial would see only the 54 phrases.

Since that time the commission has agreed to erect panels to explain the events of that day, including the hijacking of four aircraft, with two crashing into and destroying the towers of the World Trade Center and a third hitting the Pentagon; a fourth apparently headed to Washington was brought down in Pennsylvania when passengers overpowered the hijackers.