All Americans should be concerned about the insidious and despicable bile that has emerged from Rosie O’Donnell over the past two weeks and should work to remove her from the airwaves. Over the course of her time on ABC’s hit morning show “The View,” O’Donnell has managed to ignite the flames of controversy from her spat with Donald Trump to her allegations of racism and “weightism” against “American Idol.” But it is not these views that are troubling if you are an American who is concerned about the effect of pop-culture on our society. It is her most recent comments regarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the attacks on Sept. 11 that should disturb you, if not move you to action.
Let’s pause for a moment and remember several key facts about that day and Mohammed’s involvement. Two airplanes crashed into the World Trade Center, with the amount of fuel that would have given them the ability to get to Los Angeles, their intended destination. That’s a lot of fuel. So much fuel, in fact, that it ignited massive fires, enough to cause severe structural damage to the buildings. But don’t take my word for it. Just listen to Osama bin Laden, who said in a December 2001 audiotape, “We calculated that the floors that would be hit would be three or four floors. I was the most optimistic of them all. Due to my experience in this field, I was thinking that the fire from the gas in the plane would melt the iron structure of the building and collapse the area where the plane hit and all the floors above it only. This is all that we had hoped for.”
Mohammed was arrested in 2003 in Pakistan on suspicion of his involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks, his known role as a senior leader in al-Qaida and his connection to other terrorists such as his nephew Ramzi Yousef, who has been convicted of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. According to the 9/11 Commission, Mohammed was the “principal architect of the Sept. 11 attacks.” Mohammed has confessed to this, among many other things such as the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 2002 Bali nightclub bombing and the 2001 murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. All told, he is responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans.
All of these facts don’t seem to phase O’Donnell, however. She questioned the authenticity of Mohammed’s confession because she claims it was induced through means of torture. Perhaps he was tortured — he claims he was. But he also claims he is telling the truth, and we also have a lot of evidence to support his claims and the claims of many others who verify that evidence. To Rosie O’Donnell none of this matters — it is worth more to her to attack the United States government, the CIA and members of the U.S. military as torturers and liars, rather than to bring justice to a self-described enemy of the people of this country. Makes you wonder on whose side she wants to be.
While O’Donnell’s outlandish comments about Mohammed should make your blood boil, the even more recent postings on her blog about what actually happened on Sept. 11 should break the straw on the camel’s back. She has joined the ranks of the conspiracy who actually believe the World Trade Center was deliberately blown up by the government or something like that. She doesn’t really know, of course, but it sure looks suspicious! Why would they want to do this? To cover up corporate scandals that were being investigated in those buildings, of course!
The absurdity of the argument behind the conspiracy doesn’t make much sense; the corporate scandals were far and wide beyond New York City and the World Trade Center. Of course, the actual dynamics of the conspiracy theory don’t hold much water either. As multiple governmental agencies and independent engineers who have studied the tragic events that happened at the World Trade Center have concluded, the reason for the collapse is as we all suspect: fires caused the building to collapse top-down. But O’Donnell won’t let fact get in the way of her conspiracy theory — apparently, attacking the government is more important. This woman actually believes that the government hired 19 Muslim men to hijack airplanes and fly them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania just to cover up chief executives and chief financial officers who were potentially dipping their hands into the cookie jar! What’s next, a claim that we started the Iraq War to divert attention from the Martha Stewart case?
Enough is enough. The fact that millions of people watch her show and actually listen to her and possibly believe what she says is alarming to me. As an American, a patriot and someone who believes truth rather than lunacy should rule the day, I believe we have an obligation to stand against such influences on our society. This is not just a case of a person at whom we should laugh or ignore. Her attacks on America and decency itself have crossed a line no person on a major national television channel should cross. ABC and Barbara Walters need to fire Rosie O’Donnell.
Michael Wilt is a senior in the College of Arts and Science.
