Each round of throwing good money after bad has been used to justify the next,each wrong decision to claim that it is too late to correct others. Enough.What is built here must above all show the strength of our recovery more than the severity of our wounds,that we do not retreat in the face of terror or repudiate the icons murderers took from us.The Twin Towers had a higher rooftop platform,higher roof,higher occupied floor,and more than any of the planned structures,and were each 4.4 million square feet,as large as any two of the buildings you propose to grant undeserved funding.We must build larger than before,not smaller, bolder than before,not more timidly.We can not claim to show resilience in anything built across a street from where something larger was destroyed.
No plan that builds on a smaller scale than before,and not even on the same block as where the Twin Towers stood,can ever be acceptable.Empty footprints honor those who emptied them,not those they killed in doing so. They encourage future attacks in a way the blood of our soldiers can never undo.And if Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,who ordered the footprints emptied,is tried in this city,no matter what the verdict or the sentence,to settle for these plans is to make him the winner.