James Carroll of the Boston Globe writes one of the most muddleheaded and odious columns in recent memory:

It was George W. Bush who transformed Ground Zero from a site toward which the world looked with empathy for American pain into a hypernationalistic symbol of a singularly American victimhood. Sept. 11, 2001, became our wound alone, and New York's ravaged precinct became a restricted preserve, as global sympathy for the United States curdled into fear of it.

What if, instead of shunting Ahmadinejad aside as one unworthy to enter the sanctuary of our national trauma, we Americans had said, "Yes - stand here with us. Look at what threatens the universal future if we do not find other ways to relate to each other than with contempt. Relive that horrible September morning with us, when the rank evil of terrorism showed itself with such clarity that the human family, decidedly including the Iranian nation, stood together against it. Let solidarity be the meaning of this place."

If Americans, across the political divide, are still too traumatized by what Ground Zero memorializes to contemplate such a stance, it is because Osama bin Laden's crime remains unadjudicated. Bin Laden still at large, releasing videos, inspiring legions, is the living emblem of American paralysis.

Here is George Bush's most grievous failure: Instead of enabling his nation to reckon with the blow of Sept. 11, and move on from it, he has worsened that anguish immeasurably. Yes, Ground Zero is a holy place, but Bush is the one who desecrates it.

Yes, by all means, let's stand in a pit where three thousand of our citizens died at the hands of terrorists and hold hands with a man who is president of a country that is not only the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world but is also actively working to kill American soldiers in Iraq and wants to wipe Israel of the face of the earth. And together we can sing kumbaya and bemoan President Bush for disrupting the "human family." What a fabulous idea.

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