President Obama Visits Ground Zero for the First Time

I, for one, am very glad that President Obama is finally visiting Ground Zero today. He has laid a wreath to honor the dead and will spend time with the families of the victims of the 911 attack.

The President chose to make his visit today, after the American military found and killed Osama bin Laden.

President Obama did not choose to visit Ground Zero, either during his 2008 campaign or since being elected.  I frankly find it strange that he would have avoided the site for so long. 

Especially being an American from Hawaii, it would seem that Obama could have better understood the importance of Ground Zero. His state, after all, is the site of Pearl Harbor, the only other time that American soil has been touched by enemies. Pearl Harbor is to the World War II generation of Americans what Ground Zero is to ours.        

Is the President aloof to the significance of Ground Zero? Did he not really think it was worth his time until he could use it to make a personal statement? Or is he just simply maladroit, not realizing that Americans hold it in great esteem, finding in it a reason to try to go on, to find the terrorists that did the deed, to come to terms with a new world that they didn’t ask for and do not fully understand?

Lexington, Gettysburg, the Alamo, Pearl Harbor, Ground Zero. They represent for Americans hallowed ground.

I can only hope that having visited Ground Zero, President Obama will have the courage not to use it as a marker for his re-election campaign. It deserves to be above all that.