The 9/11 Memorial is sad. It is solemn. It is beautiful, perhaps in the way that dark clouds on a stormy day are beautiful. It is brilliantly conceived. And looming above it, still under construction, rises the skyscraper that will replace the Twin Towers as the tallest building in our half of the world.

When I first heard that a Memorial was being erected to commemorate the people murdered by Islamic terrorists at the World Trade Center, I was not pleased. Nor was I a fan of leaving the “footprints” of the Twin Towers undeveloped out of respect for those who had been killed.

To my (closed) mind, the proposed memorial would be akin to not rebuilding Europe after World War II because everywhere a soldier or a civilian died was considered sacred ground. One does not construct a shopping mall, an apartment complex, or a single-family home over a graveyard.

Given that way of thinking, most of Europe would be a cemetery.

I had no complaints about honoring the dead. Heroes should be honored. Victims should be treated with respect. I just believed that they were being honored out of proportion to the nature of the crime.

I was wrong.