At 8:45 am on September 11th, 2001, a hijacked airline slammed into the first of the World Trade Center towers. 18 minutes later, a second airline crashed into the second tower, and changed the course of American history forever. Now, 10 years later, Wayne Bell and his publishing company, Really Big Coloring Books are releasing a coloring book that Bell claims is an “educational tool” for children depicting the events of that tragic day.
The book, entitled “We Shall Never Forget 9/11: The Kids’ Book of Freedom,” gives young people the opportunity to relive the event through cartoonish drawings of the towers burning. Among other scenes are family members mourning their deceased loved ones and, most disturbing of all, the final picture in which a Navy SEAL is firing a bullet at Osama bin Laden as he attempts to shield himself behind a niqab-clad woman.
Accompanying the disturbing pictures, a narrative explains the events and why they happened. On the final page, next to bin Laden being shot in the face, text reads, “Children, the truth is, these terrorist acts were done by freedom-hating radical Islamic Muslim extremists. These crazy people hate the American way of life because we are FREE and our society is FREE.”
The book has sparked outrage in the Muslim American community and with many parents, who find the drawings and narrative offensive and graphic. Bell has stuck by his creation stating that “This is about 19 terrorist hijackers that came over here under the leadership of a devil worshipper, Osama bin Laden, to murder our people.”
I am a veteran of the Iraq war. I joined the Army as an infantryman fresh out of high school in 2004 and was deployed to Iraq two times, totaling 27 months.
Not many people feel as strongly as I do about the need for our future generations to remember what happened on 9/11. But what Wayne Bell has created is both perverse and disgusting, and is nothing more than another attempt to exploit a terrible moment in our country’s history.
Our children need to learn about what happened in September 2001, but not like this. A book with caricature-like scenes of 9/11 places the tragedy on the same level as zoo animals and dinosaurs. Depicting scenes that children can doodle whatever way they choose is not how they should learn about an event that killed more Americans than the attack on Pearl Harbor.
The events of 9/11 should be taught in a serious setting to children who are old enough to fully grasp how horrible that day was. Kids aged four to nine are not mentally developed enough to appreciate the reality of what happened to nearly 3,000 people on that day, and a coloring book is not a medium that will convey the significance of 9/11 to its readers.
Try to remember yourself at that age. I remember playing soldier with my friends, having toy gun battles during which I died and reincarnated hundreds of times. The reality of death, warfare, terrorism and tragedy is a terrible facet of humanity that a young child cannot fully comprehend. This book will not educate children on anything more than coloring between the lines.
While the entire book is inappropriate, the final drawing of a Navy SEAL preparing to fire a controlled pair of rounds into bin Laden is the most unsettling. Playing army with friends is much different than showing pictures of a real military operation that ended in bloodshed.
As a veteran with multiple combat deployments, President Obama’s decision to not release the photographs of bin Laden’s corpse was upsetting to me. No one wanted to see bin Laden after a four-star SEAL makeover more than I. While I was not happy with the decision to keep the photos classified, I can understand why the President chose to do so.
The United States is the most advanced country in the world and we are above showing our enemies as trophy kills, on display for all to see. With that being said, why Wayne Bell would find it appropriate for children aged 10 and under to see bin Laden moments before bullets penetrated his flesh is lost to me.
This picture is not something that I would want my children to look at no matter who was on the receiving end of the bullets. It is completely unsuitable for young eyes to observe, and the ambiguity of the picture makes it worse.
Osama bin Laden is hiding behind a woman while a SEAL takes aim, but neither bin Laden or his wife are shown dead, leaving much up to the imagination. For all Bell knows, the children could see this and think bin Laden was killed, his wife, or both. The outcome of the final picture is left up to individual interpretation, which leaves much room for error.
I completely advocate the idea that 9/11 needs to be remembered by all of the United States as the worst attack on non-combatants in our history.
However, I cannot support Wayne Bell and his publishing company’s idea that the WTC attacks should be made into a fun-time activity that children can scribble on and color like a rainbow if they so choose. I am challenging you, Mr. Bell; if you want children to really learn about 9/11 and the subsequent raid on bin Laden’s villa in Pakistan, write a REAL book about those events.
A book that can be used in schools to teach children of an appropriate age about what really happened on that day ten years ago, not some cheap cartoon coloring book that uses language offensive to Muslim-Americans and depicts one of our country’s largest tragedies as nothing more than an aid to fine-tune children’s motor skills.
David Adams can be reached at dadams@spartans.ut.edu.
Muslims AND Americans? So Muslims are separate from Americans? There aren’t Muslims who are American?
Americas youth needs to be taught of what happened one way or another. Would you rather stick them infront of the tv and watch recordings of it. I think that may be disturbing, but a coloring book… Come on. There’s no blood or anything that crazy. There’s more violence on Disney cartoons. If we fail to learn from the past, it will repeat itself. There should be no covering up of any information what so ever the the children that weren’t alive on 9/11. I refuse to have people argue years down the road that 9/11 didn’t happen just as some morons argue the holocaust didn’t happen. The world is a violent and harsh place. Don’t shelterthe your as you might have been raised.
You must teach your children to be bigots when they are young, lest they grow up and think for themselves!
Umm, not sure I agree with everything John wrote, but there is some issues there. Anyways, this is certainly disturbing, but unfortunately legal. We have certain rights in this country, and I think this is covered pretty easily by the First Amendment. I don’t agree with what the book portrays, but I don’t think there is much that can be done outside of a boycott.
I, too, am a veteran. I served in the US Marine Corps and deployed as an infantryman a total of 2 years to Iraq between Jan. ’03 and Dec. ’05. This was the worst of times in Iraq, and I can’t remember too many war crimes happening, John. When were you there?
The fact of the matter is that no matter how much we dislike the book, or other things like it, we have to remember that we served under oath to protect the Constitution and rights of the American citizens. Like it or not, that oath covered even those events which we may not like, or even despise.
That being said, I am disgusted by the book. The author is obviously trying to exploit what happened for monetary gain. To each his own, it all comes out in the wash. Karma’s a b*$@#
American, U.S. veteran, citizen, or whatever, if you live in the U.S. and you do not understand how heinous and act it is to publish such filth and market it for children, you have no idea what the U.S. ultimately has stood for or represents as a nation, a people, and a global citizen!
Let’s go back in the time machine shall we, and take a look at Nazi Germany of World War II, and revisit the Nazi propaganda films of the 1930s & 40s, and the images of Hitler dancing on the ovens as Jews burned alive beneath his boots, as the smoke rose from the stacks!
Now, imagine some German came out with children’s coloring books showing Hitler and mass graves, images of piled corpses, and mounds of clothing, or piles of gold teeth, dentures, and fillings that were pulled from POW mouths, or the piles of eye glasses, and piles of shoes…. What do you think would have happened to the German at Nuremberg or in Geneva? Would he be guilty of war crimes, … war profiteering, or violating the dignity and privacy of prisoners of war?
And, I agree that President Obama did the right thing in honoring the Geneva Conventions; Art. 130. “The detaining authorities shall ensure that internees who die while interned are honourably buried, if possible according to the rites of the religion to which they belonged and that their graves are respected, properly maintained, and marked in such a way that they can always be recognized.” Not because, I felt it was right or wrong, but because it was the rule of law, it was his duty, and it was his responsibility as President of the United States to honor it, execute it, and enforce it, regardless of the U.S’s departure from the ICI, the U.S.’s national interests remain and dictate, honoring the rule of law!
The point being that the fundamental reason that the U.S. gained the world’s respect and gained economic super power status, after WWII is because the U.S. was a signatory of the Geneva Conventions, and garnered the reputation as a nation that honored the rule of law as a global partner. And, as Europe and Germany rebuilt, war criminals were sought out all over the globe and brought to trial for their crimes, with the help of U.S!
Sadly, in 2005 the Bush Administration withdrew the U.S. from the International Criminal Courts, the only industrialized nation to do so! The U.S. today is a rogue state, and harboring war criminals, and due to the U.S. withdrawal from the ICI, the U.S. has for all intents and purposes made it virtually impossible to prosecute American war criminals.
So, the U.S. today, finds itself in the same place as post WWII Germany, a nation that was scarred by the acts of it’s war crimes and suffered economically and politically from a damaged national reputation for decades after, even though it stepped up it’s efforts to go after war criminals, it took years for Germany to be regarded in high esteem again and for other countries to want to do business with it!
So, will the U.S. have the political courage to step up to the plate, and rejoin the global community and honor the rule of law, as post WWII Germany managed to do successfully? That remains to be seem, but I am hopeful enough Americans have learned something from history and will not stand so easily for the U.S. repeating in it’s mistakes!
It is not a matter of opinion that the U.S. honor it’s commitments to international law and the treaties it has signed and helped to enforce for most of it’s 235 year history, it is it’s national and international duty as a law abiding nation, and it is required for the U.S. to maintain, “now reclaim”, the “post WWII” and “post Cold War” prestige it has enjoyed for over 6o years as a model of democracy for the world! It is our burden and honor as a nation and it is vital to our nations’ global political and economic reputation and interest, to be a good global neighbor!
The publishing of this coloring book should be regarded as a matter of national security and banned whether the U.S. is at war or not! And, the U.S. is still at war! I believe the coloring book, can also be labeled war propaganda, because it is being targeted at children, and young impressionable minds!
It should be removed from the shelves as it incites hatred toward the U.S.! And, I believe in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions, Art. 3, 1(c) “Outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment.” Not to mention Art. 13, ” … prisoners of war must at all times be protected, particularly against acts of violence or intimidation and against insults and public curiosity.”
Not to mention, that you would market such as coloring book to children and teenagers, who are not mature enough or educated enough to know, that it is inappropriate, promotes violence, and incites racial and ethnic tensions around the globe, and shows a lack of respect the dignity of all human life!
For the U.S., once seen as a leading democratic, industrialized, civilized nation to be seen allowing a citizen to exploit, at a time of war, the capture of a wanted man under such dramatic circumstances, for profit, just doesn’t quite measure up, to the reputation the U.S. has garnered! And, it does not educate, it does not enlighten, and it does not promote a healthy dialogue or cultural growth. It is glorifying, vilifying, and propagandizing, and it is an affront to the notion that Americans value to sanctity of life or respect for the dead! And, it is an insult to us all, as a culture and a nation!
Every law abiding citizen around the globe was angry, outraged, and upset on September 11th, 2001, but when they looked upon the U.S. for leadership, and rallied around the U.S. to go after it’s attackers, non of them ever imagined the U.S. would commit war crimes to do it! Or, to exploit, the capture and taking out of Osama Bin Laden, for profit and propoganda. The world expected much more from us than that! And, we let the world down!
So, where do we go from here? Well, to paraphrase a line from Paul Newman’s character “Fast Eddy Felson” in The Color of Money, I would say; “We’re even, but it ain’t settled! It is time for us to clean up our act, once and for all!”