Of stones and bones

The relentless analyses of academics, especially International Relations experts notwithstanding, the desire to destroy the Twin Towers and other U.S. buildings of iconic stature, on September 11, 2001, was motivated, not by the terrorists' envy of Western "freedom", but by religious mis-beliefs.

So claims Adam Gopnik in his meditations on the 9/11 Memorial and Museum.

Gopnik sees enough evidence in the fliers and tapes made by Al Qaeda on display in the museum to support his claim.

Repeatedly the perpetrators are drawn, like moths to the flame (and like night to the morrow), to the prospect of going directly to heaven and a bevvy of virgins, once they accomplish the task of killing the American Harams. 

I kind of veer in the direction of Gopnik because sometimes it's easier to put a closure on events when the buck stops at a party with clear-cut motives that are graspable. Very often International Relations experts and historians tend to see events in a holistic light, and perpetrators of these events as victims or passive tools of a larger machinery of "history", rather than as agents of something immediate, like a benighted belief system which they actively espouse. 

It's alright to trace the roots of 9/11 and other modern political events of immense magnitude, back to colonialism, but the historicization can be frustrating and endless.

Gopnik thinks the word "freedom" in "freedom tower" is a misnomer; if the original towers were not victims of envy but of religious bigotry carried out to an extremity, then what should be an appropriate name for the new towers? Perhaps "Stones and Bones" is a good choice?