Commemoration and ... Manipulation?

The new 9/11 museum opened last week, but many controversial issues still riddle the memorial.
One of the main issues is the museum will charge $24 entry fee to what is basically a graveyard. Thousands of unidentified human remains will be inside the building causing an uproar among victims' families. Some of these issues both recent and ongoing include:

"[1] Whether the exhibit, by displaying the hijackers' photographs and names, glorifies them and insults their victims' memories. The museum compromised by using small head shots marked as FBI evidence.

[2] Whether a brief explanatory film narrated by NBC's Brian Williams about the 9/11 conspiracy unfairly links al-Qaeda terrorism with Islam. An imam who sat on an interfaith clergy museum advisory committee resigned in protest, but the museum stuck by the film.

[3] Whether the presence in the museum of the "Ground Zero Cross,'' a cross section of steel I-beams found in the rubble that inspired many recovery workers, constitutes an endorsement of Christianity by a public institution. An atheist group has appealed a lower court ruling that there was no church-state problem."

I believe these three issues center around the problem faced in the aftermath of World War II, with the U.S. creating it's own narrative about the event and the events that surrounded the dropping of the atomic bombs. Additionally, the act of creating a museum presumes the creation of some type of single narrative; in the case of 9/11 there is usually little mentioned within the general public of the history involving US presence in the middle East pre-dating the tragedy. In regards to the video of concern,  the implications of further propagating the link between a quarter of the world's religion and terrorism could continue to yield devastating effects of racism. 

The three issues raised in the article brought to mind points made in the Hein/Seldon article, Living With the Bomb, where the authors address how the U.S. created a completely new narrative to deal with the before/after of the A-bomb on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. The US justified dropping the bomb on Japan and not it's white counterpart, Germany, by using Pearl Harbor as a main premise. In doing so the U.S. created an "official narrative [that] erase[d] all the small and large American acts of revenge that went before" (Hein/Seldon). This mirrors issues surrounding 9/11 as well.

While I have not seen or heard much about the film airing in the museum other than what is stated in the article, many Muslim groups are protesting in lieu of it's content. The danger of this film echoes again in the Hein/Seldon article that states:

"The creation of official stories always involves processes of suppression of some stories and elevation of others. Outright censorship insistence on lies, misrepresentation of others, refusal to listen, and defining a single representative national experience while despairing other experiences as marginal or deviant are all acts of silencing."

I found it very interesting that "visual censorship in both Japan and the United States [had] denied access to the most powerful images of human suffering inflicted by the war, including the bomb" (Hein/Seldon), but now with the roles switched, America was the victim of another nation's aggressions, this memorial is characterized by the face and name of each individual victim from he attack. While, "the B-29 Enola Gay fuselage was displayed nearly alone with virtually no explanation of the event,"  This museum features shoes, jackets, chairs, and myriads of other personalized items within the exhibit as well as recorded audio of voices of victims talking to their families moments before death. This is the most intimate recreation and remembrance one could possibly imaging evoking strong emotional responses and empathy. In contrast to the remembrance of the H/N victims in Japan and the United States (the stadium gathering of the bomb dropping), as well as "when [personal] artifacts and photos were barred from view at the Air and space Museum in 1995" that blocked potential for remembrance centered around "human empathy" and manipulated the narrative of the bomb; "In the United States, this etiquette required depersonalizing the victims (the view from the mushroom cloud rather than from the streets of the cities in flames)."

The Museum Director Alice Greenwald said the museum is "about understanding our shared humanity," while former mayor Michael Bloomberg called it a reminder "that freedom is not free." 

My questions for the class: Are there any hypocrisies laced in the museum and these statements, or can/should we take the museum for what it's basic intentions are/should be: to commemorate innocent victims in a horrific tragedy and honor there legacy? Is there discussion to be had in comparing this to the H/N memorial commemoration in the USA and Japan? How/Is the 9/11 narrative manipulated (history omitted?) now that we were "technically" not the aggressor but the victim of another country's aggression?

Link: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/14/911-memorial-museum-opening-concerns-interfaith-islam