The Myth of Bush As The Hero of 9/11
As January 20 grows larger in the window, I've been thinking more often about the Bush legacy -- specifically about certain aspects of the president's record that are in danger of being completely obliterated and replaced with myths and wholesale fiction. Some of this effort is of course the purview of Karl Rove and Karen Hughes and their legacy project, while rough drafts of revisionist Bush history are being contributed by certain establishment media hacks -- desperate to chisel into the record their take on this outgoing president.
For example. Last week on a special episode of Hardball, my favorite insufferable hack, TIME's Mark Halperin, remarked that one of the president's greatest accomplishments was his response to the September 11 terrorist attacks.
I do think he deserves high marks for his public presentations after a rocky start in the first few hours. [...] You can't be sure of it, but I'm confident that he performed there very well. And other presidents may not have performed as well.
Which other presidents? Lincoln after Fort Sumter? Roosevelt after Pearl Harbor? Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis? At least Halperin interrupted his verbal dry-hump to acknowledge (sort-of) that President Bush sat there in a glazed stupor for nine minutes after being told, literally, that America was under attack.
Like many Bush legacy myth-makers, Halperin has no sense of history. Or he does, but he conveniently ignores it. If he were able to peg this historical event into its proper context, Halperin would realize that the president's "rocky start" was the first in a series of disastrous performances. The Indonesian tsunami. The Iraq insurgency. Katrina. The economic meltdown. And on and on. Halperin describes those several hours as if the president's inexcusable behavior was an isolated incident -- an aberration -- a brief hiccup in an otherwise stellar eight years of lightning fast reflexes and unwavering heroism.
The rest of the president's September 11 response, Halperin says, deserved "high marks." Better than other presidents, he told Chris Matthews who somehow maintained a straight face.
Not a chance in hell, Mr. Halperin. President Bush's immediate response to September 11 was mediocre at best, even by the most lenient criteria. This notion that he somehow rose above and beyond the very basic template -- the standard operating procedure for reacting to a crisis is nothing more than a tall tale. A lie, if you will.
The patriotic flag-waving of those days managed to temporarily obscure the reality that his was a paint-by-numbers response. Nothing more. Inevitable roundelays of Lee Greenwood, Chinese-made yellow ribbon magnets and American flag window clings (most of which ended up festooning the medians of America's highways), confused the senses and helped to create the myth that President Bush was a colossus of leadership. The efficacy and accuracy of Mark Halperin's spurious draft of post-9/11 presidential history depends entirely upon the patriotically-skewed memories of those days.
In fact, any human being who occupied the office of the presidency on September 11, 2001 would very likely have handled things the same way. Knowing what we know now about the president's incompetence, it's actually conceivable that a hypothetical Random President X -- Al Gore, for instance -- might've performed even better.
Any random human being would've been hustled to the safety of Air Force One. Any random human being would've delivered a speech to a joint session of Congress. Any random human being might've said, "Coming here makes me sad on the one hand, but it also makes me angry," whilst visiting the destruction at the Pentagon. By the way, President Bush actually said those words at the Pentagon when asked by a reporter to respond to the devastation there. The great and powerful Bush, whose response was apparently more awesome than most, said he was both angry and sad. Brilliant! High marks!
Thinking back to those weeks, I remember a litany of bumper sticker slogans better suited for tourist traps than the Oval Office. Slogans like "smoke the evildoers out of their holes" and "we will not be cowed" and "watch this drive" are among the first that come to mind. Not quite the caliber of sentiment expected of a world leader whose every word, as the elected representative of his people, should have rightfully reflected the memory of those who died on that day.
Ultimately, if we look beyond the generous benefit of the doubt the president received after September 11, it's easy to recall a long line of reactions to September 11 that guided us deeper into darkness and death, rather than into the enlightenment of a new era in world history.
What I recall is a litany of awful, illegal and destructive responses to September 11 on behalf of the president. I'm thinking specifically about White House-sanctioned torture. I'm thinking about extraordinary rendition. I'm thinking about Abu Ghraib and illegal invasions and interminable occupations. I'm thinking about how a CIA agent tasked with tracking loose nukes was outed as part of effort to lie about the justifications for that invasion and occupation. I'm thinking about 35,000 American military casualties. I'm thinking about post traumatic stress disorder. I'm thinking about a system that allowed many September 11 heroes to die of respiratory-related illnesses. I'm thinking about illegal and unconstitutional searches and seizures. I'm thinking about the USA PATRIOT Act, the Military Commission Act and the "terrorist surveillance program." I'm thinking about known-knowns, "bring 'em on" and "watch what you say" warnings. I'm thinking about orange alerts, duct tape, bottled-liquids bans, cable news animations of exploding airplanes and national waves of hysteria tweaked by well-orchestrated fear-mongering campaigns. I'm thinking about the tens of thousands of terrorist attacks -- some of them on American soil, most of them against American interests and all having occurred despite the lie that the Bush administration has "kept us safe." To that point, I'm thinking about decades of future blowback which historians and foreign policy experts might attribute directly to President Bush's reaction to September 11.
Instead of compassion, reason, rationality and inspiration tempered with humility -- traits evident in the crisis-handling of other presidents -- we can easily recall self-indulgence, dangerous pride and indignity; sloganeering and exploitation in lieu of positive words and deeds -- words and deeds which so many of President Bush's predecessors have managed to summon under similar duress.
So in the face of a well-funded and high profile revisionist crusade, one of the most important tasks of our generation will be to preserve the real legacy -- the legitimate history -- of the Bush administration, and especially the sheer mediocrity of President Bush's immediate response, and utterly destructive long term reaction to September 11.
The motivation for rising to this challenge need only be found in the thought of our posterity learning the history of those days and the broader history of this decade as written by Mark Halperin and Karl Rove.
Order my book: One Nation Under Fear, with a foreword by Arianna Huffington. Also available in stores.
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Bush's stupidity, monumental as it is - and monumental is an understatement, is only the tip of the iceberg of corruption, dishonesty, and utter disregard for the American Constitution and the American people (at least, the poor American people and American people of colour) that is waiting to be documented in all its arrogant complacency.
What I don't understand is why Bush was pretty much out of the loop that day, while Cheney was running the government's response to the attacks. Does anyone really believe that Bush was doing anything more than signing off on Cheney's directives?
bush's famous clip saying "well, i can hear you!" was actually a childish response to dissatisfied new yorker yelling, "i/we cant hear you!" rudy made bush look better. rudy, not my favorite mayor, forced to stroll the streets and check his ego because he foolishly located his disaster hq in the world trade center, was a better improvisational leader and doer than bush.
Fabulous article. And I love the passionate voice.
Appointment of a truly independant Prosecuter to finally invesetigate the valid evidence still available that is related to what happened, and who really did it, I am certain would show what llush and his Administration really accomplished. It appears that the 9-11 commission and NIST purposely avoided all that would have lead to the fact that the Bush Admin, the Defense Department and other intel agencies of our own government were involved in both the lead up plnning as well as the cover-up.
Bob, your book and columns offer a glass brilliantly half full. Lift that statist shunt from your neo-cortex and you will outshine the sun!
I'm just glad he is gone. The people with their eyes open that dont drink the koolaid know the real truth of what went on over the last 8 years. Instead of inspiring fear like bush did Obama will inspire people to help things get better. http://insidetherockposterframe.blogspot.com/
Does anybody really think Iran would commit suicide by overtly or covertly attacking Israel?
I mean if I have an arsenal of m4, ak47 and mp5's I am not too worried if my neighbor buys a .22
In the end the response of the Bush Administration (Cheney&Co?) has in fact made us infinitely less safe on so many levels. Jihad could not have been handed a more effective recruiting tool. It's as if we had sent them a Panamax brimming with Steroids. Our economy has not been helped by the current and future cost of the Iraq Fiasco. Our Army/Marines are taxed to the point that we would be in serious problems if they had to respond to another crisis.
What happens when in responding to an evil doer you become what you despise?
I close with what must be my favorite quote on the subject of responsible leadership...
'In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations' from the Great Law of The Iroquois Confederacy
Next Time Immediate Gratification and the Economic Crisis : )
He kept us safe? 911 was a total fluke. Both a strike of genius and an unfortunate Snake Eyes roll for our enemies. Had our intelligence community been more interested in serving the American People rather than being concerned about who would get to put a "Feather in their Cap" , it could have been prevented. In my view we are victims of the egos of those in charge of the CIA and the FBI. The money that is allocated to those agencies is insane.
On the other hand, what happened after 911 is another thing altogether. Do I need to repeat the details on why we had not business occupying Iraq? Uff! Thank You
OK...
Homeland Security was a great idea because as callous and arrogant as our foreign policy is, never mind the lame efforts by our Secretary of State to pursue much progress to capitalize on the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, someone was going to let us know that bigger and meaner empires have fallen. Ooops! does saying the truth make me a liberal leftist commie? Oh well!
Our invasion of Iraq, our disrespect for Iran and their inalienable right to develop nuclear power and even weapons with nuclear capability. (It cracks me up that the same people that defend with their life the 2nd Amendment don't believe that a whole country should not have the same right.)
cont...
911 was not a total fluke and bin laden was never charged with committing it or even planning it. Why? No evidence that he did. Curious that within 24 hours they show pictures of the 19 people who hijacked the planes, yet somehow 6 of them were still alive and probably are still today. Miracles survivors I guess. "Survivors", that'd be a great name for a fantasy show wouldn't it?
Homeland Security was a 'very' bad idea from concept to implementation. You do not make yourself secure from without by spying on those within. Hasn't history taught us anything? We ranted and railed about the evil countries USSR, China, N. Korea etc who all spied on their own citizens and how despicable that is.
this isn't the first terrorist attack on the world trade center. i remember more republican outrage over clinton's dalliances (the public wasn't so outraged) than terrorist attacks and threats already sent.
I also fail to understand why Shrub-backers insist on giving him credit for the US not having been attacked since 9-11. Without evidence that Bush's efforts actually thwarted any plans for an iminent attack, how can he claim this? Along this line of reasoning, we didn't have any attacks on the US for all the years between Pearl Harbor and 9-11 and the Presidents in office during those years between didn't pat their own backs and say "there has not been another bombing of the U.S and I am taking credit for keeping our country safe." The arrogance of this administration is finally leaving the White House. Thank goodness...
You know?
I wonder what will happen,, when the Bubble of “Yes Men” are removed from around GW Bush?
Not Secret Service security. I want GW as secure as a babe in arms.
Call me foolish, but I still think there is a heart inside this man. I just do.
Will he ever see the damage he has done?
All the best
Knute
He, dobson and so many others are blinded by their faith to ever see the damage they do.
Yes,, Mikeeee.
What you say could very well be true. Not BLIND faith,,, but a faith that blinds.
Maybe.
All the best
Knute
Growing up I listened to my parents complain that "Ike" (then president Eisenhower) did little more than golf and hold ceremonial events like pardon turkeys. As the world became a vastly more complicated place we all marveled at technologies such as surgical strike weaponry that could be viewed on screen somewhat like a ghastly video game eyed from a remote and secure location. It seems that in his lifetime G. W. Bush has developed the idea that is all there is to being a world leader.
Could it be that W was born under the 13th constellation ophiuchus? (How is that pronounced? - Oh-fu-cus or Oh-f**k us? - no matter.) Could it also be that predictions of future doom during the 21st century is the destruction of the Great American Dream that seers had in mind. As our economy and world standing explodes into a nightmare under Bush’s’s failed presidency this turkey stands before us expecting a pardon in the eyes of history?
Okay, okay astrologist will argue that W’s birthday is July 6 - a Cancer, while ophiuchus lies between Scorpio and Sagittarius . . . but you get my point.
You may also hear the VP say that no one saw 9-11 coming, just like all the other unanticipated blowbacks to administration policy. scan this: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2002/02/11/020211fa_fact_stewart
It was in reality anticipated by many people. Even the concept of using an airplane to attack.
There were people who acted with no regard to self preservation that day and in the aftermath in the rubble. Many of them are no longer with us. Remember them respectfully.
Do not forget when he was asked what we as a nation could do he told us all to go shopping!
to pay taxes that they'll use to go shopping for furnishings of the new war culture.
Bush was left purposefully out of the loop on 9/11. They told him to stay in the classroom, reading, until the deed was done. Then he would have what might be considered airtight deniability. He did, as usual, what he was told.
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