Who kept us safe?
Someone needed to say it.
Peggy Noonan So Happy George W. Bush Prevented 9/11
As Wonkette puts it (always with eloquence and class):
"Every day is Good Friday in the Wall Street Journal, because Friday is Peggy’s Day, and this week her wonderful Declaration is right there in the headline, “At Least Bush Kept Us Safe.” Wait, what? Let’s just ask the old Internets here and double-check, because it is so hard to remember, say, when TERRORISTS BLEW UP MOTHERFUCKING MANHATTAN, WITH JETS, WHICH RUINED EVERYTHING FOREVER.
Umm, yep, Google says September 11, 2001. Who was president then, anyway? Right, right, Al Gore. That fat faggot, he killed 3,000 innocent Americans who weren’t even in the military, and then he started a war with the wrong place, and luckily he was indicted for War Crimes and then executed on teevee — along with Lieberman, which was extra-awesome — and the Supreme Court appointed George Bush Junior to be president because he actually won Florida, it was finally determined, and Bush kept us safe!...
George Bush Junior will be remembered for many things, for a very long time. But the witless clown who jacked off at his pretend ranch in Crawford while freaked-out FBI agents were frantically begging for White House help in stopping an organized plot unveiling itself within the United States for foreign hijackers to crash passenger jets into high-profile American buildings will certainly the fuck not be remembered by anyone as the guy who 'kept us safe.'
About time someone said it.
Don't mean to burst conservative pretensions but, for all the bluster about testing Presidents terrorists think are weak, nothing even in the ballpark of 9/11 happened on the watches of any previous American President, unless you count the War of 1812. And even then, only 2260 Americans died in action.
If terrorists attack when Presidents are weak, the current President has a lot of explaining to do.
The echo-chamber gets thick in every circle. But this particular theme has been uniquely disingenuous.
Thank God Al Queda didn't attack again. But I'm not 100% sure that George W. had anything to do with it, at all. I'm open to argument. But I'm not open to blatant bullshit. And this one has the stink of the latter.
The Administration deserves thanks for its efforts. But it doesn't deserve credit where credit is not due. And keeping us safe from 9/11 is not something the Bush Administration can claim, because 9/11 happened while he was President, if anyone took notice.
Back to the drawing board, folks. Surely there are better reasons to celebrate this President than ones that aren't true.
2 comments:
I wouldn't have expressed it quite like you just did (which is what makes you so interesting), but I can't really argue with you on this one.
Yes, President Bush kept us safe, after the biggest terrorist attack in our nation's history. And unleashing TSA upon us goes in the negative column as far as I'm concerned.
This reminds me of the Clintonistas bragging about how they foiled the millennium terrorists. Well, the were able to do it because they knew the time-period of the planned attack, had an attacker profile, and knew they would be coming from Canada. Good on them, but knowing who, what, where, and when gets you not just in the ballpark, but in the middle of the field with a microphone, singing the National Anthem.
Yeah, I give Presidents' Bush and Clinton credit for doing their best to prevent attacks, foutsc. I think President Bush is in good faith.
What I'm trying to challenge, here, is the notion that swagger with our overwhelming military strength somehow keeps us safe. When the President most enamoured with that idea, of late, is the one on whose watch the most serious attack on American soil - outside of the Revolutionary War, before American Presidents - occurred.
It's kind of a nonsense claim as an empirical matter. And it's one of those places where propaganda overwhelms more honest reflection.
Bush and Clinton are both decent men who tried to keep America safe. As were Bush, Reagan, and Carter before them. I would include all American Presidents in the 20th century, including Nixon, no matter how much so many Americans revile him.
But as a matter of policy, pressuring and leveraging with overwhelming military (and political and economic) power is counterproductive, generally.
That fact just challenges assumptions we have about the world and a lot of people can't handle facts that challenge their original thinking.
And that is the problem with policy debates and discussions, generally, today. That is what we need to change.
Self-righteousness is no substitute for more rigorous thinking.
And reality doesn't give two shits about whether you understand it or not. It just is.
If we want fewer Americans and people, generally, to die, we have got to learn that lesson.
If there is one central premise of my work, that is is.
I better get to bed, here, man.
Talk soon.
Ben
Post a Comment