Justice To President Bush

I came of age in the Midwest, but I have spent much of my adult life on the East Coast, residing in a very blue state.  So as a general Bush supporter over the last eight years (though by no means an enthusiastic one) I am often in the presence of those whose views of politics are, to put it nicely, not exactly in line with mine.  Out of politeness I try to hold my tongue, although it is not easy for me.  But every now and then a statement comes across my transom that seems so banal on its surface, yet is so revealing to me nonetheless, that I am compelled to comment.
 
Case in point: my wife and I were at a function recently when talk turned to the new President.  Momentarily forgetting what a rabid Obama supporter one of my colleagues had been during the campaign, (he still wears his Obama ’08 button on his jacket!) my wife innocently stated: “I hope Obama can do a good job.  He’s got a tough road ahead.”  My friend predictably snorted: “Well he can’t do any worse than Bush that’s for sure!”
 
I thought about that for a second and then responded: “Sure he can.  Manhattan can turn into a smoldering hole on his watch.”  
 
The seemingly collective amnesia the left has regarding 9/11 never ceases to astound me…especially considering it happened literally right before our very eyes here.  Every day I look from my office window, across the Hudson River, to the lower Manhattan skyline and I tell you that to this day, over seven years after their destruction, I still yearn for the Twin Towers. It is a sinking feeling in my gut.  In my mind’s eye I still see them and they dwell in my memory in a manner not unlike what amputees refer to as “phantom pains.”  
 
I, in fact, used to work in those Twin Towers. It was a simple twist of fate that caused me to find employment elsewhere years before they were destroyed.

Fortunately my brother-in-law, an FDNY lieutenant, was spared as his ladder co. never made it into the towers before they collapsed but 343 of his fellow firefighters were not so fortunate.  My business partner lost his best friend.  Another business associate both of his brothers.  Yet another friend his new bride.  My own town lost eight people that day.  The nation over 3,000.  9/11 is still very real to me.  But I am starting to wonder if I am in the minority now.  
 
If one thing concerns me about the future, it is the threat of renewed terrorism in the USA.  The economy, though struggling, will rebound in time.  Other issues, education reform, health care, fiscal irresponsibility all matter of course.  But as problems they will pale next to a major terrorist event hitting an American city.  Yet in the seven years since 9/11, the much maligned George Bush, kept this nation free from this most dangerous threat.  
 
Say anything else about the man you want (and I too have my issues with him).  That he was a big spender in conservative guise (he was), that he was inarticulate (don’t misunderestimate the man), that he made mistakes in the conduct of the war, even a major one like pushing a bogus WMD as cassis belli (he did).  But not one American has been killed by a terrorist on this country’s soil since that day.  I know that is not mere luck, but the result of a diligent, deliberate, and never-wavering assault on terrorists where they live and breathe.   A friend of mine who is a soldier in Iraq told me that one of the reasons the surge is working is that, “they let us take the gloves off.  That’s all I can say.”  That is the kind of ruthless mindset needed.  These Muslim fanatics cannot be bargained with, they cannot be reasoned with, and their goal, their soul aim is to kill us… that is their end, not a means to some other political end. 
 
Liberals are very fond of the notion that the war on terror (yes it is a war regardless of the euphemisms sanctioned these days) is a unilateral one.  That we have the power to stop it (the peace sign in the “O” of many Obama stickers is visual confirmation of this mindset).  That we need only sit across some imaginary table with these zealots and find out “what they want from us.”  Okay, but what if the only thing they want from us is our destruction?  Liberals refuse to even entertain this possibility, for the arrogant reason that they themselves do not think this way, therefore neither can anyone else in their right mind.  The key phrase here, of course, is “in their right mind.”  And that is why the left is a serious danger to themselves and this country.  To defeat an enemy, you must first be able to think like them.  The left, as evidenced by their intolerance of any opinions outside their own, is incapable of even comprehending a differing world view. 
 
George Bush, whatever his faults, understood our enemies. I see no evidence yet that Mr. Obama does.  And I fear we will pay a heavy price for his naïveté.  
 
Neither does it bode well for us that we are a nation distracted today. We now bicker over lesser matters, as if radical Islamofascists no longer harbor us ill-will.  As if we got our terrorist attack out of the way on 9/11.  This is a very dangerous state of mind.
  
Unfortunately, we have become, if I may, a nation very “September 10th” again.  How ironic would it be if this was Bush’s most damaging legacy…he took away our fears, and thus gave us back the mindset that allowed us to be vulnerable in the first place!
 
My gut tells me that the verdict of history will be kinder to this President than contemporary scribes would like to believe.
 
Not being appreciated in their time is a cross the many effective presidents must accept and endure while the verdict of history sorts it all out. It means they were “controversial.” -  that they often took up unpopular positions and held fast, despite political pressures to reverse them.  “Principled” often becomes “stubborn” when one does not share the vision of the one holding firm. And often this adherence to a policy or world view was because they knew something that we did not. 
 
In fact, I think the motto of the Bush administration may end up being: “If you only knew what we knew…”  (If anyone wishes to understand what I mean by this, I recommend picking up Anthony Cave Brown’s 900-page tome A Bodyguard Of Lies which catalogues, after thirty years of secrecy, what really went on in World War II and how the Allies won the war in Europe.  Just like back then, I think there is much about today that only the passage of time will reveal to us.)
 
We as Republicans (or more accurately conservatives looking for the GOP to get its act together so we can return to the fold) have a solemn duty to make sure the Democratic super-majority to which we are subjected does not drop the ball when it comes to terrorism.  The stakes are just too high.  The age of commoditized mass destruction is upon us.  Yet there are already signs that the Obama administration chooses denial as its policy.  The irresponsible closing of Gitmo without any provisions for what to do with the prisoners, the repealing of laws that support the surveillance of foreign phone calls and e-mails, the failure to address the bellicose rumblings from Tehran, Pyongyang, Moscow, etc., even the very banning of phrases such as “enemy combatant” all point to me the unsettling notion that we have an administration that wishes to create its own reality.  And while what they envision is more pleasant no doubt, it is belied by the world in which we live.
 
Naturally, I have been accused by my friends on the left of “fear-mongering” when I raise the subject.  Indeed, that was the Democratic strategy in the last campaign to blunt the national security issue in which their party is traditionally weak.  And it was effective.  Why?  How could we allow this most important issue to be neutralized by such a cynical phrase as “fear-mongering”? I like to ask people, if at 7:00 in the morning on that perfectly clear day, September 11th, 2001, I pointed up to the two towers and made the claim that by noon they would both be destroyed, you would have called me worse than a mere fear-monger.  You would have labeled me a lunatic. (I would have surely called myself that too!).  But now I know better. I have been made painfully aware that the seemingly impossible is in fact very possible.  3,000 Americans died that day because they could not kill 300,000 or 3,000,000.  9/11 is by no means the limit to what they can do. We have not seen their worse.  Only their worse thus far.
 
What will it take to once again awaken us from this denial into which we have settled?  A dirty nuke in Houston?  A bio-terror attack in Chicago?  How many deaths is enough to make the memories last more than one political cycle?  If we as conservatives acquiesce to this “talk of terror is fear-mongering” debate tactic, we will be sorely regretful that we did not do more to steer the discussion back into the realm of the world as it is…not as the Obamas, Reids, and Pelosis of the world would like it to be.
 
Whatever his other failings, George Bush was the right man when it came to keeping his eye on the terrorism ball.  He knew exactly who these people are… as did Reagan when he properly labeled the USSR for what it was, and took on all comers.  We must blunt all of those on the left who harbored a bizarrely manic obsession with George Bush; we must say to those who believe that Mr. Obama “can’t do any worse,” talk to us in four years.  
 
In the meantime, I think all Americans owe President George W. Bush a debt of gratitude for his clarity on the terrorism issue, and the fact that he remembered 9/11 every day of his term…even though so many in his country seem to have forgotten.
 
It is our solemn duty as conservatives to keep the memory of 9/11 alive, “fear mongering” accusations be damned… if nothing else as a reminder of what happens when we become distracted with lesser things.