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.
59 responses so far
1 Egli Ha // Mar 21, 2009 at 1:21 am
By “going back to a 9/10 mentality” do you mean respecting Constitutional guarantees again? And Geneva-Convention guarantees? Maybe a 9/10 mentality isn’t an altogether bad thing. The purpose of 9111 was, after all, to drive us mad.
And, by “the failure to address the bellicose rumblings from Tehran, Pyongyang, Moscow, etc., ” do you, perhaps, mean the failure to go around making empty threats, as practiced by Senator McCain?
Your point about not yet knowing GWB’s true foreign policy is well-taken, but shouldn’t the same apply to Obama now? You sure write as if you knew what he was really thinking and doing….
2 Chekote // Mar 21, 2009 at 6:09 am
Egli Ha. What are you talking about? What civil liberties/rights/guarntees did Bush take away from you? I want specifics. BTW, are you Italian?
3 sinz54 // Mar 21, 2009 at 6:56 am
Egli Ha: First of all, you leftists have lost sight of the main goal. The main goal is NOT to protect the rights of terrorists, but to do whatever it takes to stop terrorists from committing another atrocity like 9-11. Secondly, you leftists seem to think that the U.S. is bound by the same restrictions as the Europeans. NO WE’RE NOT. The U.S. Congress *never* ratified Protocol I of the Geneva Convention, proposed in the 1970s. That Protocol would have protected the rights of civilian combatants. America wisely refused to sign it because it would limit our ability to go after foreign terrorists. And therefore, terrorists captured on a foreign battlefield are not covered by any of the provisions of Geneva that the U.S. Congress ratified. Question for you: Would you really want Osama bin Laden to walk out of a courtroom a free man, if he got a smart lawyer who could get him sprung on the grounds that he was never read his Miranda rights??? Would that make you happy?
4 Chekote // Mar 21, 2009 at 7:08 am
sinz. People just go around repeating talking points without knowing about the law or thinking through the consequences. The Left did an effective job at demonizing Bush. And Bush did not defend himself for whatever reason. But whenever I have asked about how exactly Bush impacted their liberties, they never can come up with an example.
5 sinz54 // Mar 21, 2009 at 7:10 am
Mr. Schaeffer didn’t even bother to mention Iraq. Now that the surge has succeeded, can anyone make an argument that the al-Qaeda threat has diminished because of the Iraq War? Here’s one metric for you: None of the security measures that were put in place in the months after 9-11 have been eased. We still get our shoes checked at airports, the Department of Homeland Security is alive and well and fully funded, etc. So evidently, the relevant authorities believe that al-Qaeda is just as dangerous as ever, or else they would ease security restrictions. That’s after 7 years of war in Iraq, and over a trillion dollars spent on that war.
6 sinz54 // Mar 21, 2009 at 7:17 am
Chekote: It comes down to the question of whether our fight against terrorists is truly a war. Bush said yes, the Left said no. If it’s truly a war, then any of the enemy who are captured are detained until the war is over. That’s how it’s been in every previous war. If it’s just a law enforcement exercise, then the detainees could petition for habeas corpus and so on. The Left wants to have it both ways: On the one hand, they demand that the detainees should be treated as POWs, even though they themselves don’t believe this is a war. On the other hand, they demand that the detainees should have the right of habeas corpus, even though POWs are never given habeas corpus. (Of course, it is the duty of every POW to try to escape captivity if he can.)
7 gibberish // Mar 21, 2009 at 8:09 am
I guess Bush can claim some credit for the lack of attacks in the US since 9/11, but there weren’t that many before either. The fact to explain is not the lack of recent attacks but how 1 slipped through on Bush’s watch at all. There were plenty of warnings. The major activity of Bush post 9/11 was obviously Iraq – an arena of little relevance to controlling terror. Bush has a counter-terrorism record of complacency and incompetence, but mainly one of using it as an excuse to pursue alternative goals.
8 Bulldoglover100 // Mar 21, 2009 at 8:59 am
Couch your reality in any cloth you choose Brad but 9/11 was one event in 8 long years of lies and deciet. Was it world changing? Yes as is the financial crisis and the toilet our economy is in.
Was Bush’s response to 9/11 correct? Not by a long shot since we invaded the wrong country and went after the wrong person based on lies that Cheny fed us. Did he keep us safe? Who knows for certain. Who knows? All I KNOW for CERTAIN? Is that the man repsonsible is STILL out there…so could Manhatten become a hole under Obama? Yes it can but who will be at fault? The man who is leading our country or the one who refused to go after the guilty party?
9 sinz54 // Mar 21, 2009 at 9:15 am
gibberish: If Al Gore had been president in 2001 instead of Bush, 9-11 would have happened anyway. The bipartisan mindset back then was that the chance of a major terrorist attack on U.S. soil was “remote” (they used that word over and over). And therefore, a pre-emptive attack on al-Qaeda’s training camps in Afghanistan was unwarranted. As proof, note that the Clinton Administration had been receiving intelligence reports about those al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan–but never went to war over them. Even after the U.S.S. Cole bombing in October 2000, they never suggested that the new incoming Bush Administration should take military action.
10 ottovbvs // Mar 21, 2009 at 10:29 am
Brad…. you seem to have lost sight of the fact that Manhattan WAS ACTUALLY turned into a smoldering hole on Bush’s watch. We then embarked on a series of actions one of the most minor consequences of which was that I ended my long history of voting Republican. Not only were most of these actions strategically misconceived but they were executed with a level of incompetence that would have done credit to a 15 year old on pot. Then when the awful consequences became more apparent by the day the administration retreated in a miasma of denials, lies and distortions which poisoned public life in this country and made the president and his party a laughingstock. I’m not going to bother going over all the ground but we’ll be living with the domestic and international fallout from this for years. As against this mountain of actual failure and a real smoking hole in Manhattan all we get from Shaeffer is a load of something nasty in the woodshed scaremongering which convinces no one outside the already committed.
11 Jeffryw // Mar 21, 2009 at 10:39 am
The planning for 9/11 was set in motion years before Bush was sworn in so that it is disingenuous to say 9/11 was on Bush’s watch. It was not the result of any Bush policies or specific actions. Bush did not treat it like a law enforcement matter. It was not the result of Bush’s emboldening of terrorists by refusing to treat the matter as anything but a distraction. Or ignoring such swipes on our national honor as Somolia, the Embassy bombins, Khobar towers, the USS Cole, the first WTC bombings, etc…all of which happened on Clinton’s watch. Nor is it the result of Bush letting Bin Laden slip away when he was within our grasp.
That said I read this to mean that we were ALL caught unawares that day. But now many are slipping back into that frame of mind again. He says that Bush never idid. I think that is what he means by a 9/10 attitude.
12 Chekote // Mar 21, 2009 at 11:01 am
“I guess Bush can claim some credit for the lack of attacks in the US since 9/11, but there weren’t that many before either.” Really? Under Clinton we had an attack about every two years: 1993 First World Trade Center attack. 1996 Khobar Towers. 1998 Embassies Attacks in Tanzania and Kenya. 2000 US Cole. Bulldog, once again you have proven my point that you have to be ignorant to support the Left.
13 gibberish // Mar 21, 2009 at 11:06 am
I use the phrase “on his watch” rather than saying he is to blame deliberately. Possibly things would have been no different if Gore was president, but it can’t be certain. Clinton/Gore had actually had been involved in prior attacks by/against Al Qaeda and Gore might have prioritised counter-terrorism, but Bush had his own very different agenda to pursue. This is speculation but to assume all the same mistakes would have happened is also pure fantasy.
14 mlindroo // Mar 21, 2009 at 11:08 am
> To defeat an enemy, you must first be able to think like
> them.
[...]
> George Bush, whatever his faults, understood our
> enemies.
If George W.B. truly “understood our enemies”, i.e. the Middle East, how come he and his neocon pals @ AEI so badly managed to misjudge how ordinary Iraqis would react to the US occupation?
> But not one American has been killed by a terrorist on
> this country’s soil since that day.
Yeah (sarcasm)…what a splendid achievement indeed!! How many Frenchmen, Italians or Germans were killed by “islamofascists” in 2001-08? None as far as I know. So maybe John Kerry was right after all, i.e. this is primarily a law enforcement issue and you do not have to invade Iraq after all if you want to “assault Al Qaeda”.
> 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.
See previous comment…seems like the French and Germans are doing equally well.
MARCU$
15 gibberish // Mar 21, 2009 at 11:10 am
@Chekote unlike you, I don’t count Kenya, etc as being in the USA so really you have cited only 1 example of a prior attack in the US. The 1st World Trade attack was 8 years before 9/11 and now it only 8 years since, you can’t draw much conclusion from the lack of attacks
16 gibberish // Mar 21, 2009 at 11:15 am
@mlindroo you seem to think that the whole middle east is your enemy! A curious idea.
And in the unlikely event that Bush actually understands terrorists – I don’t see how this would help with predicting the reactions of civilians in Iraq!
17 Chekote // Mar 21, 2009 at 12:01 pm
gibberish. Those attacks were targeted at Americans. It doesn’t matter whether they occured at home or abroad. What are you saying? Americans killed abroad are not Americans?
18 gibberish // Mar 21, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Chekote the article very carefully restricts itself to congratulating Bush on preventing attacks on American soil.
This is for the very good reason that thousands of Americans have indeed been killed off American soil – you’ve heard of Iraq, right?
19 LauraNo // Mar 21, 2009 at 2:38 pm
Bush did not keep us safe. He did not.
He and his crowd pooh-poohed Clinton’s warnings and mocked him for his ‘weakness’.
When the s— hit the fan, they fell into some deranged living nightmare trance, seeing boogiemen under every rock out of huge GUILT for ignoring the danger in the first place. It happened on their watch without them having taken any steps to prevent it or even having one lousy meeting about the possibility.
Airline security, homeland security and most of the steps they took would have been taken by any American president. But the Constitutionally Challenged steps they took are theirs alone, most other presidents (sans Cheney) would not have done them.
To reiterate, Bush did not keep us safe. Not has he apologized.
Oh, and you are not special in the effect 9/11 had on you and are not some more important voice than others for claiming you are.
20 palomino70 // Mar 21, 2009 at 3:36 pm
I’m open to revisionism, but if this is the best that Bush foreign policy apologists can do, then there’s little chance of his legacy being rehabilitated. The author here uses extra column space to compensate for a lack of nuance. Main problems: the piece makes only one point, repetitively and reductively; it employs selective memory, eg “Bush kept us safe”, which ignores all the other metrics of our safety; and creating straw men (the broad and unsupported generalization that “liberals care more about giving terrorists their rights than stopping attacks”).
21 palomino70 // Mar 21, 2009 at 3:47 pm
Brad, who in the current administration has suggested that “we need only sit across some imaginary table with these zealots and find out what they want from us in order to effectively deal with terrorism? And what has Obama, who btw kept Gates, done to appease Islamofascists and endanger Americans? Sorry, the following don’t count: closing Gitmo IN A YEAR, putting a stop to a Khmer Rouge tactic–waterboarding, and moving more troops to where al-Qaeda is actually based (“Af-Pak”).
22 Jeffryw // Mar 21, 2009 at 4:06 pm
Khmer Rouge: Mass murder over one million innocent Cambodians.
Gitmo: For those caught on the battlefield fighting our armed forces – Make a guy think he’s drowning. Deprive him of sleep. Make him crouch.
I never knew there was so much similarity between the two palomino. Good analogy. Crack open a history book then get back into the discussion.
23 sinz54 // Mar 21, 2009 at 5:14 pm
Palomino70 asks: “And what has Obama, who btw kept Gates, done to appease Islamofascists and endanger Americans?” Reportedly, Obama is already putting out peace feelers regarding negotiating with the Taliban. I preferred Bush’s policy: Since the Taliban gave sanctuary to al-Qaeda, they are as guilty as al-Qaeda. Also, did you listen to Obama’s message to the Iranians a couple of days ago? It was a unilateral message of conciliation. The fact that Iran took American hostages in 1979 in total violation of international law (notice how the Left has no problem with violating international law when Americans are the targets); the fact that Iran has been stirring up trouble in Iraq to kill American soldiers; and the fact that Iran is developing nuclear weapons to wipe out Israel; well, all that is past, let’s just let bygones be bygones??? What for? That’s letting radical Islamists off the hook for all the bad things they’ve done against this country and our allies.
24 sinz54 // Mar 21, 2009 at 5:16 pm
Now that the Iraq War seems to be drawing to a close, can any supporters of Bush make a convincing case that America is safer because of it? And if America is safer, why has there been no relaxation in ANY of the security measures adopted after 9-11?
25 sinz54 // Mar 21, 2009 at 5:29 pm
LauraNo: Evidently you are unaware that the neo-conservatives who went to work for Bush after he became president, had wanted to take out Saddam for years before. No “nightmare trance.” Rather, a theory of international terrorism that these neo-conservatives had been working on for years. In their theory, Saddam was one of the biggest enablers of terrorism, and any successful fight against terrorism had to take him out. Also, in their theory, America had been made to look like a paper tiger by Vietnam and by the failure of the Gulf War to destroy the Saddam regime. And hence, America had to make an example of Saddam to prove to the whole world that America was once again “indomitable” (their word). I used to listen to right-wing talk radio in the 1990s, while Clinton was still President; and neo-conservatives would go on talk-radio to try to gather public support for these theories. BTW: In the early 1990s, partisan Democrats in Congress attacked Bush 41 as having “allowed” Saddam to remain in power. President Clinton himself signed the Iraq Liberation Act, committing this nation to the eventual downfall of the Saddam regime. So it’s not as one-sided as you’re making it out to be.
26 midcon // Mar 22, 2009 at 6:53 am
Brad: The government’s anti terrorism policy and actions have been predominately focused on individual terrorists and terrorist groups. That narrow view has perpetuated one of the greatest vulnerabilities this nations – it’s ports. As of 2005 only 5% of the are inspected. The number of containers transiting US ports annually is in excess of 16 million. You can do the math. If I was able to build a dirty nuke, do you think I would trying to hop the fence down in Arizona?
P.S. If you wanted to keep the focus on 9/11, the Iraq war was the wrong way to do it. So was mission accomplished. Keep the nostaglia and Bush memorabilia in your garage or game room. Don’t be trotting Bush out to people as an example of anything. That dog won’t hunt!
27 Bulldoglover100 // Mar 22, 2009 at 7:19 am
The planning for 9/11 may have occured years before Bush’s Presidency but the failure to capture the man responsible? Falls squarely in the shoulders of Bush & Cheney…..looking for them in the wrong country might have been the first clue that they were leading our country down a path that was disengenious at best…….for “some” people their reality and faulty application of the facts tends to not allow us, as a party, to take responsibility for our actions, and lack thereof, and so we fail to grow or prosper. Just as the American people are screaming for the heads of the people in power today regarding AIG, they are still screaming for the heads responsible for our failures regarding 9/11……..and our party still refuses to deal with realilty…which is why we keep losing elections.
28 Bulldoglover100 // Mar 22, 2009 at 7:21 am
midcon….GREAT post.
29 sinz54 // Mar 22, 2009 at 9:17 am
Bulldoglover100: The failure to capture Osama bin Laden is probably Rumsfeld’s fault. During the campaign in Afghanistan in the fall of 2001, CIA and Special Forces there asked Rumsfeld for a buildup of regular U.S. troops, to seal the eastern border and go after bin Laden in what we expected would be his final redoubt near Tora Bora. Rumsfeld never supplied those troops, and the reasons have never been made clear. As a result, our forces were forced to rely upon local Afghans at Tora Bora, and they proved unreliable. Osama bin Laden escaped, most likely across the eastern border into Pakistan.
30 sinz54 // Mar 22, 2009 at 9:24 am
midcon: While I agree that port security is important, WINNING the War on Terror can never be done through defensive measures. We have to go on the offensive and be pro-active. And there, the most important long-range goal should be to interrupt this conveyor belt by which young Muslim men are radicalized and turned into terrorists. Our allies have to step up to the plate, and institute programs that will give young Muslim men more positive outlets for their frustrations than turning to terrorist organizations. We need to do the same thing–though so far at least, we haven’t had the kind of militancy among our American Muslim population that Europe and especially Pakistan have had. But history teaches us that it’s in times of economic distress (such as the high unemployment we have now) when radicals have their best shot at finding recruits.
31 Cforchange // Mar 22, 2009 at 12:44 pm
I’m a blue state liver too. I clearly recollect the massive respect the president had during and after the NYC attack. But the Bush administration sqandered this and maybe because of the inability to multitask. While the government was planning an overseas war and the surburbanite was busy building and buying, the lower middle class communities experienced the death blow. Manufacturing and most low skill labor jobs of any type severely contracted, except for those at Walmart. Plus and most detrimental were cuts to law enforcement funding. This left plenty of American citizens all over our country to live in Bagdad like circumstances right here in the USA. Personal freedoms became very limited because of street crime that exploded during the past 8 years. Just look at the situation in Oakland CA – there it is. Before this criminal blasted the police he terrorized his entire neighborhood and influenced many youth to follow in his footsteps. Then there was Katrina which was another event where the administration’s goodwill was squandered and another case of the inability to multitask. Had Prez Bush reacted similar to the “too short term” of PA Gov Mark Schweiker and did as he did when the coal miners were trapped, media shots would have displayed a more compassionate President with his sleeves rolled up maybe helping citizens off rescue boats onto the safety and comfort of a cruise liner. The outcome of his popularity could have been drastically differenent if only…. Certainly President Bush kept us safe from outside terrorism but if you’re still being terrorized from within you are likely to forget what happened the week before.
32 dacookson // Mar 23, 2009 at 5:23 am
Hang on, didn’t 9/11 happen during the Bush presidency? So Bush was helpless to stop a terrorist event but if it happens to Obama it’s all his fault? And don’t the deaths of American soldiers mean anything to you? Thousands of Americans have been killed or injured by terrorist attacks, just not on American soil. So how did Bush keep American’s safe again? That’s not to mention the millions of innocents subjected to misery because of the ‘War on Terror’ or the billions of tax dollars that could have been spent on healthcare and crime prevention. All to counter a terrorist movement of a few thousand people. Remember the Taliban promised to hand over Al Qaeda if the US presented evidence that they were behind 9/11 but this was never about terrorism but aggressive geopolitics. Bush managed to destroy nearly all the sympathy and good will the world had towards the US after those terrible attacks, quite a feat. Seems to me you’re the one suffering from amnesia, the selective kind.
33 midcon // Mar 23, 2009 at 5:26 am
sinz54: My point exactly. We can no more inspect 16 million plus cargo containers every year, build a 2000 mile long fence that keeps people out, or put vast areas of the US border under electronic surveillance than we can stop the tide. Fortress America is not an answer. I used to think that education was the key, since radicalized Muslims were often very uneducated, but in many cases highly educated Muslims seem to be the perpetuators of terrorist acts. Muslims more closely resemble far right Christianity in their fervor. Yet far right Christianity does not have a generalized tendency towards radicalized behavior that the Muslims do. I have concluded that the Muslim religious leadership (Imams) are the one of the contributing factors because they teach violence as an acceptable means to achieve a goal and one of Islams goals is the conversion or elimination of the infidel (Christians and Jews) (Muslim schools in the US are actually teaching those concepts – stopping short of advocating violence). I don’t have any thoughts about a solution yet, except to agree that we need to reach the (primarily) young men. But doing so requires contradicting their religous training/indoctrination.
34 sinz54 // Mar 23, 2009 at 11:00 am
midcon: You’re right, and that means that part of the answer has to be an immigration policy that maintains the right of ideological exclusion.
For many years, the U.S. immigration laws included an “ideological exclusion” clause which enabled us to bar any immigrants who had expressed clearly pro-Nazi or pro-Soviet views. Today, it could be used, and should be used, to bar anyone coming to America who has expressed views favorable to al-Qaeda, for example.
Unfortunately, our own civil libertarians have agitated long and hard to get the ideological exclusion clause removed. And I don’t think Europe has ever had any such caveats in their own immigration policy. As a result, virulently anti-Western imams and agitators have been flooding into Europe, and working to radicalize the Muslims who are already there. And we’ve got a few of those ourselves, right in Detroit and Dearborn Michigan.
If some foreigner is on record as leading chants of “Death to America!”, that person has no right to come to America. And all Western nations have got to rigorously enforce such a policy. “Death to America!” or “Death to Britain!” is clear incitement to sedition. And they should be barred from ever setting foot on Western soil.
35 Cforchange // Mar 23, 2009 at 11:57 am
Sinz you are a genius – how did get paragraphing to work on this site?? Please let us in on the secret!
36 midcon // Mar 23, 2009 at 12:59 pm
I posted this in the wrong place originally, just in case someone wonders why it is posted twice|
The problem we face is that ideological exclusion seems to be contrary to the Constitution (at least for citizens). Even anarchists are protected by the Constitution. So we would have to have a very limited form exclusion that would be narrowly constrained to those who advocate overthrow of the government or violence to citizens or other similar advocacy. Such an exclusion would have to be carefully crafted lest it exclude even those who advocate legitimate constitutional change. And of course, free speech is protected is protected for citizens, even when that speech is contrary to American princples. |I would not trust either the Dems or GOP to find the right balance. Maybe the courts could parse it narrowly enough, but such an enterprise remains fraught with peril though.
37 msoliverca // Mar 23, 2009 at 1:41 pm
There is a way to keep a nation safe without sanctimony. Conservatives do not “own” 9/11. It’s not “your” solemn duty to politicize a national tragedy for political purpose for another decade.
>> 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
This is Cheney-esque assertion that is flatly not true. Gitmo is closing, that’s true. So, you think we’re just going to fly these guys in BWI and give them cab rides to DuPoint Circle? The FISA count still exsists. And, what are you looking for, air-raids on name-checked axis-of-evil capitals?
If I wanted to read this drivel, I’d go over to Town Hall – I thought Frum’s new venture was supposed to be all about getting away from this kind of rhetoric – the kind of rhetoric that has lead to Democratic super-majorities.
38 Tom B // Mar 23, 2009 at 2:34 pm
Gitmo is not even close to closing. And according to the words of our current Att. General some of those individuals may be released on the streets of this country.
A significant number of previous detaines are already back fighting against and killing USA soldiers. Only a very simple minded person would believe this fight is over. None of the rest should be release and more than likely none will.
Obama did not reverse the monitoring of overseas phone calls or any other security measure implemented by Bush including waterboarding.
And unless you are willing to wear a Burkka, you should start believing that the fight is fall from over.
The view of terrorism in the 90s was to treat it as a law enforcement issue. That changed after 9/11 and that is way there has been no further attacks on US soil. If the current administration reverts back to that method, well I believe the attacks will begin again.
39 midcon // Mar 23, 2009 at 2:55 pm
SDspringy, if there is any reason for the lack of attacks upon Amerian soil, it’s because Bush “wisely” put a whole bunch of Americans in Iraq where they were attacked with impunity. Why cross the ocean when your enemy creates such a target rich environment in your own backyard?
Our military leaders have several times that the military action is not a cure or prevention for terrorism. In fact treating them as an OPFOR is tantamount to legitimizing them. While use of special military and other means to combat terrorists is absolutely necessary, don’t mistake special forces used for that purpose as a “war”. Because it will suffer the same fate as all the “wars’ we like to engage in when we are playing that tune “Onward Christian Soldiers.”
The prevailing view of terrorism is that it is a recent manisfestation in our world. What people forget (or don’t know) is that terrorism has been part of man’s inhumanity to man for centuries. How long do you plan to wage war on terrorism? What’s the exit strategy? When you declare victory?
40 Cartero // Mar 23, 2009 at 8:37 pm
I hate to break the news to you Brad but 9/11 did happen on George Bush’s watch. Don’t you remember him sitting there at the grade school not knowing what to do as we are being attacked.
41 Jeffryw // Mar 24, 2009 at 4:51 am
Cartero. First of all, if you honestly think the Bush is to blame just because the final stages of a plot that was being hatched for years and was abetted by our appaling lax security protocols then I have a bridge to sell you. By the time Bush took over, the groundwork had been laid. It happened a mere eight months into his administration.
And enough with the left’s obsession with Bush’s eight minute pause when he received the news. I was in NY when it happened and NO ONE knew what the hell was going on dude. The secret service told Bush to sit tight while the secured the area. He’d just been informed of a potential attack on the US. A few seconds before he was reading a children’s story. Give the guy a friggin break. What you have had him do? Jump up and down screaming WAR! WAR!???
And I think Schaeffer’s point is that he, like many people, was complacent before 9/11–his example of how unbelievable it would have seemed right up until the morning it happeend shows that. What frightens him (Brad tell me if I’m wrong if you’re reading this) is that we have sunk back into that pre 9/11 mentality again. Bush, on the other hand, never did.
Obama’s pathetic outreach to the Iranians via video (and the Mullah’s subsequent retort which bordered on mockery) is a prime example. We have Jimmy Carter again.
42 palomino70 // Mar 25, 2009 at 5:53 am
Jeff, I’m so sorry that irony escapes you. But you unwittingly amplified my point for me: if a regime as brutal as the Khmer Rouge was waterboarding ppl–and subsequently denounced for it–then why the hell are WE doing it? And don’t say “because 3000 Americans were killed on 9/11.” That’s not your trump card in perpetuity, allowing you to forever sidestep moral quandaries and international law. The challenge for us is not defeating terrorism period. It’s defeating terrorism while maintaining our humanity and values. Torture simply doesn’t fit into such an equation.
43 Jeffryw // Mar 25, 2009 at 7:26 am
Palomino. One Question: You know for a fact an anthrax delivery device is set to go off in one hour in downtown manhattan. It is estimated it will kill over 1 million people. Now, the only guy who knows where it is sits before you. He won’t talk. But you know he WILL if you do a little waterboarding. If not that than some other “technique” if you will…So, what would YOU do?
And do not sidestep with “oh that’s just a hypothetical.”
44 sinz54 // Mar 25, 2009 at 7:31 am
palomino70: During the fall of 2001, noted civil libertarian Alan Dershowitz proposed a reasonable compromise on the waterboarding issue, which I have slightly modified thus: Waterboarding (or even actual torture) COULD be justified if ONLY the following two conditions were met:
1. It was necessary to extract information about an attack believed to be imminent;
2. TWO of the three branches of government would have to sign off on it. During the years of the Bush Administration, that would have meant that both President Bush AND either Chief Justice Scalia or Speaker of the House Pelosi (who is, after all, third in the line of Presidential succession) would have to sign off on it. This prevents a President abusing his executive authority to torture someone without the other branches of government providing their traditional checks and balances.
45 sinz54 // Mar 25, 2009 at 7:35 am
Jeffryw: The “ticking bomb” scenario is a red herring. NONE of the waterboarding done by the Bush Administration involved extracting specific information about a specific attack that was imminent. Rather, they had captured high-value terrorists (like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed) who they believed knew a lot, and wanted to find it out.
In my reply to palomino70, I proposed a modification of Dershowitz’s original compromise that retains the ability of the Government to use waterboarding for the “ticking bomb” scenario, while banning it for “fishing expeditions.” And it also prevents the President from acting alone on this.
46 Jeffryw // Mar 25, 2009 at 7:40 am
Palomino. One Question: You know for a fact an anthrax delivery device is set to go off in one hour in downtown manhattan. It is estimated it will kill over 1 million people. Now, the only guy who knows where it is sits before you. He won’t talk. But you know he WILL if you do a little waterboarding. If not that than some other “technique” if you will…So, what would YOU do?
And do not sidestep with “oh that’s just a hypothetical.”
47 sinz54 // Mar 25, 2009 at 7:41 am
Palomino70: By its very nature, war–ANY war–represents a rupture of our values. We’re going to be engaging in mass killing. Civilians are going to die as collateral damage, despite our best efforts to prevent it. Even those uniformed soldiers in Saddam’s army whom we killed were human beings, who had families and friends who mourn their deaths.
Some of our past ruptures have been FAR more serious than the waterboarding we did in the War on Terror. In World War II, the U.S. launched a systematic campaign to fire-bomb Japanese cities. Some 500,000 Japanese men, women and children, mostly civilians, perished in those attacks. Far more than died from the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If Japan had refused to surrender after those atomic bombings, the U.S. was prepared to just keep on dropping atomic bombs on Japan (ten more were under construction), which would likely have obliterated Japan.
For America, the job is to limit the rupture of morality, and make sure it’s temporary. Japan did surrender unconditionally. And there are ways to put the use of extreme interrogation measures under a legalistic framework that limits their use.
48 Jeffryw // Mar 25, 2009 at 7:51 am
Sinz. What do you think they wanted to find out?
Anyway, I would not presume to know what was at stake during these waterboardings but I would think that it was not done just for fun.
I guess you must have been stationed at Gitmo or maybe part of the intelligence apparatus?
At least you agree there are times when brute force is needed. Now, if Palomino is too obtuse to see that torturing someone to save innocent lives by extracting information is not even on the same moral plane as torturing someone because they are an “intellectual against the people’s liberation and collectivization” as well as getting info on yet other “enemies of the state” before marching them to the paddy out back and slamming a bullet into their brain, I cannot help him.
49 Jeffryw // Mar 25, 2009 at 8:01 am
Inronically I think your Japan analogy is off because the Japanese did in fact surrender with one MAJOR condition. The maintanence of the emperor. MacArthur needed Hirohito intact to make for an orderly transition of power as there were still over a million Japanese men at arms throughout the Pacific. He gave MacArthur the legitimacy he needed to .
As you correcly observe, Hiroshima was not the most devasting bombing raid – the worst bombing raid in history, indeed the worst single mass killing ever carried out on one day, was the March 9-10 firebobing of Tokyo. By the time we were finished with Nagasaki, Japan had no targets of value left.
Sadly, had we not stuck stubbornly to calls for “unconditional surrender” (a very capricious demand srpung on the allies by FDR at Casablanca much to Chruchill’s dismay) the wars both in Europe and against Japan could have been shortened by months saving literally millions of unnecessary deaths on all sides.
But that is a debate for another day. “If we had lost the war, I’d have been tried as a war criminal.” Curtis LeMay
50 Jeffryw // Mar 25, 2009 at 8:07 am
Inronically I think your Japan analogy is off because the Japanese did in fact surrender with one MAJOR condition. The maintanence of the emperor. MacArthur needed Hirohito intact to make for an orderly transition of power as there were still over a million Japanese men at arms throughout the Pacific. He gave MacArthur the legitimacy he needed to .
As you correcly observe, Hiroshima was not the most devasting bombing raid – the worst bombing raid in history, indeed the worst single mass killing ever carried out on one day, was the March 9-10 firebobing of Tokyo. By the time we were finished with Nagasaki, Japan had no targets of value left.
Sadly, had we not stuck stubbornly to calls for “unconditional surrender” (a very capricious demand srpung on the allies by FDR at Casablanca much to Chruchill’s dismay) the wars both in Europe and against Japan could have been shortened by months saving literally millions of unnecessary deaths on all sides.
But that is a debate for another day. “If we had lost the war, I’d have been tried as a war criminal.” Curtis LeMay
51 sinz54 // Mar 25, 2009 at 8:30 am
Jeffryw: I certainly do agree that there are times when brute force is needed. But I also maintain that I will never trust any ONE branch of the U.S. government with that kind of arbitrary unlimited power.
You asked what they were trying to learn from the waterboarding. I cannot answer that, because AFAIK, there is no public record of just what it was that caused Bush to authorize it in each case. Even though I voted for Bush, I never voted to give Bush that much unchecked executive power.
We conservatives are supposed to stand for limited government, yes? Well, limited government should NOT include unlimited Executive power to torture at their own discretion. And it should NOT include unlimited Executive power to classify anyone (even a U.S. citizen) as an “enemy combatant” at their own discretion, and imprison him without trial, not even by military tribunal. (Not a single terrorist was tried by Bush’s system of military tribunals in the first 6 years of his Presidency.)
I’m frankly amazed at how many conservatives could claim they were for “limited government” on the one hand–and on the other hand, support giving the Executive Branch vastly increased powers, including torture and indefinite detention without trial. It was clear that the main reason was that Bush was “our guy,” we had voted for him and trusted him, and therefore saw no reason to restrict anything he wanted to do. That’s a dangerous attitude to have in any democracy. But it’s particularly hypocritical for us conservatives, since we’re the ones who crusade for limited, smaller government.
As conservatives, our job should have been to devise legal and Constitutional frameworks that would have given the President the tools he needed to fight terrorism–while at the same time making sure that those tools could not be abused. Instead, we acted as blind cheerleaders, circling the wagons around Bush and anything he wanted to do. And we compromised our principles, and our integrity.
52 Jeffryw // Mar 25, 2009 at 8:50 am
I think you are confusing power to torture US CITIZENS with the power to torture FOREIGN ENEMY COMBATANTS.
That is a serious distinction. I see no constitutional protections of any kind that should be afforded men caught on the battelfield waging war against our soldiers.
At Tarawa in 1943, the US Marines tok 16 prisoners out of a Japanese garrison of 5,000. Enemy combatants today should thank their lucky stars that the military of today and not the one during that “good war” scooped em up!
53 Jeffryw // Mar 25, 2009 at 8:55 am
Sorry Sinz I missed the part of your post where you address enemy combatants. I am curious what US citizens you know of who were recategorized as “enemy combatants”? Not a trick question, I honestly am not aware of any cases but that doesn’t mean anything!
54 sinz54 // Mar 25, 2009 at 10:21 am
Jeffryw: Please familiarize yourself with the case of Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen reclassified by the Bush Administration as an enemy combatant.
As for civilian enemy combatants caught on a battlefield, you are correct that the U.S. Senate never ratified Protocol 1 Additional of the Geneva Convention, which would have extended Geneva Convention protections to civilian fighters. That Protocol would have made it much harder to fight al-Qaeda; and in fact it would make it much harder to fight any counterinsurgency war in which the insurgents masquerade as civilians and hide among the civilian population.
Nevertheless, there remain moral considerations of human rights in dealing with any captives in any situation. First, the fact that Protocol 1 was ratified by over a hundred other nations, including all our own allies, puts us in an uncomfortable position if we’re seen to be blatantly violating it.
Secondly, our own Declaration of Independence argues that all men are entitled to unalienable rights. It didn’t say “Americans,” it said “All men”.
We don’t want to treat captive civilian fighters the way the Nazis treated captive members of the Resistance, or the way the Japanese treated captured Filipinos, do we?
And that means we need some clearly specified policies on limits. I will never accept the notion of “Anything goes” with any human being. That’s un-American.
55 palomino70 // Mar 26, 2009 at 1:06 am
Jeff, It IS just a hypothetical, but I won’t sidestep. Of course we’re not going to let a city be destroyed if we know that suspect x has lifesaving info; we’ll get it out of him one way or another. But there is a HUGE difference between this one-in-a-million scenario and using torture as routine policy in multiple black-op sites. Padilla is just one of many examples, none of whom even allegedly had “ticking time bomb” type info.
56 palomino70 // Mar 26, 2009 at 1:24 am
sinz, Re Japan: the sins of the past don’t justify those of the present. It’s easy to look back at 1945 and second-guess Tokyo, Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, etc. But the targeting of civilians by 1945 was an accepted part of WWII. It still presents an ethical dilemma, but seen in the context of the war’s last year and all the attendant carnage, it’s harder to make a case that these bombings represented discrete war crimes. And if they did constitute war crimes, were ANY of the major powers innocent?
After all, in 1945 we did have good reason to think we were at risk of being annihilated. But the talk of an existential crisis over the last seven years (often used to justify torture) is just a Cheney-esque dodge. Does anyone really think al-Qaeda or the Taliban is a threat to conquer the US and dismantle our govt?
57 Jeffryw // Mar 26, 2009 at 5:36 am
Sinz: You know I was actually going to add “and PAH-.lease don’t bring up Padilla. The case against him is VERY strong.” But I didn;t think that that was still the only case that even whiffed of the accusations you make against the past admin. I would think by now after seven years something else has come up.
58 Jeffryw // Mar 26, 2009 at 5:38 am
Palomino, you too seem to ben an intel operative or are stationed at Gitmo because I again would never presume to claim to know something I don’t…to wit the stakes involved when torture is administered.
59 sinz54 // Mar 27, 2009 at 8:04 am
palomino70: I believe that an existential crisis is a very real and very sobering possibility.
9-11 should have been a wakeup call for you, but evidently it was not. 9-11 was a pinprick compared to what would happen if terrorists blew up Boulder Dam (the resulting flood would kill 100,000 Americans).
I live in Massachusetts. Due to some bad decisions, the terminal for a Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) plant is located in Everett, so supertankers carrying LNG have to transit Boston Harbor to get there. If terrorists managed to blow up an LNG tanker as it transits Boston Harbor during a normal working day, half of downtown Boston would disappear. A quarter million people would disappear along with it.
And if terrorists got ahold of WMD, they could render entire cities uninhabitable for a very long time to come.
If you look at the past history of terrorist attacks on America, the maximum casualty number has increased by two orders of magnitude: First with the Oklahoma City bombing (168 killed), then with 9-11 (3,000 killed). That’s because terrorists want publicity, and they have to keep launching ever more spectacular attacks to get that publicity.
The next attack on America will kill tens of thousands.
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