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The following was not written by me although I wish it was. All credit to D.C. Simpson over at idrewthis and ozy and millie.

March 19, 2006

The Bush 9/11 myth.

It's the great myth of the George W. Bush presidency: "Bush was brilliant right after 9/11."

You hear it from all sorts of people. You even hear it a lot from liberals, or at least I do. The sorts of liberals who are trying to sound reasonable by saying something nice about Dubya: "But, to be fair, he was really great right after 9/11."

And of course it's gospel truth in the media. Chris Matthews of MSNBC, for instance, recently referred to the peak of Bush's popularity as "when he was so heroic after 9-11."

(Matthews, of course, frequently says cartoonishly fawning things about Bush, calling him a "hero," saying he "glimmers with sunny nobility," saying he quite possibly "belongs on Mount Rushmore," comparing him to To Kill A Mockingbird's Atticus Finch. That many people accept him as a hard-hitting objective journalist, frankly, says absolutely terrible things about our media culture.)

Now, as far as I can tell now in hindsight, and in fact as far as I could tell at the time, the story of Bush's great performance after 9/11 is a complete myth, on all levels. There is absolutely no aspect of Bush's handling of that event and its aftermath that I find the least bit admirable.

Let's start before 9/11, shall we?

Clinton's outgoing national security team warned Bush's incoming National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, that she was going to spend most of her time dealing with terrorism and Osama bin Laden. She did nothing to act on this advice, possibly because "do the opposite of what Clinton did" was the major ideological creed of the incoming administration.

In March of that year, the bipartisan Hart-Rudman study was issued, which argued that America was likely to face a large-scale terrorist attack in the near future and recommended some steps to protect against it (many of which, had they been in place, stood at least a chance of doing something to thwart 9/11). Bush ignored the report, and instead had Vice President Cheney convene an antiterror "task force" to come up with its own set of recommendations.

As of 9/11, Cheney's task force had never met. But it's not because Cheney didn't have the time for task forces; his energy task force met a bunch of times during the same period. The administration just didn't take the threat of terrorism seriously. Clearly, Gary Hart and Warren Rudman did. As had the previous administration.

But the Bush Administration dropped the ball. Even that infamous August 6, 2001, national security briefing, titled "Bin Laden Determined To Strike Inside the United States," failed to raise any alarm bells or rouse Bush from pretending to be a cowboy on his "ranch."

Could 9/11 have been prevented? Impossible to say. Plausibly yes, but quite arguably no. Experts much wiser than myself don't know. But it seems impossible to argue, with a straight face, that Bush had done everything he could, or even everything others with expertise in the matter were pleading with him to do.

And we got hit.

Think back to the day of. Now, you can think what you want about Michael Moore, but he did not fake that footage of Bush entering that classroom knowing full well that the first plane had hit the first tower, and hung out there for seven minutes after the second plane hit, with a confused expression on his face.

Maybe Chris Matthews and I have different definitions of "hero." Maybe everyone's definition of "bold, decisive action" differs radically from mine. I dunno.

Then Bush spent the rest of the day scurrying around the country on Air Force One, like a frightened squirrel. (The White House made up some excuse that's almost certainly not true about believing there was a credible threat that the plane itself would be a terrorist target. Well, then get the president off the plane, Einstein.) As it often would throughout the crisis, the job of actually doing something that would help, both substantively and psychologically, fell to Rudolph Giuliani, a man I normally don't like at all but who really does deserve credit for handling the crisis well.

So, okay. Then Bush landed, and went to work giving speeches. Former Bush speechwriter David Frum, author of The Right Man and coiner of the first two words of the phrase "axis of evil," lauds Bush in his book for standing at the wreckage of the world Trade Center and looking very serious and somber. To Frum, this is proof that Bush came of age as president in the wake of the crisis, rose from being "Dubya" to being a serious and historic commander-in-chief. But ask yourself--if the sole qualification for the presidency is seeing something tragic and not laughing inappropriately, what reasonably bright ten-year-old child couldn't serve as president?

What's more, Bush always gets credit for restoring the nation's confidence during this shaky period. But to the extent that he did this, he did it in the cheapest possible way--by making threats against people who not only hadn't done anything, but had in fact pledged already to support us. And in doing so, he squandered the event's only real silver lining, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to cultivate international goodwill, even more vital in an era where the major enemies are lawless terrorists.

I mean, do you remember what it was like? As traumatized as we as a nation were, didn't it just make you cry when Chirac said "we are all Americans now," in a moving echo of "ich bin ein Berliner"? Not only did France pledge to support us--Iran did too. Everyone did. We had the whole world offering condolences and asking what help we needed.

There was only one proper response to this, for a president truly interested in what was best for his country: "Thank you. We appreciate the offers of help. If we do need anything, we will let you know."

But we had a president who was more interested in a short-term boost to his TV-based approval ratings, and damn the cost to international relations. So he thought he'd threaten everybody into doing what they'd already volunteered to do. "You're either with us or you're against us," he snarled, perhaps not realizing that Dirty Harry is not an international diplomacy guide. I think everyone was a bit taken aback by the truculence of Bush's tone. Instead of solidifying international alliances of goodwill, Bush set us firmly on the path to where we are now--isolation and hostility.

What's more, in a time of unparalleled national unity--I myself wore an American flag pin on my jacket, something I would have considered unthinkably jingoistic before that, from right after 9/11 right up until our troops went into Iraq--Bush turned us against each other. As usual, Bush didn't go on TV himself and decry his opponents as treasonous, because that isn't how Rove and co. operate--they have the front man go on TV and look all resolute, while the folks lower down smear dissenters. But recall how anyone who said anything even slightly off-message was treated. Ari Fleischer sounded positively fascist when he warned "Americans need to watch what they say, watch what they do."

So, okay, Bush did invade Afghanistan, and did it with an international coalition. But, honestly, absolutely anyone to the right of Dennis Kucinich would have done exactly the same thing. Everyone supported that invasion as a necessary thing. Al Gore was a full supporter of it, so any conservative who tells you Gore would have relied on diplomacy instead of invading doesn't know what he's talking about. You can't seriously call Bush a hero for taking an action absolutely anyone would have taken.

Bush also squandered every other opportunity he had to ask us for sacrifice, make significant changes to domestic policy. Presidents in wartime have a long history of asking for shared sacrifice and getting it, from a citizenry proud to give it, proud to unite in the service of a common cause.

A real "hero" of a leader would have called for energy conservation. He (or she) might have called for us to get off Middle East oil entirely, called for an Apollo-style project for total energy independence, using the tragedy of 9/11 to change the course of history for the better. The nation would, I believe, have risen to it.

So what did Bush, who is not a hero, call for? "Go shopping," he said. "Let us suspend whatever liberties we want. Oh, and have another round of tax cuts."

Subsequently, Bush and his military types let bin Laden escape at Tora Bora, then pulled key forces out of the region for an invasion of Iraq, for which they also abused the memory of 9/11 and further trashed international relations and national security.

A real hero would have addressed the genuine causes of the tragedy, admitted that he could have done more, and gone on to do more. He would have reached out to the world for help instead of snarling that they'd better stay in line or else. He would have called for shared sacrifice in the service of shared benefit, instead of using the crisis as a convenient excuse for policies he already wanted to pursue. He would have done the exact opposite of what George W. Bush did at every turn.