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I'm really sick to death of hearing
the Bush administration people brag about how they kept us safe from
terrorists, matrimonially inclined homosexuals, and other really mean
people.
Sure, I understand why they do it.
And, no, I'm not referring to the fact that regressives seem to be
congenital liars, or that, because they themselves are so existentially
frightened, they understand instinctively just how the politics of fear
work.
I'm really sick to death of hearing
the Bush administration people brag about how they kept us safe from
terrorists, matrimonially inclined homosexuals, and other really mean
people.
Sure, I understand why they do it.
And, no, I'm not referring to the fact that regressives seem to be
congenital liars, or that, because they themselves are so existentially
frightened, they understand instinctively just how the politics of fear
work.
No doubt all of that is part of the equation.
But I think the bigger reason that we are continually exposed to this
insane mantra is because, despite their delusional tendencies, even
conservatives recognize the paucity of plausible alternative claims.
I mean, would you want to go to the public
bragging about having booted two wars, one based entirely on lies, and
both strung out now about twice the length of America's involvement
in World War II? Would you run for office touting your party's
achievements at doubling the size of the national debt? Would
you point to Hurricane Katrina and say "Heckuva job, Bushie", expecting
the public to agree?
The truth is that, yes, regressives almost
always lie, and, yes, they love to play the politics of fear, but the
key reason that they brag about having kept the country safe during
the Bush years is because it's the only claim they can plausibly make
without being laughed out of the room.
In fact, though, they should be laughed
out of the room for making what is in reality the most absurd claim
of all. And then they should consider themselves damn lucky only
to be laughed at.
Disingenuous regressives (and what other
kind are there?) who try to sell you on this notion want you to believe
that the Bush administration somehow began on September 12, 2001.
They love to tell you about how the country was protected from terrorist
attack after 9/11. But that's odd, isn't it? I always
thought the job of the president was to protect the country for the
entire length of his administration, not just nine-tenths of it.
It gets even odder still if you inject
a little bit of logic into dissecting their argument, always a hugely
dangerous enterprise from the perspective of regressive mythology.
That is, let's just take them for a moment on their own terms, for
the sake of argument. We're supposed to be impressed that George
W. Bush kept the country safe from major terrorist attack. But
of his forty-two predecessors in the Oval Office, can you think of any
single one who failed to meet that test? Me neither.
Indeed, only one president experienced
a major foreign terrorist attack on his watch over the two and a quarter
centuries the United States has existed. His name was Bush, George
W. Somehow, they don't mention that part. Of course, the
joys of having conservatives around have always included the pleasure
of hearing lies to cover truth, bluster to mask fear, and arrogance
bluffing for insecurity. Likewise, the folks running hither and
yon squawking about how they kept us safe are actually the only ones
in the entire history of this country who, simply, did not. Did.
Not.
Yet, in fact, this is only the beginning
of the crime (and I won't even comment on the many strands of compelling
evidence suggesting that some or all of the official 9/11 story is a
fabrication). When I say that George W. Bush is the only president
to have "experienced" a major terrorist attack on his watch, that
is the most charitable possible reading of events. Even if one
does manage to intrude upon regressive hallucinations by pointing out
that, uh sorry, it wasn't Jimmy Carter who was president of the United
States on 9/11, any regressive worthy of his stripes will demonstrate
great umbrage at the suggestion that Bush might have prevented that
day's attacks.
And, you know, personally, I suspect
that blocking secretly-planned terrorist strikes is pretty tricky business,
even for the best of governments at the top of their game. And
so, ordinarily I'd be inclined to cut any president some serious slack
on this question, assuming there was a competent team making its best
efforts at the admittedly difficult project of swatting flies in the
dark, with the necessity of getting them all.
And it is precisely this widely held
sense of fair play upon which regressives prey when they implicitly
exonerate the Bush administration for the failure of 9/11. But
there are two crucial flaws to this unstated (because it is never challenged,
and therefore doesn't need to be spoken) line of thought, and they
are in fact monstrous in both scope and effect.
The first is the notion - generally
implicit, but sometimes stated by people like Condoleezza Rice - that
nobody could have seen this sort of attack coming. She, for example,
has noted that when one used to think of terrorist airplane hijackings,
those scenarios involved simply flying the plane to Cuba or some such
place and demanding a ransom. Leave aside that some security officials
did, in fact, game out precisely the possibility of hijacking airplanes
and crashing them into buildings. And leave aside the odd twist
of logic that this approach entails, suggesting that mere 'regular'
hijackings would be acceptable and unnecessary to guard against.
Even apart from all that, what is so
galling about this lame defense is that it comes from the very same
people who consistently criticized the Clinton administration for supposedly
being weak on terrorism. In fact, Richard Clarke, who served both
presidents, in addition to Bush's father and Ronald Reagan, has indicated
emphatically - despite the fact that he's a Republican who voted
for Bush in 2000 - that Clinton was far more serious about combating
terrorism than his successor was.
It's well beyond outrageous for regressives
to simultaneously attack the Clinton administration for its failures
at preempting terrorist attacks - against the World Trade Center,
against the USS Cole, against American embassies in Africa - and yet
fully exonerate Bush, heroically even, for 9/11. Unless I'm
reading my history book upside down again (as I am sometimes wont to
do 'cause it makes so much more sense that way), the Bush administration
came after Clinton. They had no excuse for being less vigilant
against an Al Qaeda attack, especially given their fondness for labeling
Clinton as weak on terrorism.
But the second implicit logic underlying
the exoneration of the Bush administration for 9/11 is even more gratuitous.
It's the unspoken presumption that the administration did everything
it could and simply couldn't prevent the attack any more than all
the will and all the effort in the world could stop a tsunami coursing
across the ocean from reaching its destination.
But here's what Clarke said in 2004,
and it's important to remember that he was not some off-the-pigs-counterculture-beret-wearing-dope-smoking-stuck-forever-in-1968-radical-Mao-spouting-militant,
but, rather, the very man that George W. Bush hired to head his anti-terrorism
efforts: "Frankly, I find it outrageous that the president is
running for re-election on the grounds that he's done such great things
about terrorism. He ignored it. He ignored terrorism for
months, when maybe we could have done something to stop 9/11.
Maybe. We'll never know. I think he's done a terrible job
on the war against terrorism."
Clarke had good reasons to say these
things, too. He had tried in vain for eight months to get a meeting
of top Bush administration officials on the question of terrorism and
the Al Qaeda threat. Nobody would take the matter seriously.
He finally got his meeting, but it was one week prior to 9/11, and the
administration still had little interest in terrorism, because it was
already entirely focused on Iraq. His meeting got hijacked, so
to speak.
The myth of basic Bush administration
competence in fighting terrorism is similarly shattered by George Tenet's
efforts of a similar nature. The CIA director was also hearing
alarm bells going off like crazy in the weeks before 9/11. Unable
to shake the administration out of its stupor, Tenet finally resorted
to calling an emergency meeting with National Security Adviser Condoleezza
Rice. He still could not manage to move the Bush team into action.
She wasn't interested.
And then there's the president himself.
He was famously briefed on August 6, 2001, one month before the attack,
with an urgent report entitled, "Bin Laden Determined To Strike In
US". Bush was in Crawford, Texas, chainsawing brush, pretending
to be a Texan, and playing cowboys and Indians. What was his reaction
to this seven alarm emergency? This president - who, by the
way, spent more time on vacation than any other American president in
history - remained on vacation for an entire month prior to 9/11.
Even more telling was Bush's immediate
reaction to this briefing. He telegraphed his level of concern
by responding to the CIA briefer who presented him with the report using
these infamous words: "All right. You've covered your
ass, now."
Unless one lives with Alice, the Mad
Hatter and the Queen of Hearts in some sort of LSD-soaked Wonderland
- which I'm increasingly convinced all regressives in fact do -
it's impossible to reconcile these historical facts with any plausible
argument that the Bush administration was competent, or even seriously
concerned, about fighting terrorism. If there is any doubt about
this whatsoever, just try replacing the name Bush in these stories with
Obama. The lunatics on the right are literally already calling
Obama a socialist, communist, and fascist, while worrying out loud about
his secret plan to turn America into a Muslim paradise. Imagine
what they would say about him if his top terrorism advisor and his CIA
director warned him of a looming attack, he responded to that warning
by accusing them of bureaucratic ass-covering and by spending the next
month on vacation, and then 3000 Americans died in an attack he failed
to take seriously.
Given what they already say about Obama,
or Clinton, and given a repeat of these same set of facts that actually
do apply to George Bush, I could quite literally imagine a massive,
angry and violent march on Washington - think tea parties on steroids,
complete with roid rage - in which the president's life would literally
be in danger. And you know what? People should be incredibly
angry at any president so incompetent, so negligent, and so cavalier.
But, of course, George Bush's job approval
ratings only skyrocketed in the wake of 9/11, and he remains a favorite
of regressives unto this day, who also miraculously completely buy into
the myth of George the Protector, the guy who kept us safe (except when
he didn't). So much so that even the former vice president could
wait only a week or two into the new administration to begin lining
up the predicate for blame should the United States experience another
terrorist attack during the Obama administration.
In the end, all of this is powerful testament
to the skill regressives possess at bludgeoning and marketing.
Even middle Americans, who long ago migrated from supporting George
Bush out of fear to despising the little puke for all the manifold and
righteous reasons there are to choose from, still buy into the myth
that Bush kept us safe. Nobody ever blames him for 9/11, despite
the fact that there is ample evidence overwhelmingly demonstrating his
administration's complete failure leading up to that day.
And, miraculously, nobody thinks of him
with any sort of historical accuracy on this question. Not only
is he not the president who kept us safe, he is indeed precisely the
opposite. He is the one president - out of forty-four, serving
for over two centuries time - on whose watch a massive terrorist attack
took place.
Even as Barack Obama endears himself
to America by returning the careening, hurtling eighteen wheeler to
the middle-of-the-road - right there with Jim Hightower's proverbial
yellow stripes and dead armadillos - and even as the Republican Party
finds new ways each week to commit political suicide by increment, attitudes
on this question still remains nothing short of astonishing.
Those among us - including tens of
millions who voted for Bush not just once, but twice - wishing to
dismiss the last eight years as some sort of aberrant nightmare should
stop for a long moment to consider the meaning of Bush administration
mythology on the question of terrorism and national security.
Maybe it's true that regressive freaks
can no longer plausibly run around bragging about how great the boy
king was on economics, or fighting bad guys abroad. Woo-hoo.
Yep, we've come a long way, for sure.
But surely it is a measure of this society's
profoundly pathetic and unyielding political immaturity that these lunatics
can still get away with lauding the former president with the monumental
claim of keeping America safe, when in fact he did just the opposite.
What kind of country is it where so manifestly
absurd and oxymoronic a line as that goes unchallenged?
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I'm really sick to death of hearing
the Bush administration people brag about how they kept us safe from
terrorists, matrimonially inclined homosexuals, and other really mean
people.
Sure, I understand why they do it.
And, no, I'm not referring to the fact that regressives seem to be
congenital liars, or that, because they themselves are so existentially
frightened, they understand instinctively just how the politics of fear
work.
No doubt all of that is part of the equation.
But I think the bigger reason that we are continually exposed to this
insane mantra is because, despite their delusional tendencies, even
conservatives recognize the paucity of plausible alternative claims.
I mean, would you want to go to the public
bragging about having booted two wars, one based entirely on lies, and
both strung out now about twice the length of America's involvement
in World War II? Would you run for office touting your party's
achievements at doubling the size of the national debt? Would
you point to Hurricane Katrina and say "Heckuva job, Bushie", expecting
the public to agree?
The truth is that, yes, regressives almost
always lie, and, yes, they love to play the politics of fear, but the
key reason that they brag about having kept the country safe during
the Bush years is because it's the only claim they can plausibly make
without being laughed out of the room.
In fact, though, they should be laughed
out of the room for making what is in reality the most absurd claim
of all. And then they should consider themselves damn lucky only
to be laughed at.
Disingenuous regressives (and what other
kind are there?) who try to sell you on this notion want you to believe
that the Bush administration somehow began on September 12, 2001.
They love to tell you about how the country was protected from terrorist
attack after 9/11. But that's odd, isn't it? I always
thought the job of the president was to protect the country for the
entire length of his administration, not just nine-tenths of it.
It gets even odder still if you inject
a little bit of logic into dissecting their argument, always a hugely
dangerous enterprise from the perspective of regressive mythology.
That is, let's just take them for a moment on their own terms, for
the sake of argument. We're supposed to be impressed that George
W. Bush kept the country safe from major terrorist attack. But
of his forty-two predecessors in the Oval Office, can you think of any
single one who failed to meet that test? Me neither.
Indeed, only one president experienced
a major foreign terrorist attack on his watch over the two and a quarter
centuries the United States has existed. His name was Bush, George
W. Somehow, they don't mention that part. Of course, the
joys of having conservatives around have always included the pleasure
of hearing lies to cover truth, bluster to mask fear, and arrogance
bluffing for insecurity. Likewise, the folks running hither and
yon squawking about how they kept us safe are actually the only ones
in the entire history of this country who, simply, did not. Did.
Not.
Yet, in fact, this is only the beginning
of the crime (and I won't even comment on the many strands of compelling
evidence suggesting that some or all of the official 9/11 story is a
fabrication). When I say that George W. Bush is the only president
to have "experienced" a major terrorist attack on his watch, that
is the most charitable possible reading of events. Even if one
does manage to intrude upon regressive hallucinations by pointing out
that, uh sorry, it wasn't Jimmy Carter who was president of the United
States on 9/11, any regressive worthy of his stripes will demonstrate
great umbrage at the suggestion that Bush might have prevented that
day's attacks.
And, you know, personally, I suspect
that blocking secretly-planned terrorist strikes is pretty tricky business,
even for the best of governments at the top of their game. And
so, ordinarily I'd be inclined to cut any president some serious slack
on this question, assuming there was a competent team making its best
efforts at the admittedly difficult project of swatting flies in the
dark, with the necessity of getting them all.
And it is precisely this widely held
sense of fair play upon which regressives prey when they implicitly
exonerate the Bush administration for the failure of 9/11. But
there are two crucial flaws to this unstated (because it is never challenged,
and therefore doesn't need to be spoken) line of thought, and they
are in fact monstrous in both scope and effect.
The first is the notion - generally
implicit, but sometimes stated by people like Condoleezza Rice - that
nobody could have seen this sort of attack coming. She, for example,
has noted that when one used to think of terrorist airplane hijackings,
those scenarios involved simply flying the plane to Cuba or some such
place and demanding a ransom. Leave aside that some security officials
did, in fact, game out precisely the possibility of hijacking airplanes
and crashing them into buildings. And leave aside the odd twist
of logic that this approach entails, suggesting that mere 'regular'
hijackings would be acceptable and unnecessary to guard against.
Even apart from all that, what is so
galling about this lame defense is that it comes from the very same
people who consistently criticized the Clinton administration for supposedly
being weak on terrorism. In fact, Richard Clarke, who served both
presidents, in addition to Bush's father and Ronald Reagan, has indicated
emphatically - despite the fact that he's a Republican who voted
for Bush in 2000 - that Clinton was far more serious about combating
terrorism than his successor was.
It's well beyond outrageous for regressives
to simultaneously attack the Clinton administration for its failures
at preempting terrorist attacks - against the World Trade Center,
against the USS Cole, against American embassies in Africa - and yet
fully exonerate Bush, heroically even, for 9/11. Unless I'm
reading my history book upside down again (as I am sometimes wont to
do 'cause it makes so much more sense that way), the Bush administration
came after Clinton. They had no excuse for being less vigilant
against an Al Qaeda attack, especially given their fondness for labeling
Clinton as weak on terrorism.
But the second implicit logic underlying
the exoneration of the Bush administration for 9/11 is even more gratuitous.
It's the unspoken presumption that the administration did everything
it could and simply couldn't prevent the attack any more than all
the will and all the effort in the world could stop a tsunami coursing
across the ocean from reaching its destination.
But here's what Clarke said in 2004,
and it's important to remember that he was not some off-the-pigs-counterculture-beret-wearing-dope-smoking-stuck-forever-in-1968-radical-Mao-spouting-militant,
but, rather, the very man that George W. Bush hired to head his anti-terrorism
efforts: "Frankly, I find it outrageous that the president is
running for re-election on the grounds that he's done such great things
about terrorism. He ignored it. He ignored terrorism for
months, when maybe we could have done something to stop 9/11.
Maybe. We'll never know. I think he's done a terrible job
on the war against terrorism."
Clarke had good reasons to say these
things, too. He had tried in vain for eight months to get a meeting
of top Bush administration officials on the question of terrorism and
the Al Qaeda threat. Nobody would take the matter seriously.
He finally got his meeting, but it was one week prior to 9/11, and the
administration still had little interest in terrorism, because it was
already entirely focused on Iraq. His meeting got hijacked, so
to speak.
The myth of basic Bush administration
competence in fighting terrorism is similarly shattered by George Tenet's
efforts of a similar nature. The CIA director was also hearing
alarm bells going off like crazy in the weeks before 9/11. Unable
to shake the administration out of its stupor, Tenet finally resorted
to calling an emergency meeting with National Security Adviser Condoleezza
Rice. He still could not manage to move the Bush team into action.
She wasn't interested.
And then there's the president himself.
He was famously briefed on August 6, 2001, one month before the attack,
with an urgent report entitled, "Bin Laden Determined To Strike In
US". Bush was in Crawford, Texas, chainsawing brush, pretending
to be a Texan, and playing cowboys and Indians. What was his reaction
to this seven alarm emergency? This president - who, by the
way, spent more time on vacation than any other American president in
history - remained on vacation for an entire month prior to 9/11.
Even more telling was Bush's immediate
reaction to this briefing. He telegraphed his level of concern
by responding to the CIA briefer who presented him with the report using
these infamous words: "All right. You've covered your
ass, now."
Unless one lives with Alice, the Mad
Hatter and the Queen of Hearts in some sort of LSD-soaked Wonderland
- which I'm increasingly convinced all regressives in fact do -
it's impossible to reconcile these historical facts with any plausible
argument that the Bush administration was competent, or even seriously
concerned, about fighting terrorism. If there is any doubt about
this whatsoever, just try replacing the name Bush in these stories with
Obama. The lunatics on the right are literally already calling
Obama a socialist, communist, and fascist, while worrying out loud about
his secret plan to turn America into a Muslim paradise. Imagine
what they would say about him if his top terrorism advisor and his CIA
director warned him of a looming attack, he responded to that warning
by accusing them of bureaucratic ass-covering and by spending the next
month on vacation, and then 3000 Americans died in an attack he failed
to take seriously.
Given what they already say about Obama,
or Clinton, and given a repeat of these same set of facts that actually
do apply to George Bush, I could quite literally imagine a massive,
angry and violent march on Washington - think tea parties on steroids,
complete with roid rage - in which the president's life would literally
be in danger. And you know what? People should be incredibly
angry at any president so incompetent, so negligent, and so cavalier.
But, of course, George Bush's job approval
ratings only skyrocketed in the wake of 9/11, and he remains a favorite
of regressives unto this day, who also miraculously completely buy into
the myth of George the Protector, the guy who kept us safe (except when
he didn't). So much so that even the former vice president could
wait only a week or two into the new administration to begin lining
up the predicate for blame should the United States experience another
terrorist attack during the Obama administration.
In the end, all of this is powerful testament
to the skill regressives possess at bludgeoning and marketing.
Even middle Americans, who long ago migrated from supporting George
Bush out of fear to despising the little puke for all the manifold and
righteous reasons there are to choose from, still buy into the myth
that Bush kept us safe. Nobody ever blames him for 9/11, despite
the fact that there is ample evidence overwhelmingly demonstrating his
administration's complete failure leading up to that day.
And, miraculously, nobody thinks of him
with any sort of historical accuracy on this question. Not only
is he not the president who kept us safe, he is indeed precisely the
opposite. He is the one president - out of forty-four, serving
for over two centuries time - on whose watch a massive terrorist attack
took place.
Even as Barack Obama endears himself
to America by returning the careening, hurtling eighteen wheeler to
the middle-of-the-road - right there with Jim Hightower's proverbial
yellow stripes and dead armadillos - and even as the Republican Party
finds new ways each week to commit political suicide by increment, attitudes
on this question still remains nothing short of astonishing.
Those among us - including tens of
millions who voted for Bush not just once, but twice - wishing to
dismiss the last eight years as some sort of aberrant nightmare should
stop for a long moment to consider the meaning of Bush administration
mythology on the question of terrorism and national security.
Maybe it's true that regressive freaks
can no longer plausibly run around bragging about how great the boy
king was on economics, or fighting bad guys abroad. Woo-hoo.
Yep, we've come a long way, for sure.
But surely it is a measure of this society's
profoundly pathetic and unyielding political immaturity that these lunatics
can still get away with lauding the former president with the monumental
claim of keeping America safe, when in fact he did just the opposite.
What kind of country is it where so manifestly
absurd and oxymoronic a line as that goes unchallenged?
I'm really sick to death of hearing
the Bush administration people brag about how they kept us safe from
terrorists, matrimonially inclined homosexuals, and other really mean
people.
Sure, I understand why they do it.
And, no, I'm not referring to the fact that regressives seem to be
congenital liars, or that, because they themselves are so existentially
frightened, they understand instinctively just how the politics of fear
work.
No doubt all of that is part of the equation.
But I think the bigger reason that we are continually exposed to this
insane mantra is because, despite their delusional tendencies, even
conservatives recognize the paucity of plausible alternative claims.
I mean, would you want to go to the public
bragging about having booted two wars, one based entirely on lies, and
both strung out now about twice the length of America's involvement
in World War II? Would you run for office touting your party's
achievements at doubling the size of the national debt? Would
you point to Hurricane Katrina and say "Heckuva job, Bushie", expecting
the public to agree?
The truth is that, yes, regressives almost
always lie, and, yes, they love to play the politics of fear, but the
key reason that they brag about having kept the country safe during
the Bush years is because it's the only claim they can plausibly make
without being laughed out of the room.
In fact, though, they should be laughed
out of the room for making what is in reality the most absurd claim
of all. And then they should consider themselves damn lucky only
to be laughed at.
Disingenuous regressives (and what other
kind are there?) who try to sell you on this notion want you to believe
that the Bush administration somehow began on September 12, 2001.
They love to tell you about how the country was protected from terrorist
attack after 9/11. But that's odd, isn't it? I always
thought the job of the president was to protect the country for the
entire length of his administration, not just nine-tenths of it.
It gets even odder still if you inject
a little bit of logic into dissecting their argument, always a hugely
dangerous enterprise from the perspective of regressive mythology.
That is, let's just take them for a moment on their own terms, for
the sake of argument. We're supposed to be impressed that George
W. Bush kept the country safe from major terrorist attack. But
of his forty-two predecessors in the Oval Office, can you think of any
single one who failed to meet that test? Me neither.
Indeed, only one president experienced
a major foreign terrorist attack on his watch over the two and a quarter
centuries the United States has existed. His name was Bush, George
W. Somehow, they don't mention that part. Of course, the
joys of having conservatives around have always included the pleasure
of hearing lies to cover truth, bluster to mask fear, and arrogance
bluffing for insecurity. Likewise, the folks running hither and
yon squawking about how they kept us safe are actually the only ones
in the entire history of this country who, simply, did not. Did.
Not.
Yet, in fact, this is only the beginning
of the crime (and I won't even comment on the many strands of compelling
evidence suggesting that some or all of the official 9/11 story is a
fabrication). When I say that George W. Bush is the only president
to have "experienced" a major terrorist attack on his watch, that
is the most charitable possible reading of events. Even if one
does manage to intrude upon regressive hallucinations by pointing out
that, uh sorry, it wasn't Jimmy Carter who was president of the United
States on 9/11, any regressive worthy of his stripes will demonstrate
great umbrage at the suggestion that Bush might have prevented that
day's attacks.
And, you know, personally, I suspect
that blocking secretly-planned terrorist strikes is pretty tricky business,
even for the best of governments at the top of their game. And
so, ordinarily I'd be inclined to cut any president some serious slack
on this question, assuming there was a competent team making its best
efforts at the admittedly difficult project of swatting flies in the
dark, with the necessity of getting them all.
And it is precisely this widely held
sense of fair play upon which regressives prey when they implicitly
exonerate the Bush administration for the failure of 9/11. But
there are two crucial flaws to this unstated (because it is never challenged,
and therefore doesn't need to be spoken) line of thought, and they
are in fact monstrous in both scope and effect.
The first is the notion - generally
implicit, but sometimes stated by people like Condoleezza Rice - that
nobody could have seen this sort of attack coming. She, for example,
has noted that when one used to think of terrorist airplane hijackings,
those scenarios involved simply flying the plane to Cuba or some such
place and demanding a ransom. Leave aside that some security officials
did, in fact, game out precisely the possibility of hijacking airplanes
and crashing them into buildings. And leave aside the odd twist
of logic that this approach entails, suggesting that mere 'regular'
hijackings would be acceptable and unnecessary to guard against.
Even apart from all that, what is so
galling about this lame defense is that it comes from the very same
people who consistently criticized the Clinton administration for supposedly
being weak on terrorism. In fact, Richard Clarke, who served both
presidents, in addition to Bush's father and Ronald Reagan, has indicated
emphatically - despite the fact that he's a Republican who voted
for Bush in 2000 - that Clinton was far more serious about combating
terrorism than his successor was.
It's well beyond outrageous for regressives
to simultaneously attack the Clinton administration for its failures
at preempting terrorist attacks - against the World Trade Center,
against the USS Cole, against American embassies in Africa - and yet
fully exonerate Bush, heroically even, for 9/11. Unless I'm
reading my history book upside down again (as I am sometimes wont to
do 'cause it makes so much more sense that way), the Bush administration
came after Clinton. They had no excuse for being less vigilant
against an Al Qaeda attack, especially given their fondness for labeling
Clinton as weak on terrorism.
But the second implicit logic underlying
the exoneration of the Bush administration for 9/11 is even more gratuitous.
It's the unspoken presumption that the administration did everything
it could and simply couldn't prevent the attack any more than all
the will and all the effort in the world could stop a tsunami coursing
across the ocean from reaching its destination.
But here's what Clarke said in 2004,
and it's important to remember that he was not some off-the-pigs-counterculture-beret-wearing-dope-smoking-stuck-forever-in-1968-radical-Mao-spouting-militant,
but, rather, the very man that George W. Bush hired to head his anti-terrorism
efforts: "Frankly, I find it outrageous that the president is
running for re-election on the grounds that he's done such great things
about terrorism. He ignored it. He ignored terrorism for
months, when maybe we could have done something to stop 9/11.
Maybe. We'll never know. I think he's done a terrible job
on the war against terrorism."
Clarke had good reasons to say these
things, too. He had tried in vain for eight months to get a meeting
of top Bush administration officials on the question of terrorism and
the Al Qaeda threat. Nobody would take the matter seriously.
He finally got his meeting, but it was one week prior to 9/11, and the
administration still had little interest in terrorism, because it was
already entirely focused on Iraq. His meeting got hijacked, so
to speak.
The myth of basic Bush administration
competence in fighting terrorism is similarly shattered by George Tenet's
efforts of a similar nature. The CIA director was also hearing
alarm bells going off like crazy in the weeks before 9/11. Unable
to shake the administration out of its stupor, Tenet finally resorted
to calling an emergency meeting with National Security Adviser Condoleezza
Rice. He still could not manage to move the Bush team into action.
She wasn't interested.
And then there's the president himself.
He was famously briefed on August 6, 2001, one month before the attack,
with an urgent report entitled, "Bin Laden Determined To Strike In
US". Bush was in Crawford, Texas, chainsawing brush, pretending
to be a Texan, and playing cowboys and Indians. What was his reaction
to this seven alarm emergency? This president - who, by the
way, spent more time on vacation than any other American president in
history - remained on vacation for an entire month prior to 9/11.
Even more telling was Bush's immediate
reaction to this briefing. He telegraphed his level of concern
by responding to the CIA briefer who presented him with the report using
these infamous words: "All right. You've covered your
ass, now."
Unless one lives with Alice, the Mad
Hatter and the Queen of Hearts in some sort of LSD-soaked Wonderland
- which I'm increasingly convinced all regressives in fact do -
it's impossible to reconcile these historical facts with any plausible
argument that the Bush administration was competent, or even seriously
concerned, about fighting terrorism. If there is any doubt about
this whatsoever, just try replacing the name Bush in these stories with
Obama. The lunatics on the right are literally already calling
Obama a socialist, communist, and fascist, while worrying out loud about
his secret plan to turn America into a Muslim paradise. Imagine
what they would say about him if his top terrorism advisor and his CIA
director warned him of a looming attack, he responded to that warning
by accusing them of bureaucratic ass-covering and by spending the next
month on vacation, and then 3000 Americans died in an attack he failed
to take seriously.
Given what they already say about Obama,
or Clinton, and given a repeat of these same set of facts that actually
do apply to George Bush, I could quite literally imagine a massive,
angry and violent march on Washington - think tea parties on steroids,
complete with roid rage - in which the president's life would literally
be in danger. And you know what? People should be incredibly
angry at any president so incompetent, so negligent, and so cavalier.
But, of course, George Bush's job approval
ratings only skyrocketed in the wake of 9/11, and he remains a favorite
of regressives unto this day, who also miraculously completely buy into
the myth of George the Protector, the guy who kept us safe (except when
he didn't). So much so that even the former vice president could
wait only a week or two into the new administration to begin lining
up the predicate for blame should the United States experience another
terrorist attack during the Obama administration.
In the end, all of this is powerful testament
to the skill regressives possess at bludgeoning and marketing.
Even middle Americans, who long ago migrated from supporting George
Bush out of fear to despising the little puke for all the manifold and
righteous reasons there are to choose from, still buy into the myth
that Bush kept us safe. Nobody ever blames him for 9/11, despite
the fact that there is ample evidence overwhelmingly demonstrating his
administration's complete failure leading up to that day.
And, miraculously, nobody thinks of him
with any sort of historical accuracy on this question. Not only
is he not the president who kept us safe, he is indeed precisely the
opposite. He is the one president - out of forty-four, serving
for over two centuries time - on whose watch a massive terrorist attack
took place.
Even as Barack Obama endears himself
to America by returning the careening, hurtling eighteen wheeler to
the middle-of-the-road - right there with Jim Hightower's proverbial
yellow stripes and dead armadillos - and even as the Republican Party
finds new ways each week to commit political suicide by increment, attitudes
on this question still remains nothing short of astonishing.
Those among us - including tens of
millions who voted for Bush not just once, but twice - wishing to
dismiss the last eight years as some sort of aberrant nightmare should
stop for a long moment to consider the meaning of Bush administration
mythology on the question of terrorism and national security.
Maybe it's true that regressive freaks
can no longer plausibly run around bragging about how great the boy
king was on economics, or fighting bad guys abroad. Woo-hoo.
Yep, we've come a long way, for sure.
But surely it is a measure of this society's
profoundly pathetic and unyielding political immaturity that these lunatics
can still get away with lauding the former president with the monumental
claim of keeping America safe, when in fact he did just the opposite.
What kind of country is it where so manifestly
absurd and oxymoronic a line as that goes unchallenged?
"What is it going to take for Senate Republicans to oppose this unfit nominee? Every Republican senator who votes to confirm Bove will be complicit in undermining the rule of law and judicial independence."
After a second whistleblower came forward claiming that Emil Bove III instructed attorneys at the U.S. Department of Justice to ignore federal court orders, his critics on Friday renewed calls for the Senate to reject the DOJ official's appointment as an appellate judge.
"Evidence is growing that Emil Bove urged Department of Justice lawyers to ignore federal court orders. That alone should disqualify him from a lifetime appointment to one of the most powerful courts in our country," said Sean Eldridge, president and founder of the progressive advocacy group Stand Up America, in a statement.
U.S. President Donald Trump announced in late May that he would nominate Bove, his former personal attorney, to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit. Then, last month, a whistleblower complaint was filed by Erez Reuveni, who was fired from the DOJ's Office of Immigration Litigation in April after expressing concerns about the Kilmar Ábrego García case.
On Friday, as the Republican-controlled Senate was moving toward confirming Bove, the group Whistleblower Aid announced that another former Justice Department lawyer, whose name is not being disclosed, "has lawfully disclosed evidence to the DOJ's Office of the Inspector General that corroborates the thrust of the whistleblower claims" from Reuveni.
"Loyalty to one individual must never outweigh supporting and protecting the fundamental rights of those living in the United States."
"What we're seeing here is something I never thought would be possible on such a wide scale: federal prosecutors appointed by the Trump administration intentionally presenting dubious if not outright false evidence to a court of jurisdiction in cases that impact a person's fundamental rights not only under our Constitution, but their natural rights as humans," said Whistleblower Aid chief legal counsel Andrew Bakaj in a statement.
"What this means is that federal career attorneys who swore an oath to uphold the Constitution are now being pressured to abdicate that promise in favor of fealty to a single person, specifically Donald Trump. Loyalty to one individual must never outweigh supporting and protecting the fundamental rights of those living in the United States," Bakaj added. "Our client and Mr. Reuveni are true patriots—prioritizing their commitment to democracy over advancing their careers."
Bove has also faced mounting opposition—including from dozens of former judges—due to his embrace of the so-called "unitary executive theory" as well as his positions on a potential third Trump term and the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol by the president's supporters.
The Senate on Thursday voted 50-48 to proceed with the consideration of Bove's nomination. Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Susan Collins (Maine) joined all Democrats in opposition. Responding in a statement, Demand Justice interim executive director Maggie Jo Buchanan warned that "Bove will be a stain on the judiciary if confirmed."
"Voting to confirm Trump's judicial nominees to lifetime seats on the federal bench, as he wages a war on the very idea of judicial independence, is an unacceptable choice for any senator who believes in our democracy and the importance of individual rights," said Buchanan, who also blasted the Senate's Tuesday confirmation of Joshua Divine to be a U.S. district judge for the Eastern and Western Districts of Missouri.
"Trump and his MAGA allies are helping him consolidate power in the executive branch, attacking judges who dare to rule against his interests, and targeting Trump's perceived political enemies—all while seemingly unconcerned about the future this sets up for our nation," she stressed. "Every senator will have to decide where they stand when it comes to this assault on our country's values—and that choice will not be forgotten."
After news of the second whistleblower complaint broke on Friday, Stand Up America's Eldridge declared that "again and again, Bove has proven he lacks the temperament, integrity, and independence to serve on the federal bench. He's nothing more than a political foot soldier doing Trump's bidding."
"What is it going to take for Senate Republicans to oppose this unfit nominee?" he added. "Every Republican senator who votes to confirm Bove will be complicit in undermining the rule of law and judicial independence."
"This administration deserves no credit for just barely averting a crisis they themselves set in motion," said one Democratic senator.
While welcoming reporting that the Trump administration will release more than $5 billion in federal funding for schools that it has been withholding for nearly a month, U.S. educators and others said Friday that the funds should never have been held up in the first place and warned that the attempt to do so was just one part of an ongoing campaign to undermine public education.
The Trump administration placed nearly $7 billion in federal education funding for K-12 public schools under review last month, then released $1.3 billion of it last week amid legal action and widespread backlash. An administration official speaking on condition of anonymity told The Washington Post that all reviews of remaining funding are now over.
"There is no good reason for the chaos and stress this president has inflicted on students, teachers, and parents across America for the last month, and it shouldn't take widespread blowback for this administration to do its job and simply get the funding out the door that Congress has delivered to help students," U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee Vice Chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said Friday.
"This administration deserves no credit for just barely averting a crisis they themselves set in motion," Murray added. "You don't thank a burglar for returning your cash after you've spent a month figuring out if you'd have to sell your house to make up the difference."
🚨After unlawfully withholding billions in education funding for schools, the Trump Admin. has reversed course.This is a massive victory for students, educators, & families who depend on these essential resources.And it's a testament to public pressure & relentless organizing.
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— Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (@pressley.house.gov) July 25, 2025 at 1:42 PM
Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward—which represents plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration's funding freeze—said Friday that "if these reports are true, this is a major victory for public education and the communities it serves."
"This news following our legal challenge is a direct result of collective action by educators, families, and advocates across the country," Perryman asserted. "These funds are critical to keeping teachers in classrooms, supporting students in vulnerable conditions, and ensuring schools can offer the programs and services that every child deserves."
"While this development shows that legal and public pressure can make a difference, school districts, parents, and educators should not have to take the administration to court to secure funds for their students," she added. "Our promise to the people remains: We will go to court to protect the rights and well-being of all people living in America."
Democratic Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes—a plaintiff in a separate lawsuit challenging the withholding—attributed the administration's backpedaling to litigatory pressure, arguing that the funding "should never have been withheld in the first place."
They released the 7 B IN SCHOOL FUNDS!! This is a huge win. It means fighting back matters. Fighting for what kids & communities need is always the right thing to do! www.washingtonpost.com/education/20...
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— Randi Weingarten (@rweingarten.bsky.social) July 25, 2025 at 11:46 AM
Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association—the largest U.S. labor union—said in a statement: "Playing games with students' futures has real-world consequences. School districts in every state have been scrambling to figure out how they will continue to meet student needs without this vital federal funding, and many students in parts of the country have already headed back to school. These reckless funding delays have undermined planning, staffing, and support services at a time when schools should be focused on preparing students for success."
"Sadly, this is part of a broader pattern by this administration of undermining public education—starving it of resources, sowing distrust, and pushing privatization at the expense of the nation's most vulnerable students," Pringle added. "And they are doing this at the same time Congress has passed a budget bill that will devastate our students, schools, and communities by slashing funds meant for public education, healthcare, and keeping students from their school meals—all to finance massive tax breaks for billionaires."
While expanding support for private education, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed by President Donald Trump earlier this month weakens public school programs including before- and after-school initiatives and services for English language learners.
"Sadly, this is part of a broader pattern by this administration of undermining public education."
Trump also signed an executive order in March directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to begin the process of shutting down the Department of Education—a longtime goal of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation-led roadmap for a far-right takeover and gutting of the federal government closely linked to Trump, despite his unconvincing efforts to distance himself from the highly controversial and unpopular plan.
Earlier this week, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office determined that the U.S. Health and Human Services Department illegally impounded crucial funds from the Head Start program, which provides comprehensive early childhood education, health, nutrition, and other services to low-income families.
"Instead of spending the last many weeks figuring out how to improve after-school options and get our kids' reading and math scores up, because of President Trump, communities across the country have been forced to spend their time cutting back on tutoring options and sorting out how many teachers they will have to lay off," Murray noted.
"It's time for President Trump, Secretary McMahon, and [Office of Management and Budget Director] Russ Vought to stop playing games with students' futures and families' livelihoods—and end their illegal assault on our students and their schools," the senator added.
"You want history books to not record you as an evil genocide supporter?" said one organizer. "You need to actually make an impact, NOW."
U.S. college students are still facing punishment for protesting Israel's U.S.-backed bombardment of Gaza and its starvation of more than 2 million Palestinians there, with Columbia University announcing this week the suspension and expulsion of dozens of students who spoke out over the past year.
But a number of observers have pointed to a shift in the rhetoric of some of the student organizers' biggest detractors in recent days, with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton notably saying Thursday that "thousands of children in Gaza are at risk of starvation while trucks full of food sit waiting across the border" and calling for "the full flow of humanitarian assistance" to be restored.
Clinton didn't mention the Israeli blockade that has kept food from reaching Palestinians, more than 120 of whom have now died of starvation, or the at least $12.5 billion in military aid the U.S. has provided to Israel since the blockade first began in October 2023—in violation of U.S. laws prohibiting the government from giving military aid to countries that block humanitarian aid.
The former Democratic presidential nominee also didn't acknowledge the remarks she made in May 2024 about the campus protests that were spreading across the country, with students demanding that their schools divest from companies that work with the Israeli government and that the country end its support for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
At the time, Clinton said students who oppose Israel's policies in Gaza and the West Bank "don't know very much" about the conflict there. Clinton and other politicians from both the Democratic and Republican parties have repeated the familiar phrase, "Israel has a right to defend itself" as the IDF has attacked so-called "safe zones," hospitals, and refugee camps.
Some suggested her comments on Thursday appeared to be those of an influential political figure who's come to a realization about the situation that both the Biden and Trump administrations, with bipartisan support from Congress, have helped to bring about in Gaza.
"Seems mostly like all the recent photos of starving children are responsible for this shift, though humanitarian aid groups have been warning about this for months and months," said Washington Post reporter Jeff Stein.
One observer said Clinton and a number of European leaders are speaking out now because Israel has already "carried out their final solution."
As Common Dreams reported this week, Integrated Food Security Phase Classification has said that 85% of people in Gaza are now in Phase 5 of famine, defined at "an extreme deprivation of food."
New York Times columnist Megan Stack said she welcomed anyone who is "[waking] up" to the reality of man-made mass starvation made possible by U.S. support, but called it "an absolute indictment of the center-left, such as it is, that it took pictures of dying, skeletal babies with trash bags for diapers to muster this pale response."
"Subtext: We can stomach mass bombings, but starvation is a bridge too far," said Stack.
The comments from Clinton coincided with a shift in the corporate media's coverage of Gaza, with major outlets focusing heavily on the impact of starvation.
Organizer and attorney Aaron Regunberg said that instead of simply doing "reputational damage control by speaking up in these very last moments," powerful political leaders must "shut shit down."
"You want history books to not record you as an evil genocide supporter?" said Regunberg. "One speech now—after countless speeches condemning those who have been speaking out—ain't gonna cut it... You need to go to Gaza. You need to actually make an impact, NOW."
Progressive organizer Lindsey Boylan wondered whether establishment leaders "will ever admit that smearing all protests to stop the genocide actually contributed to the genocide."
"Few people could have played a more pivotal role in shaping the democratic response to prevent genocide," said Boylan of Clinton's comments. "Now here we are. Watching mass death of kids."
On Friday, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who has consistently demanded that the Biden and Trump administrations stop funding Israel's assault on Gaza and warned of the impact mass starvation would have, issued his latest call for U.S. support to end immediately.
"American taxpayer dollars are being used to starve children, bomb civilians, and support the cruelty of [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu and his criminal ministers," said Sanders. "Enough is enough. The White House and Congress must immediately act to end this war using the full scope of American influence. No more military aid to the Netanyahu government. History will condemn those who fail to act in the face of this horror."