OK I know this has been done to death and back again. But here in My humble oppinion I would like to say something about his book reading from my Brittish point of view.
I think Bush would have been highly praised by the Brittish press for remaining calm and continuing his allready started action of reading to the children. For the following reasons…
It would be believed that everyone who needed to make decisions about the terorist attacks would be in place to do their jobs without needing the ‘CEO’ to make decisions for them, the military and airforce could be authorised to act appropriately by high level individuals with the authority to do anything necessary in the emergency. Bush would not be involved in a decision to shoot down passenger jets, that would be a desision for the politicains in charge of the military (secretary of deffence I susspect)
It shows a certain ‘stiff upper lip’ attitude to not being phased on paniced by the actions happening.
If by some reason Bush himself was being targeted by a terrorist plane, then that plane would be flying at that school, it would be terribly cowardly for the president to evacuate the area whilst leaving those in and arround the school to be hit by the potential plane. By staying there he was if anything keeping the children safer because the airforce would be more likely to knock a plane out of the sky aimed at the president than one aimed at a school.
Now being a Brit, I don’t know the political system in America too well, if all decision making of the level of shooting down passanger jets has to go through the president, and cannot be made by subordinates, then my views above are mistaken. But then I would be worried about the US government relying so much on a single and not necessarily best able person to make such desisions.
(“not necessarily best able” refers to any president and all presidents)
If Bush were to show the Blitz spirit (which I feel is what you’re hinting toward), he’d have been in New York shaking the hands of Manhattan firefighters on the morning of the 12th.
No, I’m being serious. In the Blitz, Liz & George could have disappeared to Balmoral, but they didn’t. That’s stiff upper lip. Listening to a kid read for a few more minutes hardly compares.
BTW have you any evidence that the military would have had the authority to shoot down civilian aircraft?
None at all, that is part of what was questioned in the last part of the OP. I sertainly hope USA doesn’t reequire so heavily on one man to make important snap desisions. But I sometimes fear it does, I get no impression of there being an equivalent to the foreign office, the MOD, etc. capable of working without having to get everything approved by the prime minister.
I don’t have a problem with Bush spending seven minutes finishing the story – remaining calm, thinking about what to do next. Stiff upper lip. But he could have done a lot more during the next few days besides hiding.
I agree that most of the discussion of this issue here has been a waste of good hamster sweat. His apparent dithering had no practical consequence.
My criticism of Bush’s slow response stems from my own preference that leaders be rather more hands-on when the world is falling apart. But I understand that that just isn’t in him. (It seems that, after Johnson and Nixon, we prefer presidents who aren’t terribly ambitious.)
Our military command authority is rather murky, which is as it probably should be. Generally, it seems that decisions on the level of shooting down civilian aircraft should be made by the president, if “available.” The Veep and Secretary of Defense also possess a great amount of authority, and I believe Cheney was the one who initially gave the shoot-down command (in one line of authority, some midlevel yahoo sat on the order; if only we could get Congress to repeal Murphy’s Law).
Not surprised to hear the Brits see this as an expression of the old Stiff Upper Lip thing, and applaud it.
Regarding point 3: seems to me the sensible thing would have been to evacuate everyone from the school; but this is probably a contingency no one gave much thought to before 9/11 . . . .
We only know that with hindsight. Seven minutes when your country is under attack is a huge amount of time to site there ‘thinking about what to do next’ - I’d feel a lot more comfortable with somebody who was capable of doing that thinking while actually obtaining all the information available at that moment.