I think Bush and Cheney are criminals. I’m not giving them a pass on their politics. But if we put aside any 9/11 conspiracy theories and assume it was a genuine crisis situation in those short minutes a lot was actually accomplished without Bush which is exactly how the system is designed. Any president whatever their politics or IQ, gets picked up and carried around like a rag doll by the secret service in situations like that. They may have a telephone in their hand as they get carried off but they aren’t in control of their travel plans for the moment.
Bush was probably already wearing a hidden wire to help him get through the harder words in the goat story and was being fed constant information through that, if not the handwritten signs being held up to him from the back of the room.
Sure. But when considering the decisions made we don’t just look at what actually happened but what could very well have happened. As things played out, UA93 went down without intervention. The other planes reached their targets and did at least the damage AQ had hoped for (in the case of WTC) or slightly less (the Pentagon).
So where did we see the result of any action taken by the Bush admin play a part in how everything went down?
There could just as well have been five or ten planes in the air. One jetliner could have been taken out on Cheneys blanket authorization, only to later find that it was never hijacked. And if so, would relatives of those casualties and the nation been satisfied that it was done on a blanket authorization from VPOTUS, delegating the final decision to the military?
They must have assumed Bush was a target. Therefore sitting around reading to kids would jeopardize them too. Once he was airborne ,they secreted him as quickly as possible. The time in the school makes no sense.
it has always been my impression that if the Secret Service feels the President is in actual danger, they grab him and move him, whether he wants to go or not.
Now I may be wrong, but I gotta think that Secret Service didn’t feel the President was target where he was.
Despite rampant speculation about Flight 93’s target, I’m pretty sure Al-Qaeda’s target list that day did not include a Florida middle school. I’m also pretty sure the SS (and Bush) didn’t think Bush was in imminent danger.
However, I’m willing to stand corrected in the face of compelling evidence.
I have to say I find the people defending Bush here to be bizarre. There is absolutely no justification - none whatseover - for not immediately going to a place where he can get the most possible information (even if it’s just watching CNN) as he can. You can say “in hindsight it’s not like he could’ve done anything” but we didn’t know that at the time. “He didn’t want to scare the kids” is the dumbest fucking excuse I’ve ever heard. The country is under attack, of unknown scope, and we have to worry about the fucking commander of our military possibly making some kids nervous if he doesn’t finish reading a fucking book to them?
It’s such a bizarre reaction that I can’t even understand where the defense is coming from. “You don’t know what you’d do in his shoes”? This is a guy who always has access to the fucking nuclear codes and may be required to make world-wrecking decisions in a few minute’s time. But apparently responding to an attack on the US - even if only to get more information - is so beyond his capability to function and you somehow see this as a mitigating factor? That’s a total fucking disaster.
There can be no excuse whatsoever for his behavior and the idea that anyone would even defend it is absurd to me.
If we’re gonna go back down this well worn a path let’s go back even further: why Monica Lewinsky? I understand Bill Clinton was a busy man but…really? The leader of the most powerful nation in human history can’t get better ass? Not to knock on Monica in particular too much. I’m sure she’s a sweet girl. Maybe they had good chemistry. Maybe she really liked that cigar trick. And compared to this last decade it’s actually a pretty respectable relationship: she didn’t end up in a shallow grave, she consented, there was no cock shot on twitter, she wasn’t a prostitute, and she was an actual woman instead of a rental boy or a cop in the next stall. But let’s be real: JFK is rolling over in his grave.
Or hey, remember when Bush won in 2004 because everyone was scurred of of TEH GAY? Good times. Or as IOZ pointed out:
Because the new flavor just isn’t as satisfying. Yeah you can harumph on Obama for killing train cars full of brown people or torture or for being BFF to the banking and insurance companies or for doing the very things he railed against but it just isn’t the same as a blue blooded fake cowboy talking about putting food on your family. Even hardcore dissident blogs just can’t find it in them anymore. Bush had that it factor that turned the common man into a poet.
Agreed to everything, but with the caveat that it was a chaotic situation and people make suboptimal decisions, which is to be expected. But usually they get to eat them up later - Dubya got off pretty much scot-free, because they caught a break and their suboptimal handling didn’t affect the outcome in any obvious way, and the rally to the flag and the Bush admin’s willingness to use that to beat down dissent made any criticism de facto verboten for years to come.
Plausible. It was not an impeachable offense. The issue is, to me:
(a) we expect a higher standard from the president, the commander in chief. We expect him to be able to think and act on his feet in a time of crisis, to be curious about gathering information, to be proactive about sketching out plans for decisions that can be made as more information comes in
(b) people defend his actions in this incredible heel-digging-in partisan fashion. If most Republicans said “yeah, he was probably just in shock for a few minutes, not his finest hour” I would care a heck of a lot less. Instead you get lengthy arguments will all sorts of bizarre justifications as to why his actions really don’t reflect poorly on him at all
I almost never quote an entire post because it’s so dead on perfect, but this is one of those times. It’s not that I can’t understand Bush’s actions. It’s that I can’t understand why anyone would defend them or support them.
This. I don’t care if he had any plans fully formulated. IT WAS HIS JOB AS PRESIDENT TO PRETEND HE DID! It was his fucking JOB to excuse himself and PRETEND he had a clue. We look to our leaders for leadership, even if it’s a fake, “I have this,” followed by a private, “What the fuck is going on?” Anything less is a failure of leadership.
One thing I remember about that morning was the constant meme by the TV journalists saying over and over again how not to rush to judgment that Muslims had done this. Remember right after the OKC bombing when they were looking for Muslims? We can jump to that conclusion just yet. We don’t know who did this or what they want.
But count me as one of the person saying that Bush didn’t do a damned thing wrong in this circumstance. You guys that don’t like him would have found fault with however he reacted.
Absurd. This is the commander in chief and the country is under attack. What if he, instead of doing a PR stunt reading to kids, was relaxing on a beach somewhere and decided to keep on soaking in the sun while he was told the country was under attack? Would that have made a difference? Why?
Hypothetically, what if the country was under a potential nuclear attack? Is it still cool for the president to lock up and freeze because he has no idea what to do and some people can sympathize with that?
It’s not a partisan issue. I wasn’t really anti-Bush in 2001 and I still thought it was fucking bizarre.
I’m not a Republican, or a conservative, or a Bush defender or a Bush fan. My posting history here should show that, but I can’t see damning him for a normal reaction. I’ve blasted at him enough for other things anyway.
Sometimes, something is both not very surprising and understandable, but still a fuck-up.
IOW, what Bush ought to have done and what his staff ought to have done is a different question than whether you as an individual choose to forgive them that they in the end didn’t do it.
somebody please agree with me that there is a difference between evil and incompetence, and the following popular ideas are total bullshit:
the war was the impetus of the president alone, and that the president has enough power to initiate a war singlehandedly, and
no matter how stupid and unjustified and poorly executed the war was, the idea that it was declared in the first place solely in the interest of murdering thousands of people
i’m not coming to anyone’s defense, but come on, get a grip here