Oh, if, say some terrorists managed to nuke, say, San Fransisco, I expect Bush and most of the Republican leadership ( and a lot of their base ) would cheer and gloat in private, no matter what crocodile tears they would shed in public.
Not in the slightest, nor did his neocon friends, nor most ( all ? ) of the Republican leadership. They saw it as an excuse to attack Iraq and push their agenda, nothing more. They’d have cheerfully done it themselves. If the targets were poor people they would have reacted the same, because those poor people would still have been the tool they needed to get what they wanted.
They would have cared that it was an attack on American soil; they wouldn’t have cared much about the actual victims.
Bosda has missed the point, the raisin d’ eatery of the whole war. There was a tremendous opportunity in the wars. Not only could the party benefit from a constant drumming of jingoism, but old pals could make trainloads of money from the privatizing of the war and the rebuilding. Mr. Cheney himself held $450,000 worth of Halliburton stock options when he took office, and the stock price is now ten times what is was then. Despite efforts to suppress the reports, it’s clear that massive war profiteering is taking place.
That doesn’t even count the Bush family itself. The Bushes have been investment bankers for generations, and they always thrive in wartime. Former president Bush, GHWB, has not been a quiet retiree; he’s an investment banker, just like his pa and his grandpa. Imagine being in that line of work and having inside information from your son, the president!
Is it any surprise that GWB says we’re not leaving as long as he’s president?
Well, that might be a reason for several charitable organizations to want the war, but not Cheney. All of that stock is in a blind trust, and all the procededs go to charity.
If only it were that simple. The unfortunate truth is that Bush actually believes in what he’s doing.
Even if we stipulate that Cheney’s trust is as blind as a bat and all proceeds go to charity, the top brass at Halliburton are still all Cheney’s pals and cronies. Even if Cheney doesn’t make a nickel off of it, all those no-bid contracts for exorbitant prices benefit his buddies.
Would Bush had cared as much if the 9/11 targets were different? I don’t know about that. But I think the nation may not have. It was the image of those towers falling that stirred the great outrage. If as many people had died and the towers had been salvaged, I rather doubt the outrage would have been as great. Take away at least some of the outrage, and the Iraq war becomes a tougher sell. He still would have tried to sell it, though. Clinton official accounts of the Clinton-Bush transition foreign policy briefings showed that the Bush team was obsessed with Iraq and wanted to talk about little else, even in late 2000. This war was planned even before the 2000 election, and whether the 9/11 victims were poor or rich didn’t make a dime’s worth of difference to Bush.
I think there is a certain truth to the fact that hitting the pentagon and the WTC had more of an impact than say a housing project, even if the casualty numbers were the same.
Not that this has anything to do with the class or income of the victims, it’s just a matter of the visibility of the targets. It wouldn’t have had as much of a punch in the gut impact on the American people (and probably the POTUS) if it were a building that nobody had ever heard of which got hit. Everyone knows the WTC, many of us had been there before. Everyone knows of the pentagon, and what it is and represents.
A random building being hit, whether filled with rich or poor victims, would not have had as much of an impact on us. There still would have been a response, but I’m not sure the reaction would have been as strong as it was. We may have seen even more resistance from the left to invading Afghanistan, for instance, although Bush probably still would have.
I think Bush’s rection to 9/11 would have been more or less the same had the planes crashed into Joe Schmoe’s house.
I think a more pertinent question might be: Would Bushco (and other relevant parties) have been more responsive had Katrina done the same damage to Crawford or Tallahassee?
Oh what an interesting conversation we would be having if the second plane had zipped up the East River and taken out the UN building…and it was in session.
of the whole war. There was a tremendous opportunity in the wars. Not only could the party benefit from a constant drumming of jingoism, but old pals could make trainloads of money from the privatizing of the war and the rebuilding. Mr. Cheney himself held $450,000 worth of Halliburton stock options when he took office, and the stock price is now ten times what is was then. Despite efforts to suppress the reports, it’s clear that massive war profiteering is taking place.