I don’t care what you can or cannot bear. That’s your problem. It’s also your problem that you don’t know what “but” means. And as usual, you have it all wrong. I’m not siding with Al Gore. As I said in that thread, if he starts up his leftist bullshit again, like wealth redistribution, I’ll call him out for it. Only so long as he maintains his defense of liberty will I admire him. Same same for any other man.
Honestly, if you wonder whether there is some action that you, as president, might take to warn the other planes, then I’m glad you’re not president. He is not an air traffic controller. Nor is he a military expert. Having civilian authority as Commander in Chief does not imbue the president with military expertise. His role as CiC is not as a military general drawing up plans and coordinating responses. His role is to see to it that those who are military generals carry out his broad-stroke visions. It is seldom if ever that a president unilaterally proposes military actions, such as launching jet fighters. Typically, he is advised to do so by military experts who are supposed to have some idea of what might work and what might not. If you are criticizing him for a five minute pause, I shudder to imagine your criticism if he had unilaterally ordered the launch of fighters and some disaster ensued. In fact, had he shot down the planes before they hit their targets (and let us assume for the sake of argument that the FAA and NORAD actually fully grasped what was going on, which they did not), then you could be arguing here that no one knew what those planes were going to do and that therefore the president murdered all those passengers. You could be arguing that for all we knew, the remaining planes were on their way to Cuba. It is the second-guessing aspect that makes your criticism moot. If you are as convinced as you seem that he wasted that five minutes, and if you are not merely analyzing by hindsight, then you should be able to produce an anecdote of the criticism you voiced four minutes into the pause.
That’s one reason why you should not be speculating about it. I might interpret the wait between this post and your response to be that you are “sitting there like a dolt” not knowing how to respond to my excellent points. But that would be presumptuous to the extreme. In all likelihood, you are reading my post, giving the points I’m making due consideration, determining whether you agree, and then formulating your response accordingly. Not to mention that, even though I’m waiting to hear from you, you do have other things to do. Even if responding to me were a priority for you, I would not appreciate it if you just started typing out a response without giving it any thought.
As far as your (a), I believe that your assertion contradicts itself. If indeed it is a crisis of unprecedented scope that is still unfolding, then five to seven minutes is hardly enough time for even a nearly omniscient person to think the matter through. If anything, you should be criticizing him for acting so hastily. In fact, Moore could just as well have spun it that way and planted that meme. He could have shown a clock for the entire day, moving in slow motion, while Bush flits all about like Adam Ant, not even pausing to think before acting. But the fact is that the national consensus of the time is that Bush handled 9/11 with exemplary skill, so much so that everyone was surprised. The expectations of people had been quite low.
I do realize that you have criticized me before for using the argument. But if you thought that your criticism constituted a refutation, or that I said to myself, “Oh, wow, he has criticized me; therefore, the debate is over,” then you are mistaken. It does indeed matter whether you would have criticized him no matter what he did because it goes to whether your criticism is born of some insight or expertise about what he ought to have done, or whether it is born of a bias or prejudice that means that, if it applied, its application would be a mere coincidence. Take the ancillary topic that is currently the focus of Blowero’s obsession: my reaction to Al Gore. It matters whether it is the case that I would criticize Gore just because I don’t like him, or whether I would criticize him on the basis of his remarks about civil liberties. If it were the former, and I had criticized Gore’s speech, then Blowero would have seen me as being “consistent” because he mistakenly believes that I have some interest in the personnel of politics. Only people like you, who understand that my judgments are drawn from thirty years of prodigious study and application of the Noncoercion Principle, understand that the only consistent thing I could do was praise Gore for his attacks on Bush.
I don’t believe it is that case that no one should ever criticize anyone who is not in power. In fact, I have criticized Bush severely. He is a monster whose administration is doing nothing short of destroying America. When he is done with it, it will be an unrecognizable shadow of its former self. Our grandchildren will not even know what freedom is. I am not criticizing people because they are criticizing Bush. As I have stated repeatedly, I am criticizing people for criticizing things about Bush that are petty and irrelevant, as though they are so much smarter than he and would know exactly how to behave in a crisis. The reason this is bad is because it is taking time and attention away from things that are almost universally recognized as problems. While people are fretting over this five minute pause, the CIA is obtaining power to arrest American citizens. Going on and on about piddly shit like this is playing right into Bush’s plan to wipe out our civil liberties. It is like soldiers at war who are obsessed by a wild fox running loose in the woods beside them while an army is bearing down on them with swords drawn.
I’m not saying it’s meaningless; I’m saying it’s dangerous — it is counter-productive, obfusctatory, and a massive distraction. Ever since that slob put out his mockumentary, this fucking piece of nothing has been the focus of national attention even while Congress and the President are moving to make this a totalitarian State. Look, Max, I can respect your position on the five-minute thing, and if you were to state your opinion and I mine, and then we move on to something else, I would have no problem with that. But it simply is not the case that the five minutes made any difference whatsoever with respect to 9/11 or with respect to 2004. We are where we are, not because Bush waited for five to seven minutes on that fateful day, but because Bush has worked tirelessly since then to destroy freedom after freedom. Even conservatives understand such things as loss of liberty. It would be something that even the rednecks in trailer parks care about. You do a disservice to your own candidate by dwelling on debatable points like this, when you could be showing them the tenets and consequences of the Patriot [sic] Act and similar orders and legislation that is strangling our liberty. Conservatives will react to this sort of criticism by being suspicious precisely because it is so debatable. Why, they wonder, are you so vehement about something so small in the scheme of something so large? They themselves will assign to you a bias and prejudice whether you have one or not, because it will seem like to them that if this is the worst thing you can criticize, then Bush must be the greatest leader of all time. It is a lousy job of battle-picking.
In government? All of them. The One Thing To Do in every case, as far as I am concerned, is to guarantee that peaceful honest people are free to pursue their own happiness in their own way. All other things are wrong to do. And I will criticize them until my dying breath.
Shrill hyperbole isn’t a very effective debating tactic here. The people want to feel safe, and they’re willing to give up many of their freedoms for that. It sucks, but that’s the way things are. Calling someone who promises to make them safer freedom’s antichrist is a lot like pouring water on a duck. The duck is waterproof, and the people don’t want to hear what you say. It’s far more effective to nail the bastard for the metaphorical equivalent of repeatedly farting in the elevator.
YMMV of course, but get down off your fucking high horse. You’re a hairless ape with too many brain cells, just like the rest of us.
And you’re going to try to tell me that this isn’t a partisan position?
:rolleyes:
It sounds to me like you advocate that the fraternity run the university. If indeed you speak for The People, then you deserve to be in the statistical deadlock in which you find yourselves.
You mean because I support neither party, I am partisan? Now I understand why atheists bristle so when told that their nonbelief is a religion.
What university is that? Government isn’t some ivory tower enterprise. You have to deal with the hopes, fears and aspirations of people as they are, as opposed to how you think they should be. This isn’t the age of reason. It probably never will be.
Converse accident fallacy. I wasn’t talking about the ivory tower aspect of universities, but about the administrative aspect, as was indicated by the idea of running one.
I’m a people, and I aspire to freedom. You should be ashamed, first for presuming to be spokesperson for The People, and second for the legacy you will have left to your grandchildren of capitulation and apathy when they needed you most.
Perhaps not, but you’re obviously greatly enamored of an ivory tower format for public discussion. I’m a people just like you, and I think that’s a crock. Deal with it. You are not the PC police, and I wouldn’t give a damn even if you were.
Your attempt at playing the shame card is contemptible. I have not presumed to speak for the people. However, you have presumed to a position of authority over what the people should talk about.
I’m responding to this paragraph first, because it seems like is the most crucial point, and I think speaks to what is really motivating you in this discussion. Basically, I think you’re outraged that people are criticizing Bush for what seems to you to be the wrong reason, which you perceive as meaning that the things that really matter to you are getting less attention. Thus, you’re brusque and dismissive, leading you to make all sorts of basically unsound arguments, such as the “if you’re so smart, why aren’t you president?” business, which is, viewed in isolation, pretty feeble.
So I’ll address the root question. First of all, note the very first paragraph of the OP. This is NOT that big a deal. Why, then, do I keep arguing about it? Well, bluntly, because I like to argue. This happens to be a topic which keeps getting discussed, and people keep saying things I disagree with. That leads to arguing.
If someone started a thread entitled “why I love the patriot act” or “accused criminals should have no rights” or something of that sort, I’d probably contribute to it. Not necessarily, because, let’s face it, sometimes a thread just grabs you and says “YOU MUST RESPOND”, and sometimes other people have already said everything that you want to say, but probably.
Am I a bad person for spending so much energy on this topic? I find it a bit hard to muster up much outrage at myself…
In most situations, I agree with that. For instance, on any random day in the middle of WWII, the chances that there was some decision that needed to be made by FDR in the next seven minutes is vanishingly small.
But that’s really not a fair comparison. 9/11 was a quite unique event. If (god forbid) there were 9/11 style attacks three or four times per year, there was a dealing-with-hijacking-czar whose job it was to talk to the DoD, FAA and NORAD, and in general the situation was one that was well understood, then I would agree that the president would have little to do in such a situation other than sit back and let the wheels spin.
But that was not the case. From reading descriptions of what was going on, one of the major problems from the US perspective was the lack of communication between various groups. Was the whole situation the FAA’s to deal with? NORAD? The White House? The National Guard? The Military? Who was in charge? Who was making decisions? That kind of confusion is precisely the kind of situation that most strongly calls for a strong leader, one who is willing to delegate, but who also makes sure that people below him are taking action.
Launching fighters isn’t going to cause a disaster. Telling fighters to start shooting prematurely might. Launching fighters, that is, creating the capability to make the tough decision later on if necessary, is exactly what he SHOULD have done
So you think I’m so intellectually dishonest that, after the two planes had hit the WTC, if a fighter had shot down one of the other two planes, I would be here, bitching about Bush having acted too hastily? Well, I guess we’ll never know, but I’d like to think that you’re wrong.
That would be difficult, given that (a) no one was watching that video feed live, and (b) I didn’t find out about the events of 9/11 until both towers had already fallen (from my car radio, on my way to work, out here on the west coast).
I’ll tell you two things, though:
(a) If I’d been awake at the time, and some network had been broadcasting a spilt screen, with the burning WTC on one half, and Bush sitting there reading on the other half, I sure as hell would have been criticizing him.
(b) Contrary to your claim later on in your post that people have generally praised Bush’s actions on 9/11, my memory is that while people rallied behind Bush in the days and weeks that followed, there was some amount of muttering about his actions on the day itself, ie, “why’s he hiding in all these random air force bases? Where is he? Why doesn’t he come out and make stronger statements?”. And I think all such criticisms are ridiculous. The best thing Bush possibly could do on 9/11 was go hide somewhere and preserve the chain of command. See? I don’t just always criticize everything he does.
I can’t believe that you’re even PROPOSING that analogy, as it contains two hideously fundamental flaws.
(a) You don’t have video tape of me having read your post and then spent the next 7 minutes doing something several orders of magnitude less important, with an expression of total non-alarm on my face
(b) most importantly, there’s absolutely 0 possibility that if I don’t respond to your post in time, thousands of people will die. Whereas, and here’s the utterly most crucial point I’m trying to make, there’s at least SOME possibility that Bush could have made a difference. Not a guarantee. Maybe not even a likelihood. But there is a chance that, had things gone differently, Bush could have made a choice or issued a command that would have made some difference on 9/11. And that’s particularly true if we restrict ourselves to analyzing the situation based on the information that was available to him at that precise moment.
Agreed. I don’t expect that Bush would spend some period of time thinking, and then, wham, he fully grasps everything and immediately knows all the right courses of action. But wouldn’t you think that his thinking-through process might go a tad better if he was, say, having a brainstorming session with his advisers rather than reading to kids?
As mentioned above, I have to disagree with this. The consensus, then and now, as far as I know, is that Bush didn’t do a damn THING on 9/11 itself that made any difference. It’s possible, perhaps, that he couldn’t have done anything anyhow. But I don’t remember many people, on the morning of 9/12, saying “wow, I sure was impressed by Bush yesterday”.
Except that, even if you’re exactly correct (which you’re not), all you’re demonstrating is that MaxTheVool is a tool, not that Bush isn’t a tool. If I make an argument about Bush’s actions, and there’s even the slightest amount of actual logic and coherency in what I say, and you respond by attacking my credibility due to your perception that I’m a liberal nutjob, then it just makes you look like you can’t respond to the argument itself. If you want to start another thread entitled “MaxTheVool is worse than Reeder”, go ahead. If you want to start ignoring me because you think I’m a fraud, go ahead. But as long as you’re going to take the time to respond to my posts, you might as well actually respond to them.
A claim about the appropriateness, or lack thereof, of actions, real or hypothetical, that Bush could have taken, is in no way supported or refuted by your claims about what my personal reaction (or the reaction of the liberal media, or whatever) to it would be.
I still Just Don’t Get It. Where does the “as though they were so much smarter than he” business come from? When did I claim that I would have done better? If I criticize Barry Bonds for dropping a ball in the outfield, does that mean that:
(a) I’m jealous of how rich he is
and/or
(b) I’m claiming I wouldn’t have dropped that ball?
Like I said, I think this is the crux of your passion about the issue (as you’d probably agree). And, to a certain extent, I agree. (Although your snide remarks about Michael Moore and a movei that you still have not yet seen are, honestly, beneath you). But this thread is what it is, and I’m not going to lie and claim that I’ve suddenly changed my mind about Bush’s actions on 9/11 just because I’ve decided to focus on more important things. Nor do I necessarily think that the “slob in the trailer park”, even if such a person were reading the SDMB, would find the patriot act as disturbing as you and I both wish he would.
Your response would indicate that you do.
Lib, if what you got out of all the responses in your Al Gore thread was that everyone thought it was completely consistent with your positions over the last 5 years, you’re even nuttier than I thought you were. And no, the word “but” in the sentence does not make your point. Not in the fucking least…
Actually, now that I think about it, that sentence didn’t even have the word “but” in it. So I have no idea what you’re trying to say. But that’s nothing new - just more of your usual unbelievably annoying inscrutability.
…
Of course not. You’re not a bad person at all. Just because I think you’re making a mistake does not mean that I think you’re evil. But in this instance, I am not the loony libertarian warning people about the tyranny of involuntary taxation. As Al Gore has said, “Again, specifically, the biggest threat to America is that we Americans will acquiesce in the slow and steady accumulation of too much power in the hands of one person.” When a man is in charge who is guarding our civil liberties, we can break out the kegs and have a blast making fun of his hair-do and how he says his words. But when a man is in charge who is tearing down our house, we are wise to be vigilant and sober until we have relieved him of his duties. We Dopers are all smart people. Other people in the house are more dull. It is our duty to sober them up and let them know that a man is outside with a wreaking ball. Let us go out together and evict him from our property. Then we can come back inside and have a well earned celebration.
I agree. Who would not agree with that? But the question is what could be done, and whether what Bush did was reasonable. There are times, particularly in emergency situations being handled by experts, where a minimum of interference is at least as reasonable an approach as the alternative. It is not the case that Bush could have flipped open his cell phone, pressed a button, and connected the FAA administrator to the NORAD commander. (We will set aside that such meetings were already ongoing.) And even if he had, what would he say to them that they were not already doing? And even if he had said the magic words to put them in one mind, what could they then do? I know that you understand that what we have is not a tightly knit group of people like a basketball team that have practiced together and can read each other’s moves and anticipate each other’s plays. We have a behemoth bureaucracy — a labyrinthine structure of commands, sub-commands, cross-checks, double-checks, overlapping authorities, and isolated authorities. It is not the fault of Bush in particular that our government was designed to be slow in response, although he and others are contributing to the problem by creating even more bureaucracy than ever before. The panacea used to be “throw money at it”. Now it is “create a new department”. On that day, at that time, in that place, the president was at the mercy of a system he did not design. The differences between planning and execution are legendary and go much further back than Bush. Consider when, as the NY Times reported in 1978, President Carter decided to test the readiness of nuclear response plans. It was supposed to take ten minutes to evacuate the president to Mount Weather from the White House, but when the plan was actually tested at Carter’s insistence, it took the helicopter twice that amount of time even to arrive. And because of a communications failure, the doubles in the exercise (Brzezinski and his secretary) were lucky not to be shot by Secret Service since, for all they knew, the flight was unauthorized. The people who were acting on 9/11 were the people who were trained to act, and they were acting imperfectly in an imperfect world with an imperfect system. If you know of any specifics that the president neglected, feel free to enumerate them.
That was already done. From the 9/11 Commission Report:
*At NEADS, the report of the hijacking was relayed immediately to Battle Commander Colonel Robert Marr. After ordering the Otis fighters to battle stations, Colonel Marr phoned Major General Larry Arnold, commanding general of the First Air Force and NORAD’s Continental Region. Marr sought authorization to scramble the Otis fighters. General Arnold later recalled instructing Marr to “go ahead and scramble them, and we’ll get authorities later.” General Arnold then called NORAD headquarters to report.
F-15 fighters were scrambled at 8:46 from Otis Air Force Base. But NEADS did not know where to send the alert fighter aircraft, and the officer directing the fighters pressed for more information: “I don’t know where I’m scrambling these guys to. I need a direction, a destination.” Because the hijackers had turned off the plane’s transponder, NEADS personnel spent the next minutes searching their radar scopes for the primary radar return. American 11 struck the NorthTower at 8:46. Shortly after 8:50,while NEADS personnel were still trying to locate the flight, word reached them that a plane had hit the World Trade Center.*
Of course not. I meant if the fighter had shot down the wrong planes, or as I said, if we had not known the planes’ intentions. This stuff we’re discussing now, no one knew during those five minutes. The skies were full of commercial planes. Without perfect communication and identification, there was a very real risk of making a mistake. In fact, there was no contingency plan whatsoever from NORAD for dealing with a domestic plane at all. From the 9/11 Commission Report:
Prior to 9/11, it was understood that an order to shoot down a commercial aircraft would have to be issued by the National Command Authority (a phrase used to describe the president and secretary of defense). Exercise planners also assumed that the aircraft would originate from outside the United States, allowing time to identify the target and scramble interceptors.The threat of terrorists hijacking commercial airliners within the United States—and using them as guided missiles—was not recognized by NORAD before 9/11.
Actually, reporters themselves, whose beepers only began to go off as the president sat there, started criticizing him only after he left the room. All the talking heads were wondering, “Where is the president? When will he address the nation?” That’s because at that time, all anyone knew was that the two buildings were on fire, and the fire department was on it. No one knew how many floors were damaged, how many casualties, whether it was even a terrorist act, whether there was any foreign involvement at all. CNN first reported suspicion of an al-Qaeda tie that afternoon around 4:00. It only began to unfold as a presidential matter over time. I mean, what was Bush to do, look to the cameras and say, “We don’t know what’s going on. Please tune to Fox News for coverage.”? There was ample opportunity that day to do exactly what you describe — show the split screen. No one did. And in fact, no one made a big deal of it at all until Michael Moore. The consensus indeed over the course of the next few hours and days was that the president’s calm, mature reaction was exactly appropriate and demonstrated a leadership that surprised everyone. Americans rallied around him almost immediately. (I know you disagree, but I give documentation below.)
You are talking about the look on his face? You could not be more subjective if you were reading tea leaves. The school’s principal saw the look on his face first hand, and opined that he looked alarmed but calm.
Yes, the possibilities are endless. That’s my point exactly. It is possible that he could have saved some lives, and it is possible that he could have endangered more lives — shooting down the wrong plane, shooting down the right plane over the wrong place, giving a false-hope to passengers of United 93 who failed to respond thinking everything would be okay, and so on. I just don’t believe that hypothetical woulda-shoulda-coulda is sufficient grounds for unwavering, unrelenting, uncompromising criticism of this magnitude. Some of the reasons why so many people died had nothing at all to do with the federal government, not the least of which was the (in retrospect) terrible advice by the New York City Fire Department that people would be safer staying on their own floors and making no attempt to exit.
That certainly is possible, but then again, until his advisers themselves have more information, it could lead to a lot of very wrong thinking. I imagine (at least, if it were I in his shoes), the time was spent thinking in very broad terms, not specifics. I imagine that there was less of, “Maybe I’d better make sure that Henry in the control tower has notified Major Payne at Otis,” and more of “What am I going to say to the American people?”.
According to a Gallop Poll on September 12, 2001:
Most Americans see the terrorist attacks yesterday as an “act of war” and view them as the most tragic news event in their lifetimes… Despite these views, Americans express a high level of confidence that the perpetrators will be identified and punished, and they express confidence in President Bush’s ability to handle the situation.
http://www.gallup.com/content/login.aspx?ci=4879
Also, CNN reported on that day that Bush’s speech the prior evening was a defining moment. “The shape of the U.S. response to the World Trade Center and Pentagon terrorist attacks will be defined by President Bush’s declaration Wednesday that ‘they were acts of war’ against the United States. The president won bipartisan support Wednesday from both houses of Congress, which passed a resolution declaring the nation was ‘entitled to respond under international law’.”
http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/09/12/america.under.attack/
I believe that I am responding. And frankly, I am mystified by your bristling defensiveness. My only criticism of you is that you’re fiddling while America burns. If you disagree, then explain why this incident is more important for discussion than the power that Bush and the Republicans have given John Ashcroft.
Um, aren’t you the person who just criticized me for drawing an analogy between a crisis event affecting thousands of lives and a non-crisis event of trivial importance? 
I’m just kidding, because I believe that such analogies can be useful if not over-applied. But in this instance, I think a more apt analogy would be criticizing a mugger for using a .22 instead of a .38 when it is in fact you that he is mugging.
Maybe not. But he certainly is not disturbed by the five minutes. If we want to bring this election out of a statistical dead heat, maybe it behooves us to think about how we might frame the real danger in a way the slob in the trailer park can understand. Tell him that his porn will be taken away, that his beer purchases will be recorded, that his phone conversations will be monitored, that his woman can be taken away for no good reason, and that his mama will be watched to see what she does at church — all this and much worse if he does not vote for Kerry.
Do you read the newspapers Liberal, or are you being deliberately obtuse? Are you incompetent to determine which way the wind is blowing? Do you honestly believe that the danger to our freedom arises from “hegemonistic and imperialist tyrants” who are determined to seize wealth and power? Or are you willing to concede that the people’s post 9/11 fears might have something to do with the recent decline of individual freedoms?
Ideological fanaticism gave us al Qaeda. It gave us the ascendancy of the neocons and the conquest of Iraq. Now you presume to give us a list of what is and what is not worthy of public discussion, and claim that you’re doing it because you love freedom? Whose version of freedom are you talking about, Liberal? It sure isn’t mine.
You blathering moron. Ideological fanaticism gave us America, too. Fanaticism in the pursuit of liberty is no vice. Tyrants and terrorists are seeking out people like you — political zombies, breathing in the laughing gas of apathy and exhaling the frosty bliss of ignorance. You, and people like you, are the reason our grandchildren will wonder what freedom was.
COURIER: General Washington! I have terrible news!
GEORGE WASHINGTON: What is it? We’re being invaded?
C: Begging your pardon, sir, but we’ve known about that for years.
GW: Well, then, what news?! Or must I whip it from your impudent hide?
C: It – It’s Paul Revere, sir. He won’t ride unless he can say “the poopyheads are coming.”
GW: Oy.
Even if this is literally true, all it does is show up the stupidity of the reporters. I said to my wife that morning, the one time I was able to speak to her, “This is war.” There was no doubt in my mind or any of my co-worker’s that morning, looking at the WTC towers burning, what was going on.
The President has no excuse whatever for not recognizing, immediately, what was going on and that he, out of everyone else in the US, was tasked with the responsibility of responding immediately to what was going on.
Very nice.
What we have in that 7 minute tape is rare footage of the leader of the free world at the very nexus of the crisis. We don’t have such documentation of Truman’s response to the Berlin Crisis, Kennedy hearing of Cuban missiles, or Carter learning of the fall of the US embassy in Tehran. If we did, there’d still be much discussion and second guessing of what was going on in the minds of those presidents as they faced tribulation. With Bush, we’ve got footage of a president facing his time of trial, and sitting around like a total dumbass. That deserves some discussion too.
Fanaticism in pursuit of anything is a vice. In this very thread, it’s lead you to proclaim that some who disagree with you over interpretation of a fairly minor event are “blathering morons” and “political zombies.” My posting history here gives the lie to that nonsense. I don’t expect you to see that. That’s the way it is with fanatics. They’re all fools, and sooner or later that becomes apparent to anyone who listens to them with a balanced ear.
Squink, you must have that wrong. Surely that paragon of dispassion, the disinterested observer Liberal would not call others “blathering morons” and “political zombies”! But…that would seem inconsistent with the typical definition of “disinterested”. Of course, participating in about 10 pages of discussion on one topic would also seem to be orthogonal to the concept of “disinterested,” but who am I to say?