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?
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.
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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