The Myth of Bush As The Hero of 9/11

[Poiuyt]

by Bob Cesca

As January 20 grows larger in the window, I've been thinking more often about the Bush legacy -- specifically about certain aspects of the president's record that are in danger of being completely obliterated and replaced with myths and wholesale fiction. Some of this effort is of course the purview of Karl Rove and Karen Hughes and their legacy project, while rough drafts of revisionist Bush history are being contributed by certain establishment media hacks -- desperate to chisel into the record their take on this outgoing president.

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What I recall is a litany of awful, illegal and destructive responses to September 11 on behalf of the president. I'm thinking specifically about White House-sanctioned torture. I'm thinking about extraordinary rendition. I'm thinking about Abu Ghraib and illegal invasions and interminable occupations. I'm thinking about how a CIA agent tasked with tracking loose nukes was outed as part of effort to lie about the justifications for that invasion and occupation. I'm thinking about 35,000 American military casualties. I'm thinking about post traumatic stress disorder. I'm thinking about a system that allowed many September 11 heroes to die of respiratory-related illnesses. I'm thinking about illegal and unconstitutional searches and seizures. I'm thinking about the USA PATRIOT Act, the Military Commission Act and the "terrorist surveillance program." I'm thinking about known-knowns, "bring 'em on" and "watch what you say" warnings. I'm thinking about orange alerts, duct tape, bottled-liquids bans, cable news animations of exploding airplanes and national waves of hysteria tweaked by well-orchestrated fear-mongering campaigns. I'm thinking about the tens of thousands of terrorist attacks -- some of them on American soil, most of them against American interests and all having occurred despite the lie that the Bush administration has "kept us safe." To that point, I'm thinking about decades of future blowback which historians and foreign policy experts might attribute directly to President Bush's reaction to September 11.

Instead of compassion, reason, rationality and inspiration tempered with humility -- traits evident in the crisis-handling of other presidents -- we can easily recall self-indulgence, dangerous pride and indignity; sloganeering and exploitation in lieu of positive words and deeds -- words and deeds which so many of President Bush's predecessors have managed to summon under similar duress.

So in the face of a well-funded and high profile revisionist crusade, one of the most important tasks of our generation will be to preserve the real legacy -- the legitimate history -- of the Bush administration, and especially the sheer mediocrity of President Bush's immediate response, and utterly destructive long term reaction to September 11.

The motivation for rising to this challenge need only be found in the thought of our posterity learning the history of those days and the broader history of this decade as written by Mark Halperin and Karl Rove.

more -

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/the-myth-of-bush-as-the-h_b_156092.html

That last sentence is kind of chilling to me. How would you like your children or grandchildren to read in history books how great Bush was. You know that there are people trying to push that concept into posterity. Just like the PR push to name Reagan as a demi-god.

[terisan]

1. Thanks for posting this. nt

[liberalmuse]

2. I was the only person...

in my circle of family, friends and co-workers who didn't give Bush an inch on this. I never stopped hating him. God, it galls me that this is something I can even be proud of. Hating another human being.

I can't count the times I heard, 'Jesus, stop your Bush hating and give the guy a chance.' I couldn't. I knew from day 1 this could have been prevented. Chalk this up to my being acquainted with how NORAD works and people who worked for the FAA. I knew better. But hey, maybe I was lied to and NORAD really doesn't track every fucking inch of airspace over the US at all times. My bad for believing that.

The really interesting thing is, some of the people who told me this now hate Bush more than I do (if that is even possible).

[Poiuyt]

3. I didn't know at the time that it could have been prevented, but I knew that Bush

was going to use the attack to bolster his political standing.