BLUF:
The bottom line: There is simply no comparison in scale, act, motivation, or anything else between Sept. 11 and Jan. 6. And yet now, a former president suggests that those two enormously dissimilar events were actually similar, both coming from “the same foul spirit.”
George W. Bush’s dreadful 9/11 speech.
President Joe Biden was silent during Saturday’s 9/11 commemoration events. So were former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. Former President Donald Trump visited a New York City police precinct and fire station, where he made a few impromptu remarks.
The only president who delivered a formal speech on 9/11 was former President George W. Bush. And it was terrible.
In two ways. First, Bush’s speech was as much about decrying today’s political divisions as it was about remembering the events of Sept. 11. But Bush showed an astonishing lack of self-awareness of the role his own actions played in creating those divisions. And second, Bush helped widen those divisions by endorsing a Rachel Maddow-esque argument that an equivalence exists between the plane-hijacking, murderous terrorists of Sept. 11, 2001, and the Capitol rioters of Jan. 6, 2021 — a comparison that has no basis in fact but has done much to sour the national debate.
Bush spoke at ceremonies for Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. It was the site of perhaps the most heroic of many heroic acts by Americans on Sept. 11. The passengers who fought back against the hijackers sacrificed their own lives to save the victims the terrorists were targeting. In the process, they likely also saved the Capitol, or perhaps the White House, from attack.
Bush praised their courage. He praised the courage of Americans who volunteered for the armed forces in the years that followed. And he praised the selflessness of Americans who helped one another at the time. There was great unity in that moment, Bush said. “In the weeks and months following the 9/11 attacks, I was proud to lead an amazing, resilient, united people,” Bush said. But now, those days seem far, far away, and a “malign force” is at work in American life:
When it comes to the unity of America, those days seem distant from our own. A malign force seems at work in our common life that turns every disagreement into an argument and every argument into a clash of cultures. So much of our politics has become a naked appeal to anger, fear, and resentment. That leaves us worried about our nation and our future together.
How could our politics have become so angry? Bush pointed to one reason, in the briefest way possible, just a moment earlier. Hailing Americans who joined the armed forces, he added, “The military measures taken over the last 20 years to pursue dangers at their source have led to debate.” Well, yes they have! But rather than elaborate, even a little, Bush instead went on to assure veterans that their service was not in vain.
What Bushed skipped was, first, his failures in the war in Afghanistan, and second, his failures in the war in Iraq. In Afghanistan, Bush failed to find and bring to justice Osama bin Laden, Ayman al Zawahiri, and Mullah Omar. And with the major 9/11 player Bush did capture, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Bush failed to deliver justice through a military commission trial and execution. The architect of 9/11 remains alive and well today, imprisoned at the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Also in Afghanistan, Bush set the war on a track of nation-building that was sure to fail and did, not only during Bush’s presidency but during Obama’s and Trump’s, until Biden clumsily put an end to it.
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