Bush’s Words Fall Flat on 20th Anniversary of September 11
Ironic. Insulting. And unsettling to see former President George W. Bush rewrite history as the good guy today in Shanksville, Pennsylvania on the 20th anniversary of 9/11.
Bush called out "violent extremists abroad and violent extremists at home" for their "disregard for human life" — as if he played no role in proliferating such present dark realities.
It’s insulting because we know that after his administration failed to read the myriad alarming warning signs that preceded the September 11, 2001 terror attacks that killed nearly 3,000 Americans, then puppet President Bush exploited America’s pain and anger to peddle a “Big Lie” that would kill hundreds of thousands of humans.
Bush, whose strings were pulled by a warmongering cabal of administration advisers, played Americans’ outrage and unity in the wake of the attacks to fear-monger a lie about weapons of mass destruction and ties to Osama Bin Laden — so the citizenry would swing along with an unprovoked invasion of a Iraq.
An invasion that, again, killed hundreds of thousands — including more than 4,000 U.S. service members — and spawned the scourge of ISIS - "violent extremists" that plague the world today in unstable regions like Afghanistan.
ISIS-K, an offshoot of the ISIS Islamic State, whose origins trace to Camp Bucca, a U.S. interntemt camp in southern Iraq, claimed responsibility for the bombing of the Afghanistan airport that killed 13 American service members at the end of August.
As the Afghanistan War — the Bush administration’s other disastrous attempt at nation building that claimed tens of thousands more innocents lives and cost several trillion more dollars — finally came to an end two weeks ago, a vacuum was left for an emboldened enemy to fill.
Bush’s reference to domestic and international terrorists as “children of the same foul spirit” on Saturday in Shanksville was eerily reminiscent of his January 2002 “axis of evil” State of the Union speech — which was the impetus to ensuring America, indeed, would have a blood-thirsty foe to fight abroad for decades to come.
The disastrous eight Bush years, from 2001 to 2008, spawned a lingering sense of despair — particularly in the wake of the 2008 "Great Recession," which bankrupted millions of lives on Bush’s watch.
Arguably, that desperation among the American electorate was instrumental in laying the groundwork for the eventual precipitous rise to power of a phony, populous demagogue like Donald Trump.
And, of course, Trump was the culprit who emboldened those same “violent extremists at home” — such as the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrectionists — of which Bush was clearly referencing on Saturday.
So, when the guy who was demonstrably instrumental in proliferating an “evil” enemy “abroad” — and at “home” — feigns a foreboding, protective tone warning about those same visceral terroristic threats, his words fall resoundingly flat.
Bush’s commemorative speech on 9/11’s 20th anniversary on Saturday, which all major media outlets gleefully crowned as front page news and lead stories, was an affront to our intelligence and sensibilities.
The second worse president in U.S. history perhaps, essentially pulled the same stunt he did more than 19 years ago in his "axis of evil" speech while September 11’s wounds were still painfully new.
On Saturday, Bush played off the somberness of a nation, with hearts still hurting after 20 years as if it were yesterday, to project himself again as some pseudo champion of righteousness.
As then President Bush once attempted to say, but bungled: Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.
Already, in this swiftly aging 21st Century, Americans have endured our share of devestating blunders and deceptions, which have profited the elite and unnecessarily spilled precious blood.
It’s crucial to cut through all the grandstanding and fanfare headlines to connect the dots — so that we don’t get fooled again.
