Monday, August 30, 2004
Bush's 9-11 Cowardice
This piece from Kos is so telling, I really don't want to add much to it. I will say, however, that it's pretty telling when Tucker Carlson and Andrew Sullivan say they will have trouble voting for Bush again.
Also, it shines a light on how our President really behaved when the chips were down...
Carlson, in particular, is brutal on Bush, taking him to task for his cowardice on 9-11:
... The attacks initially made me sorry I voted for him. For most of that day, as my wife and children stayed inside our house listening to the roar of fighter jets overhead, and black smoke from the Pentagon hovered above our neighborhood, Bush failed to return to Washington. My family sat unprotected a few miles from the scene of a terrorist attack; Bush hid in a bunker on some faraway military base.
It infuriated me, as did the subsequent excuses from White House spokesman. There was a risk in coming back, they said. There was a risk in coming back, they said. Of course there was. That's the point: Leaders must take risks, sometimes physical ones. Bush should have elbowed his Secret Service detail out of the way and returned in a display of fearlessness to his nation's capital. I found it distressingly revealing that he didn't.
So did I. It was one of my earliest thoughts that fateful day. Say what you will about Giuliani, and most of what I would say is bad. But Rudi showed the type of leadership Bush only wishes he could muster.
What's worse, Rove knew how bad Bush's cowardice looked, so much the same way they handle any obstacle they face, they lied. Rove claimed they had received credible threats against Air Force One, a ludicrous assertion that was proven false days later. But in the chaos of the moment, both Bush's palpable fear and the lies used to cover it up were lost.
But as Carlson says, the incident was revealing. Just as Kerry's heroism half a world away is revealing. There's a reason the Swift Boat Liars are going after the story so hard. Kerry turned his boat into the danger he faced. Bush ran to Nebraska and cowered in fear.
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