Keeping Us Safe
The notion that George W. Bush kept us safe is very hard to understand. If you put in one column “Americans killed by international terrorists before George W. Bush” and in another column “Americans killed by international terrorists after George W. Bush” you see that it’s not even close. And even if you want to say that Bush’s safekeeping responsibilities somehow began on September 12, it’s still the case that far more Americans were killed in the invasion and occupation of Iraq than died on 9/11.
In general, the Carter, Reagan, H.W. Bush, and Clinton administration managed to put together a nice 25 year run in which sundry foreign menaces were faced down with very few American lives lost. Post-Bush, this is still a safe country in the scheme of things, but Bush’s blundering sure has managed to endanger a lot of people.
44 Responses to “Keeping Us Safe”
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December 7th, 2008 at 8:27 am
Not to mention, bin Laden hasn’t been found … nor has the war in Iraq or Afganistan been won … it always mystifies me when some pundit claims the US is safer under Bush …
Even more so when they claim there hasn’t been a terrorist attack on US soil since 9/11, somehow forgetting the people killed by a targeted anthrax attack a mere month or so later …
I guess it’s not mystifying, these pundits and neo-cons who say this crap … they’re simply lying … that pisses me off more than anything …
December 7th, 2008 at 8:28 am
You know, if we sent everybody to war, we could reduce domestic casualties from terrorism to zero!
December 7th, 2008 at 8:31 am
Not to be a Bush apologist or a Grinch about Obama, but I’m pretty sure Team Bush means that we’re safer if you include all the hazards Bush’s actions precluded, most of which won’t be disclosed for a long time for security reasons. It’s probably bs, but it’s propaganda, not a serious claim to be debated.
Similarly, Obama is pre-positioning his legacy by stating his economic plan will “save” or create 2.5 million jobs by 2011.
December 7th, 2008 at 8:40 am
By the same token, history has revealed how remarkably safe Clinton made us at a time when Al Qaeda was also active against US interests – and before we realized it. Sheer tactical brilliance and geopolitical foresight from a Democratic administration can be the only explanation for having so thoroughly thwarted a range of terrorist attacks from ‘93 to ‘00 … until Bush assumed office and took his eye off the ball.
Also, Bush reversed the curse.
December 7th, 2008 at 8:57 am
Bush’s base accepts his distinction between domestic and non-domestic terrorism, and accepts that our military’s responsibility is to protect us from domestic terrorism even if it means great loss of life. On that score, Bush’s Presidency has indeed been a success, as has the military’s role as Bush defines it. His critics would argue that Bush has made us more vulnerable to a future domestic terrorist attack, but Bush, as he often says, isn’t much concerned about history. To Bush and much of his base, history is beyond our control and follows a linear path that only He determines.
December 7th, 2008 at 9:07 am
I hasten to mention the anthrax attacks. That was terrorism; it happened in the United States, chronologically after 9/11, and people died. Further, as I understand the administration’s usage of the term, weapons of mass destruction were employed.
And we still, AFAIK, do not have the least fucking clue who did it to us. Quite safe we have been kept!
December 7th, 2008 at 9:12 am
Post-Bush, this is still a safe country in the scheme of things, but Bush’s blundering sure has managed to endanger a lot of people.
Yeah, and this is a No Shit, Sherlock Situation. President Mulligan fucked up royally on 9-11 and compounded the fuck-up by invading Iraq. Embracing torture and a gulag-like collection of black torture sites surely didn’t help things. This should be obvious to anyone. Disingenuous shitheads (e.g., Karl Rove) should be repeatedly mocked for suggesting otherwise.
December 7th, 2008 at 9:13 am
jsrutstein:
Please. If Team Bush had any successes, we would know about it.
They wouldn’t pass up a chance to preen and strut for security reasons. Just ask Valerie Plame.
December 7th, 2008 at 9:20 am
I’m not a fan of the Bush administration, but I don’t count the anthrax letters as “terrorist attacks,” except maybe as false-flag attacks. You can’t complain about the government’s failure to stop a government plan. That would be like complaining after a police chief says he eliminated speeding on the city’s streets that police cars were still breaking the speed limit.
December 7th, 2008 at 9:22 am
Not saying Bush is good, but this post is rather simpleminded. The blame for 9/11 is not solely Bush’s; and the war did achieve the desirable outcome of removing Saddam. The lack of attacks in the United States seems hardly worth mentioning, but it’s true as well. It’s logic like this that gives the liberal left a bad name. I understand that the war was not a good idea, but to say Bush = [9/11 casualties + Iraq War casualties] = bad, is the opposite of analysis. At best you are congratulating Bill Clinton for adopting a policy of removing Saddam and then doing very little about it.
December 7th, 2008 at 9:25 am
Right wingers and pants-pissers fully expected that the sort of damage and death caused in the actual 9/11/2001 would then become routine, and daily.
Glenn Beck ranted for weeks at a time when the DC sniper was killing people that this was how America was all going to be now, you’d just be driving down the block and some jihadist would be shooting at you. As far as I know, there’s been no retraction, rather, dumbass was promoted to CNN with his own show for a number of years, now heading to Fox Nooz.
So, what they mean, is that compared to the unending cataclysm they thought 9/11 represented (rather than a stunning exception made possible by Bush’s callow incompetence), we have been comparatively safe.
For Bush Jr. it’s the subtle bigotry of low expectations.
December 7th, 2008 at 9:25 am
The blame for 9/11 is not solely Bush’s
Eisenhower has some blame in there.
December 7th, 2008 at 9:35 am
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December 7th, 2008 at 9:40 am
@Just Dropping By:
Not so much the police cars, in your example, as the provocateurs dispatched by the mayor to whip up outrage against speeding, right?
I don’t really buy your take on things, but if I did, I think I could still complain–on the basis of the generally forgotten anthrax attacks–that we really haven’t been kept so safe after all.
December 7th, 2008 at 10:00 am
Jimbo, I said it was probably bs.
December 7th, 2008 at 10:10 am
1) It’s a good thing Bush kept those terrorists out of our country.
Otherwise they might have robbed our banks, stolen $7 Trillion of our wealth, and sabotaged our economy into another Great Depression.
2) All that in order to weaken our military and to undermine the economic base needed to support national defense.
December 7th, 2008 at 10:14 am
Our current military requires close to $1 Trillion per YEAR to sustain it.
In that light, who has been the greatest threat to our national defense? Al Qaeda, Saddam Hussein, or deeply corrupt Republicans?
December 7th, 2008 at 11:16 am
I think it is worth remembering that in the countries with the 3 largest Muslim populations–Indonesia, India & Pakistan totaling about 500,000,000 Muslims–we have seen a dramatic increase in radical extremism directly tied to the Bush policies. The disintegration of Pakistani Gov’t control over much of it’s territory and even critical parts of its intelligence & military services is truly frightening. In addition, through our policies, we have allowed the Iranians to effectively establish a Shiite Theocracy from the Afghan border to the Mediterranean. They have exploited our blunders at every step. Safer? I don’t think so.
December 7th, 2008 at 11:55 am
This is another fun occasion on which it’s worthwhile to imagine what conservatives would be saying had Al Gore been properly allowed into office and had somehow he duplicated all of Bush Jr’s staggering laziness and incompetence in allowing 9/11 to happen.
I really can’t quite see Peggy Noonan writing about how Al Gore kept us safe and 9/11 doesn’t count.
December 7th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
I really can’t quite see Peggy Noonan writing about how Al Gore kept us safe and 9/11 doesn’t count.
And that’s not even considering how they’d be screaming about civil liberties and calling airport security ‘oppressive’ and ‘totalitarian.’
On the original topic, raylward & El Cid are also right about the RW base– they really enjoyed imagining a series of apocalyptic attacks on The Heartland (never mind that most of them live in places no self-respecting terrorist would admit to recognizing, much less attack- no symbolic value), and GWB offered them the best of both worlds in that they could fantasize about living within action-movie scenarios without actually being in any serious danger. It’s all about the dramatic potential and their emotional indulgence.
December 7th, 2008 at 12:51 pm
Hear, hear on the anthrax comments. One hears, time and time again, some learned and interesting TV pundit reminding his listeners that no terrorist attacks on US soil have followed 9/11. Somehow we have collective amnesia regarding fatal bioterrorism on US soil, a crime that still has not been solved.
December 7th, 2008 at 1:25 pm
A search of “the Google” turns up many postulations to the contrary, but in general I believe the maxim (or theory) that you can’t prove a negative. Saying that Bush has kept us safe from further terrorist attacks since 9/11 has just as much validity (which is to say, none) as my saying that I’ve been wearing rhinoceros repellent for four years and I haven’t been attacked by a rhinoceros, so therefore it must work.
December 7th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
Forget whether or not Bush has kept Americans safe.
For the rest of the world he’s been murder…
December 7th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Re: And we still, AFAIK, do not have the least fucking clue who did it to us.
It’s pertty well known that some rightwing kook scientist was behind the anthrax mailings. The guy committed suicide not that long ago just as the FBI was about to solidify its case against him. We’ll never know all the details of course, but this counts as a lot more than just a clue.
December 7th, 2008 at 11:00 pm
Saying that Bush has kept us safe from further terrorist attacks since 9/11 has just as much validity (which is to say, none) as my saying that I’ve been wearing rhinoceros repellent for four years and I haven’t been attacked by a rhinoceros, so therefore it must work.
It only has equal validity if we ignore a large number of low level terror attacks– the Beltway snipers, the guys who opened fire at LAX in 02, the Anthrax attacks, the nine injured at the University of North Carolina in ‘06 (and the 19 injured, one dead, in a similar drive-down attack in San Fransisco later that year), or the attempted use of an IED on the Mexican Consulate in New York in 2007 (and the British Consulate in 2005), and the much larger number of Americans killed and injured overseas by terror attacks (even excluding the active theater of war).
For your comparison to be accurate (”can’t prove a negative”), you would have to have been at least nuzzled by a rhinoceros two or three times over the last four years.
The real problem is that 9/11 made us think that terrorists were magical supermen, who could bring us to our knees and kill thousands– and the ordinary levels of terrorism that we experience (in part due to the successful functioning of our law enforcement and intelligence agencies) is minuscule by comparison. 9/11 messed up the calibration of how we measure terrorism– sure, there’s never been another attack of that magnitude, but there was never a terror attack of that magnitude before 9/11 either.
December 8th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
I think Bush deserves much more blame for 9/11 than he usually gets. It is inexplicable to me that Bush, even after he was especially informed that al quaeda was signaling an attack on the U.S. in August, did precisely what he did – about New Orleans – or the financial crisis. Nothing. What the right has never wanted to see, what they have spent a lot of time trying to cover up, is that Bush is basically a panicer. Although having a man who has the management abilities of a second tier golf pro of a small Southern country club as president was going to be bad at any time, it was the Nation’s luck that our Caligula-lite came along just as there was a lot of stuff to be panic-ed about. Much of the more outrageously stupid shenanigans of the Bush administration emanated from Bush’s need to look tough, which is the classic panic-er strategy – if you can look tough enough, maybe people will forget that you panicked the last time. Although letting Osama bin Laden go was motivated mostly by the need to have a terrorist on tap, so that money could be poured into the military and we could invade various countries in the Middle East (Iraq proving, in the end, one country too far), another reason is surely that bin Laden embodied the man who humiliated Bush – and embodied him to such a degree that Bush would rather not be reminded of him.
It isn’t enough to say Bush was the worst president – it is time that we thought about all the malevolent or simply vanilla elements that went into his form of badness. Ignorance, check, laziness, check, but I’d put that panic/tough neuroses at the top of the list. It was really his attraction to his base, the male white middle manager type, who expresses his panic in road rage and paranoid delusions about the world, continually in a sweat that his own incompetence, his own manliness, will be discovered to be the fraud that his kids and his wife plainly see that it is. The Rush Limbaugh type.
December 13th, 2008 at 2:35 am
Without reading any of the comments, I know that by including Carter you do make your point. We could give up only a hundred or so a year and be walked all over, if we took his approach.
December 13th, 2008 at 2:44 am
And goddamn it, if Bush wouldn’t have blown up the World Trade Center we would have been ok.
Not to mention, the housing bubble is blamed all on Bush. But does everyone understand that these loans were handed out during HORNDOG BILL’S administration?
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