Iraq War in the Crapper? Solution: Attack Democrats Over 9/11

As more and more Americans come to realize that the Iraq war was a terrible mistake, and the Downing Street memos prove the degree to which this Administration manipulated and misled the American people, Karl Rove made some remarks in New York yesterday, not about Iraq, but about "liberals" and 9/11:

Karl Rove came to the heart of Manhattan last night to rhapsodize about the
decline of liberalism in politics, saying Democrats responded weakly to Sept. 11
and had placed American troops in greater danger by criticizing their
actions.

"Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for
war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare
indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers," Mr. Rove,
the senior political adviser to President Bush, said at a fund-raiser in Midtown
for the Conservative Party of New York State.

Citing calls by progressive groups to respond carefully to the attacks, Mr.
Rove said to the applause of several hundred audience members, "I don't know
about you, but moderation and restraint is not what I felt when I watched the
twin towers crumble to the ground, a side of the Pentagon destroyed, and almost
3,000 of our fellow citizens perish in flames and rubble."

Told of Mr. Rove's remarks, Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New
York, replied: "In New York, where everyone unified after 9/11, the last thing
we need is somebody who seeks to divide us for political purposes."

Mr. Rove also said American armed forces overseas were in more jeopardy as
a result of remarks last week by Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of
Illinois, who compared American mistreatment of detainees to the acts of "Nazis,
Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime - Pol Pot or others."

"Has there ever been a more revealing moment this year?" Mr. Rove asked.
"Let me just put this in fairly simple terms: Al Jazeera now broadcasts the
words of Senator Durbin to the Mideast, certainly putting our troops in greater
danger. No more needs to be said about the motives of liberals."

Well, I've got a few things to say about those comments. You know what I remember first after 9/11? That our President looked scared and unsure of how to act that night when he addressed the country. That he was tongue-tied and completely over-his-head the next few days as he tried to string sentences together. (I remember with particular fear and amazement a televised conference call that Bush had with Pataki and Giuliani that showed Bush's inability to do anything other than repeat the same rote phrases over and over again.) That the President was so unsure of how to act on 9/11 that the Vice-President had to give an order for unknown planes to be shot down, and then lie and say he got the order from the President. (An order, by the way, which the normally understated 9/11 Commission Report goes out of the way to prove never existed). And then that President and Vice-President are forced to testify before the 9/11 Commission together in order to attempt to cover up this lie. And, of course, we all now know about how Bush stayed in the classroom, even after learning of the attack, to finish reading My Pet Goat. The 9/11 Commission Report makes clear that, had the President acted boldly and forcefully immediately upon learning the news, and issued an order to land all planes, the flight that crashed in the Pennsylvania countryside might have been saved, as terrorists had not yet taken over that plane.

I don't remember what Mr. Rove is referring to. I do remember the Democratic-led Senate leading a rendition of "God Bless America" on the Capital steps right after the attacks. I remember Tom Daschle hugging President Bush after his speech to Congress on September 21. I remember Daschle foregoing the traditional Democratic rebuttal and speaking jointly with Trent Lott after the speech. I remember unqualified Democratic support for the effort in Afghanistan.

Then I remember an Administration that picked off and attacked Democrats who didn't vote for the Homeland Security Bill (which Bush initially opposed when DEMOCRATS proposed it) in the exact form Bush wanted. I remember the President failing to ask for any sacrifice from any American at a time when all of America would have willingly given it. And I remember the fact that we didn't catch Bin Laden in Tora Bora and still haven't. And I now know that's likely because efforts were shifted to planning and creating the conditions for the Iraq war.

So if Mr. Rove wants to go back to 9/11, then I say, fine, but let's go back to 9/10, and 8/10, and 7/10 etc, also. Let's hear from Richard Clarke again about how Condoleezza Rice ignored his repeated, URGENT pleas (just look at the 9/11 Commission report, it reprints many of Clarke's e-mails and memos to Rice, with the original italics and underlining) to do something, anything about Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Let's discuss Bush's statement the day after the attacks to Clarke and others that he wanted to see if we could link the attacks to Saddam Hussein. Let's discuss the fact that Dick Cheney was personally briefed by Clarke on his Al Qaeda plan in early 2001, yet Cheney did NOTHING. Let's discuss how Sandy Berger told Rice when he was leaving before the 2001 Inauguration that he thought that she would spend more time on terrorism in general and Al Qaeda in particular than any other issue. Let's discuss how President Clinton told President-elect Bush that he thought terrorism would be the biggest foreign policy issue Bush would face during his time in office. Let's discuss how Bush said NOTHING in response to that comment.

I was in New York on 9/11, not in Florida reading a story to schoolchildren about goats. I worked five blocks from the World Trade Center. Each day on my way to work I would smell the awful smell of human flesh and steel burning in the air. Every night, for months, as I left work, I would see smoking pieces of the Trade Center loaded onto ferries outside my office. I wanted Bin Laden captured and killed. But this Administration chose to move resources off that endeavor and embark on a foolish, ill-conceived and poorly planned war to satisfy its most rabid ideologues. At the end of the day, I see Rove's comments as an acknowledgment by this Administration that nearly six months after the Iraqi elections, it recognizes that the situation in Iraq shows little signs of improving. And that rests solely on their shoulders, not on any "liberals."
- posted by Joshua @ 10:13 AM