George W. Bush Did NOT Keep Us Safe

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Joe Lapointe

Joe Lapointe has worked as a sports reporter with the New York Times and a segment producer for "Countdown With Keith Olbermann'' on Current TV

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September 11th, 2012 10:38 AM

George W. Bush Did NOT Keep Us Safe

By Joe Lapointe

Like the assassination of President Kennedy, the 9-11 attack on the Twin Towers of New York’s World Trade Center will forever hold a sense of horror for those alive at the time of the crimes.

As we again commemorate the memories of the victims of the 2001 terrorist attack this week, the newest shock is a devastating piece Tuesday in the New York Times by Kurt Eichenwald about how President George W. Bush ignored many specific warnings during the first year of his administration that a devastating attack by Islamic religious fanatics was imminent.

Eichenwald recounts the growing concern at the time among security and intelligence officials about Bush’s cavalier attitude toward his job and the willful ignorance of the neo-con cabal around him.

This occurred less than one year after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Bush in a disputed Presidential election in which the Democratic candidate, Al Gore, got more votes. The Court, a right-wing faction packed by previous Republican Presidents, awarded Bush the electoral votes of Florida, which provided the winning margin.

The governor of Florida at the time was Jeb Bush, George Bush’s brother, who damned his brother with faint praise two weeks ago at the Republican National Convention by saying “He kept us safe.”

In fact, George W. Bush did not “keep us safe.” He left more than 3,000 people exposed to fiery death in New York and at the Pentagon in Washington when hi-jacked airliners rammed into buildings. He used those terrorist attacks to start two unnecessary, expensive and bloody wars in two different nations, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Bush put the wars on a credit card which helped increase our national debt. He neglected to pursue the hunt for Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the terrorist plot. After that, Bush ignored hurricane victims in New Orleans and presided over the meltdown of the financial system and a Great Recession that has left lasting damage on our economy.

Now, with Barack Obama in office for almost four years and a new election coming, Republicans and their hacks at Fox News Channel are advancing the argument that Obama has had enough time to fix everything but the economy still lags.

And because Obama has “failed,” it’s time to turn over our government and economy to the Republican Mitt Romney, a Wall Street vulture who is an expert at firing people, taking away their pensions and making himself even wealthier.

On Fox News and various radio outlets, you can hear the daily shriek of right-wingers crying “How long can you continue to blame President Bush for this mess?”

It’s a rhetorical question that deserves a straight answer. We can blame President Bush for decades. It will take more than one Obama term to clean up his mess. It will take more than one President, too.

Certainly the worst President in our lifetime, Bush may have been the worst President in the history of the United States. He represented a political party dedicated to God, Greed and Guns. He followed eight years of peace and prosperity under Bill Clinton with a horrific eight years filled with jingoism, torture, blood, arrogance and financial ruin.

Unlike Clinton and many other former Presidents, Bush is almost invisible, even at his own party’s nomination last week of Romney. You can catch Bush once in a while on TV, at the Texas Rangers baseball games, sitting in a front-row seat next to Nolan Ryan, popping sunflower seeds with that same, smug smirk on his face.

PS: To the New York Times. When you have an excellent investigative piece like Eichenwald’s on Tuesday, please don’t publish it on paper with white letters over a black background. That makes it difficult to read. Why annoy your readers?