Robert Creamer, writing in The Huffington Post, makes minced meat of one of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s claims during CNN’s mega-rated Republican Presidential debate — that his brother George W. Bush kept America “safe” on his watch. To many, that makes sense, if they have a big gap in their memory of history — as Creamer bluntly points out:
Here is a news flash for Jeb: George W. Bush did not begin his term on September 12, 2001. The worst attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor occurred on his watch. And it occurred after he had systematically ignored intelligence warnings – before 9/11 – that Osama Bin Laden “was determined to strike the U.S.” and that his terrorist network might try to hijack planes to do it.
In fact terrorism was a low priority for the Bush Administration before 9/11. And just six months after 9/11, when asked about apprehending the mastermind of those attack, Bush said, “I truly am not that concerned about him.”
Because I’ve been feverishly glued to a computer since I started doing The Moderate Voice in December 2003, I remember FULL WELL the news stories heading up to 9/11. And, yes, as testimony and history now records, the Bush administration was warned that something was coming.
Should Americans interested in the accuracy look at that and borrow a quote from former Gov. Rick Perry?
“Oops…”
Instead his administration was busy cherry picking intelligence to justify an attack on Iraq that had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11.
The Iraq War did anything but “keep us safe.” It was based on false “intelligence” that Saddam Hussein had non-existent weapons of mass destruction. It cost over 4,000 American lives and maimed or injured tens of thousands more. It cost America trillions of dollars. Worst of all it served as a recruitment tool for Al Qaida and other terrorist networks around the world.
In fact, rather than “keep us safe,” a 2006 intelligence report concluded that the War in Iraq “made the overall terrorism problem worse”. It also kicked over the sectarian hornet’s nest in the Middle East and created the conditions that spawned Al Qaida in Iraq that ultimately turned into ISIL (there was no Al Qaida in Iraq before the invasion).
And then there’s that teeny weenie problem for those of us independents who for the most part (not all) were impressed by Jeb Bush’s stint as Florida Governor. I visited there often when my parents were alive and living part of the year at a condo on Marco Island. Both there and elsewhere, I’d come across Floridians pleased with their Governor.
The problem is that Jeb Bush has given the impression that what will occur is a “restoration” in one way that is unacceptable to many Americans, many Democrats, independents and Republicans. And he’ll have to deal with this issue if he is nominated:
Of course you can understand why Jeb Bush insists that his brother “kept us safe”. He has surrounded himself with many of the very same foreign policy advisors that presided over the worst foreign policy record in half a century.
They are the same crowd that most recently tried and failed to sink the six-nation agreement to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon without a war.After a while it gets sickening to listen to their attempts to rewrite history and posture as tough foreign policy geniuses when in fact they conducted a foreign policy that put America and our interests at more risk and sent thousands of young men and women to their deaths in an unnecessary elective war.
But the thing that is most galling is their refusal to take any responsibility for allowing the nation to be subjected to the worst attack on the homeland in 70 years.
It is simply outrageous that the Bush crowd would have the audacity to say they “kept us safe” after presiding over the 9/11 debacle – and the inept, ineffective, ideologically driven response that followed.
And there’s this little tidbit, too:
George Bush left President Obama an economy that was hemorrhaging 800,000 jobs a month when he took office in 2009. And the collapse of the financial markets on Bush’s watch wiping out $2 trillion in retirement savings.
Is that what he means by “keeping us safe”.
George Bush sped up climate change with an energy policy written in secret by Dick Cheney and representatives of the Oil companies.
And who can forget how he kept the people of the New Orleans and the Gulf Coast “safe” when they were struck by Hurricane Katrina. Over a thousand Americans died because the levies failed in New Orleans and the Bush Administration’s response was infamously inept.
“Keeping us safe?”
Jeb’s claim is akin to saying an extra large pizza with extra cheese and extra pepperoni is “diet food.”
And many Americans of both parties and no party felt that the country lost a lot of unwanted fat when George Bush left office.
Still, Jeb! now realizes he can’t run away from his name:
“Name a country in the world where our relationship is better today than the day that Hillary of Clinton became secretary of state,” Bush instructed the crowd.
“Iran,” he said, responding to an audience member. “There’s one more, come on, you’re smart, you’re from Michigan. … Cuba. Maybe Burma, we’ll give ’em a break. That’s it.”
Instead, he said, relations appear to be worse with Israel, the Middle East and Canada.
The next president needs to foster better international relations and peace, he said.
“I know how to do this because, yes, I am a Bush,” he said. “I happened to see two really good presidents develop relationships with other countries.”
The line got big applause from the audience at the signature event of the Michigan Republican Party.
It’s the most full-throated defense of his presidential last name that the former Florida governor has engaged in during his campaign — where he has often sought to distinguish himself as his own man.
Former President Vice President Dick Cheney must also be smiling.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.