On this last weekend of George W Bush’s administration—after a week of hearing the man and his surrogates bleat that he kept us safe—I rewatched United 93.
This was only my second time through the film. It’s not an easy one. On September 11th, one of my friends and co-workers in Baltimore, lost both her parents on American Airlines flight 77. Shortly after that, one of my classmates from our very small middle school, trapped, was killed on one of the top floors of the WTC towers.
Whether you’re reading the 9/11 Commission report’s account, or watching this remarkable film, the best contrast for our era plays out for you. In the film, the air traffic controllers, the military officers, the professionals in the film, are generally played by the actual people in those roles on that day. They do their jobs, and do them well—piecing together the horrifying truth from the snippets available to them with startiling skill and deftness. They know what to do, the best next step; they are prevented from doing it.
So much power, just a vast amount of power, is concentrated into the hands of the incompetent few—the unitary executive, the vortex of incompetence, the duet of Bush and Cheney.
The orders to activate the military force against the hijacked jets never came. The order to ground all flights never came. In the latter case, the decision was simply made. Bush and Cheney were too busy in their cowardice to do their duty. These men and women did. As thanks, for the duration of this administration, civil servants were deeply, profoundly and criminally disrespected by these petty fools.
And then, it came down to that more-or-less random collection of forty of your fellow citizens. They made the decision that Bush and Cheney refused to make. They brought their own jet down, based on gleaned details of what was happening.
They were rational, cool and successful in all the ways that Bush was incoherent, panicky and incompetent. If you want to give credit to anyone for the lack of further attacks, for no more airliners being hijacked, thank these passengers, who demonstrated that Americans are made of sterner stuff than Al-Queda or Bush would like you to believe.
We didn’t need to be kept safe. We kept ourselves safe. We’ll keep ourselves safe. It’s our republic. It’s our bravery and freedom, not yours to claim, President Bush.
I’m fat.
pooger’s fat insulates pooger from temptation to join herd writing patriotic pre-inaugural pronunciamentos. I will use pooger as role model until Tuesday afternoon.
Bravo.
@1 = Awesome.
I’m still laughing. Really.
This post was good in general, but pooger took it to the next level. Pooger. Lollywolly.
yeah.
WE cured AIDS, too.
Jonathan,
I saw the same film (United 93) and found it excellent. It was fascinating that they cast actual participants for the roles. Truly, a fine example of fortitude. But, I part with you on your interpretation. It’s fairly obvious (from the film) that very few could conceive of what was actually going on until way too late. The hijacking/attack was so surprising and bold that it would have been exceedingly difficult to round up pilots, execute a flight plan and determine targets (planes filled with civilians) to shoot down.
It is true after that horror that there haven’t been any attacks on US soil. And, several plots have been foiled as well. But, it’s also impossible to prove a negative. Few Americans will care about whether Bush kept us safe.
Not to mention that Bush & Cheney fulfilled Al Qaeda’s every desire. Why would they keep attacking us when we gave them everything they wanted?
I didn’t watch the movie until the Sept. 11 anniversary this year when it was airing on some cable channel. I was unexpectedly riveted by it… I watched standing up in my living room for the first half an hour, feeling like I needed to be standing and pacing for some reason.
I came out somewhere between Golob and lark in terms of my interpretation – I was struck by how difficult it was, for those involved to even conceive of what was happening. But, I don’t remember feeling like Bush/Cheney came across as particularly incompetent, or that if it weren’t for them, the right decisions could have been made and some of the catastrophe could have been mitigated.
I had been thinking that when I moved to Eugene, I would maybe think of 9/11 less, since I’m not in a major city and I don’t work in a high rise anymore (it was virtually impossible to not think of it whenever I saw out my office window commercial planes flying low over downtown Chicago). But, last night I dreamt that I was in a skyscraper that was collapsing, floors falling down on one another. I guess it’s going to take a bit longer…
I think on 9/11 we just got caught with our pants down. Nobody really expected something like that, not seriously. I actually don’t blame Bush for his failures on that day, he pretty much reacted the same way probably any of us would have reacted… wtf?!?, uh, shit, uh, ok what’s our procedure for this… shit…, ok, we’ll be ok… just, uh, shit…
Bad planning, bad predictions. But not bush’s fault. I don’t think Clinton or Reagan or anyone before would have been any better. All the stuff afterwards he sucked on, but on that day, he was only as dumb as we all were.
“We didn’t need to be kept safe. We kept ourselves safe. We’ll keep ourselves safe. It’s our republic. It’s our bravery and freedom, not yours to claim, President Bush.”
next up- COMPLETE FINANCIAL MELTDOWN! if we only had someone to save us! someone smarter!
From your take on the movie I doubt you’ve ever worked in any military command or first responder role for our government. The real breakdown that happened is that the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld trifecta were all power hungry and did not allow our carefully planned powers to operate as intended.
In order to offset an attack like this, an attack that defies any pre-planning, the people on the bottom tier of response need authority to make bold moves like ground flights, scramble fighter jets, secure segments of airspace, etc. The arrogance of the executive triumvirate denied the lower throng, worker-bees, the ability to do their job without prior review from well above. It should be mentioned that the left wing mantra of absolute oversight causes the same paralysis.
The American Public needs to stop envying the awesome power very carefully and purposely endowed to the responders and start doing more to keep them happy and “un-corrupted”.
On Tuesday, each and every police, FBI, and Secret Service officer working the inauguration will be working under shoot to kill orders. That is a necessity. If they needed supervisory approval the Obama family might well not make it.
I hope this can help you understand that it is essential that first responders be allowed to do the job they were hired to do as they see fit with oversight coming LATER in the process. Notice I didn’t argue against oversight, I simply argued that it’s place in the process is as a review after the event is over and when cooler heads can prevail.
@11: Reading comprehension… FAIL.
Wow. This was kind of a stupid post. The point you’re trying to make doesn’t really gibe with the situation you’re describing. Not to mention the fact that Bush’s was that he helped prevent further attacks. He wasn’t talking about Sept. 11 being a shining day for him. I understand you hate Bush, but that doesn’t absolve you from having to make cogent points.
@9,
I’m sure most of us would have sat there with a vapid expression on our faces upon hearing that the country’s under attack. Most of us would also have been happy to run and hide for most of the day, shirking our responsibilities. The thing is Bush isn’t like most of us, or at least shouldn’t have been. He was the President of the United States, which means that sitting in that classroom with a “Well, duh” look on his face, then hiding on Air Force One for hours, is unacceptable. He is and has always been a fuck up, on that day and before and since.
Nice Article.
Too bad it’s eight years too late.
http://www.pushthenet.com
you should have remembered this before electing him for another term, idiots…
indeed 8 years too late
Frankly, the loss of life on 9/11 was pretty minor on a worldwide and/or cosmic scale. It was certainly a blow to US national pride, and it was certainly massively tragic for anyone who lost loved ones when it happened, but the few thousands lost are quite literally negligible compared to the ongoing deaths out there in the world.
It’s just a very American thing to be horrified by the death of a few thousand highly paid predominantly caucasian people who were American and not give a tinkers damn about the thousands upon thousands of children and women who are not American who have died as direct consequence of the actions of (and sometimes directy at the hands of citizens of) the US.
As for being safe… there is no such thing. As long as people sit fat and happy in their suburbs and demand that they be kept safe from everything, fear mongers will do very well indeed in political circles. The only thing all the fear mongering has done is take massive chunks out of the personal liberties of every citizen, without materially increasing security for anyone. And that certainly counts as a big, juicy win – for the terrorists.
We were not kept safe. Does anyone besides the families of the dead postal workers remember anthrax?
The largest terrorist attack in the history of the United States happened during his presidency. Please tell me how that is keeping us safe?
I found out what Bush and Cheney were made of after that day. No one else remembers AF1 endlessley taking off from one base to another, never quite staying on the ground long enough for Bush to answer questions or show his face? Cheney being hunkered down in some “undisclosed location” for weeks? Leadership at the top simply disappeared, didn’t even make a video appearance. Cowards.
I’ve always thought that Cheney ordered Flight 93 shot down. Not true?
I survived the Bush Presidency and all I got was this lousy alcohol addiction