President Bush at Ground Zero on 9/14/2001: “Thank you all. I want you all to know that America today is on bended knee in prayer for the people whose lives were lost here, for the workers who work here, for the families who mourn. This nation stands with the good people of New York City and New Jersey and Connecticut as we mourn the loss of thousands of our citizens.”
A worker yelled: “I can’t hear you!”
Bush replied: “I can hear you. I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.”
The crowd then chanted: “U.S.A.!”
Three days later, President Bush said, “The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That’s not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace. These terrorists don’t represent peace. They represent evil and war. When we think of Islam we think of a faith that brings comfort to a billion people around the world. Billions of people find comfort and solace and peace.”
I greet today’s 25th anniversary of 9/11 with sorrow and anger because America was tested and we failed. At a time when we needed strength and resolve, we showed weakness and later a loss of willpower.
Mistakes were made in large part due to weak leadership. The baby boom generation was in charge and utterly failed to unite the country and defeat a common enemy.
10 days after Pearl Harbor, FDR fired the men in charge. He relieved Admiral Husband E. Kimmel as Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, demoting him from a four-star admiral to his permanent rank of a two-star rear admiral.
FDR relieved three-star Lieutenant General Walter C. Short as commander of the Army’s Hawaiian Department, reverting him back to a two-star major general.
They retired rather than face court martial. Some say they were made scapegoats. I don’t know. I wasn’t there. But I do know the very important message that failure was not an option. That helped win the war.
Bush sent a message too—the wrong one. George J. Tenet kept his job as director of the CIA, which missed 9/11 completely.
On September 26, 2001, Bush visited CIA headquarters and said, “George and I have been spending a lot of quality time together. There’s a reason. I’ve got a lot of confidence in him, and I’ve got a lot of confidence in the CIA.”
Later, in July 2003, after controversy over Iraq WMD intelligence, Bush told reporters, “Yes, I do. Absolutely. I’ve got confidence in George Tenet and in the men and women who work at the CIA.”
Tenet retired a year later. In December 2004 Bush awarded Tenet the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The message was clear. Those who run DC are a protected lot.
On his watch, Tenet’s agency missed the worst attack on American soil>Three years later, Bush awarded him the nation’s highest civilian award.
At the time, Bush stated that Tenet “was one of the first to recognize and address the growing threat to America from radical terrorist networks” and was ready after 9/11 “with a plan to strike back at al Qaeda.”
We did not catch Osama bin Laden for 10 years. We searched all over Afghanistan for him. He was in Pakistan.
Robert Mueller also kept his job but he had been FBI director for only one week. It took him a month to show his incompetency when he personally took over the investigation of anthrax spores sent by mail to two senators and various news agencies. Five people died of inhalational anthrax and 17 others were infected.
The FBI wasted seven years treating Steven Hatfill, a former Army scientist, as the prime suspect. They used bloodhound scent evidence that was later discarded as unreliable, publicly identified him as a person of interest, and subjected him to intensive surveillance. He was never charged. In 2008 the government settled his privacy lawsuit for about $5.8 million and later formally cleared him.
Hatfill had no access to anthrax. Another Army scientist, Bruce Ivins, did. He had access to the specific anthrax flask (RMR-1029) used in the mail-in attack. Ivins committed suicide once the government finally cleared Hatfill.
When Mueller finally retired, Obama praised him no end, “For more than a century, we have counted on the dedicated men and women of the FBI to keep us safe. In that time, the FBI has been led by six directors. And the second-longest-serving director of the FBI—for the last 12 years—has been an exemplary public servant, Bob Mueller.
“By law, FBI directors only serve for 10 years. But back in 2011, when Bob’s term was up, I asked Congress to give him two more years. It wasn’t a request I made lightly, and I know Congress didn’t grant it lightly. But at a time when transitions were underway at the CIA and the Pentagon, and given the threats facing our nation, we felt it was critical to have Bob’s steady hand and strong leadership at the bureau.”
As the second in tenure, Mueller must have had the goods on everyone because the longest-serving FBI director—J. Edgar Hoover—certainly did. It is called job security.
The bureaucracy failed and so Bush and Congress rewarded the bureaucracy with yet another Cabinet-level department. We federalized airport security, which made sense in the short term but has since become permanent. Growing government is easy. Actually governing is difficult.
Our biggest mistake was treating 9/11 like it was Pearl Harbor because we were not attacked by an imperial military. This was just 19 terrorists. By treating it as Pearl Harbor we wound up in two wars. One was successful—yes, we succeeded in rendering Iraq impotent—the other ended in an outright surrender by Biden and the rest of Washington DC.
Afghanistan is called the graveyard of great armies for one reason: it is. The USSR’s decision to invade became a retreat that helped bring down the Soviet Union. Putin learned nothing and invaded Ukraine.
We offered a pitiful $25 million bounty on Osama bin Laden’s head. We should have paid the Taliban $1 billion to turn him over, no questions asked.
Instead we blew $2.3 trillion ($2,300 billion) on a war that cost us 2,461 military men and women—and cost our NATO allies 1,144 military personnel. In addition, Australia lost 41 troops and the Republic of Georgia lost 32.
That’s 3,678 sacrifices. Our NATO frenemies have every right to complain because Biden never consulted them when he caved in to the Taliban.
Ahead of the 25th anniversary, President Bush threw shade on Donald Trump and said, “Our nation occasionally goes through isolationist periods. Where the attitude is ‘we’ve got too many problems at home therefore who cares what happens overseas.’ Which really means to me they don’t pay attention to the lesson of 9/11.”
Did no one tell him about the war in Iran?
He should go back to painting because had Bush done his job right, the Global War on Terrorism would have ended with a quick and decisive victory. Instead, we spent trillions of dollars and lost thousands of good men and women because we had a commander-in-chief who denied the reality of the Islamic threat even after the destruction of the Twin Towers and much of the Pentagon.
He had his moments. What might have been.
We remember the Alamo because Texas went on to defeat Santa Ana and wrest independence from Mexico. We remember the Maine because the USA went on to win the Spanish-American War. We remember Pearl Harbor because America went on to destroy the Japanese empire and Nazi Germany.
Our generation remembers 9/11 in shame because Washington was not up to the task—and George Bush refused to tell the truth about Islam.
Let us learn the lesson already.
God bless the families of those who lost loved ones on 9/11 and in the wars thereafter.
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This article first appeared on Don Surber’s Substack. Reprinted here with permission.
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