Tag Archives: Twin Towers

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'W' should have been there

OK, kids. At the risk of incurring the wrath of those who think I’m a member of the “Always Blame Bush” crowd, I’m going to weigh in on what some might perceive to be a sensitive subject.

Former President George W. Bush should have been among those attending today’s dedication of the 9/11 National Memorial and Museum.

He wasn’t there because of what a spokesperson for the former president said was a scheduling conflict.

President Bush had been invited. He couldn’t rearrange his schedule to make room for an event that surely had been on his radar for weeks, if not months.

President Obama was there, as was former President Clinton. Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg was on hand, as was former Mayor Rudy Guiliani, on whose watch the terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo took part, along with former New York Gov. George Pataki and the current NYC mayor, Bill De Blasio.

Lots of dignitaries were on hand.

Not the 43rd president of the United States.

President Bush’s most stellar moments in office likely came in the hours and days after that horrific event, which occurred not quite nine months after he had taken office. The strength of character he exhibited in rallying a grief-stricken nation will be remembered forever. I admired then — and I do to this day — the way he stood in the rubble and declared through the bullhorn that “the people who knocked these buildings down will hear from all of us soon.”

The world today should have heard from the president on whose watch this nation was battered and scarred.

Scheduling conflict? It just doesn’t wash.

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Global war on terror far from over

The standing down today of 21 U.S. embassies around the world because of so-called terrorist “chatter” has opened up a bit of a debate over whether President Obama said the “global war on terror is over.”

It also illustrates how headlines can be, well, a bit misleading.

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/05/23/obama-global-war-on-terror-is-over

The headline on this link illustrates the point.

It tells of speech Obama made in May in which he declared a significant change in U.S. strategy in fighting international terrorists. He vowed to end drone strikes, restated his intention to close the U.S. terrorist prison in Guantanamo, Cuba and declared that the global war as we’ve known it since 9/11 has come to an end.

But as I read the story contained in the attached link, I read that the president declared his intention to keep looking for bad guys, to keep searching for their hiding places and to kill or capture them whenever possible.

Yet, the president’s many critics in the conservative mainstream media keep harping on half-truths and keep trying to put words in his mouth in the wake of the embassy stand-down.

I’m pretty sure we’re going to remain at war with international terrorist organizations throughout the remainder of Barack Obama’s time in office and we’re going to keep fighting that war well into the next administration’s tenure in the White House. Heck, we might still be fighting them for the rest of all of our lives.

Our strategies do change, though, as circumstances warrant. That’s what I’m hearing the president say about the global war on terror.