Osama died happy – thanks to Bush

Note: The chronicle of my post-9/11 terrorist conspiracy is available at Asia Times

Ten years ago, al-Qaeda extremists wrought tragedy upon America, killing more than 3,000 people in attacks aimed at the US political, economic and military nerve centers. The George W Bush administration turned this day of infamy into a decade of disaster for the US, just what Osama bin Laden had in mind when he ordered the 9/11 attacks.

The Bush administration’s reactions and their consequences did far more damage than the attacks themselves over the past decade. By turning the US into the country caricatured in al-Qaeda propaganda, the Bush people set the stage for catastrophic results at home and overseas. How dare they show their faces on this anniversary of their great failure, or take it as an occasion to sell books or indulge their sense of self-importance. They deserve to be served with warrants, strewn with garbage, and, most of all, never listened to again.

One thing you’ll never hear them do: take responsibility in any way, shape or form for the deadly attack that happened on their watch or the disasters that followed due to their errors. Condoleezza Rice thinks she was right to ignore the memo titled “Bin Laden determined to strike in US” five weeks before 9/11. Dick Cheney knows it was a good idea to turn away from Afghanistan, where the group that attacked the US on 9/11 was, to Iraq, where it wasn’t. Donald Rumsfeld thinks trying to police Iraq with at least 100,000 fewer troops than the generals recommended was a perfect plan. When George W Bush said, “We’re changing the culture of America from one that has said . . . ‘if you’ve got a problem, blame somebody else,’ to a culture in which each of us understands we are responsible for the decisions we make,” it was just another instance of Bush either not understanding his own words, or not meaning them.

Shame on Laura Bush and fellow 9/11 liars

Watching the 9/11 commemorations stirred appropriately somber memories and emotions of that tragic day, until I saw Laura Bush speaking at the Shanksville, Pennsylvania, memorial to Flight 93 passengers. The National Parks Foundation, which organized the memorial, must’ve invited Bush because Osama bin Laden and shoe bomber Richard Reid sent regrets. No telling where Bush found the gall to attend.

Bush, of course, is the wife of former president George W Bush, who held office when al Qaeda struck on September 11, 2001. Yet Bush shoulders none of the blame for the attacks, even though his administration downgraded the fight against al Qaeda, and Bush’s national security advisor, serial incompetent Condoleezza Rice, ignored an August 2001 memo titled “Bin Laden determined to attack inside the United States.”

Despite all that, plus the administration’s botched conduct of the operation to capture bin Laden that’s become the nine year war in Afghanistan, Bush evades responsibility for this monumental tragedy. Moreover, he and fellow Republicans wear 9/11 as a badge of honor, using it as a political weapon to bludgeon opponents. By contrast, the Obama administration came under a firestorm of criticism over an attempted attack where the primary fault was overseas airport security failing to detect explosives.

Laura Bush is no innocent bystander but an active part of the Bush propaganda squad. As first defender of her husband’s administration, two years ago at the Republican National Convention, Mrs Bush fibbed, “Let’s not forget, President Bush has kept the American people safe.” That’s not true, Laura, unless 9/11 is your idea of safe. Maybe it is, since you and W came out okay.

Today in Shanksville, Bush even had the temerity to mention Iraq, the misbegotten war her husband’s team justified by abusing 9/11 and telling other, bigger lies. The invasion of Iraq cost more Americans lives than 9/11, killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and extinguished any opportunity for the US to build on the global goodwill the attacks created.

For future 9/11 anniversaries, let’s hope that memorial organizers have the good sense to keep members of the George W Bush administration off the podium, and that administration members, starting with Laura and her husband, have the good taste to spend that day, and every day, with their heads bowed in shame and regret, at least until they take responsibility for their errors and apologize to the families in America and beyond that lost loved ones due to the administration’s incompetence, malfeasance and arrogance.

Make no mistake, Bushies, you’ll find Osama. You’re all guaranteed to meet him in hell.

Totally globalized native New Yorker and former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen is author of Hong Kong On Air, a novel set in his adopted hometown during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal, financial crisis, and cheap lingerie.