The heroism of DubYa.

You know, you hear it from a lot of people; hell, I said it myself: "Bush really did do a great job right after 9/11;" and I think it's probably fair to say that I probably have as great a loathing of dub-YA as just about anyone out there. You hear it in the media, you hear it from people of both political extremes about Bush's supposed heroism just after the terrorist attacks. And, like I said, I've heard it from me.

But let's really think about this. I mean, let's go back to a few months before the 9/11 attacks and really, seriously ask ourselves what made Bush so heroic after that fateful day.

January, 2001: Clinton is just leaving office, and the outgoing national security team warns Bush's incoming National Security advisor, Dr. Condoleezza Rice, that she will probably spend most of her time dealing with terrorism in general, and Osama bin Laden in specific. To the best of anyone's knowledge, she did nothing to act upon this advice.

March, 2001. The bipartisan Hart-Rudman study was issued. I'm not going to go over the specifics of the study, but suffice to say that the study argued that the US was likely to face a large-scale terrorist attack in the not-too-distant future, and recommended steps to protect against such an attack. While we obviously cannot say for sure, it is certainly possible that some of the recommended measures stood at least a chance of preventing or at least mitigating the 9/11 attacks.

The report was largely ignored, and Bush had Chaney convene an antiterror task force to come up with its own set of recommendations.

As of 9/11, the task force had never met. That's six months after the issuing of the study, and they hadn't met once. It's worth mentioning that his energy task force met several times in the same six months. Apparently, energy was a more pressing issue than terrorism.

Somehow, even the August 6th security briefing with the rather ominous title: "Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside the United States" failed to raise any red flags with the administration.

Now, I want to stop here and say that people smarter than me don't even know if 9/11 could have been prevented or not, so I'm not for a minute saying that it could've. But how it can be argued with a straight face that Bush did everything he could, or even everything that a reasonably intelligent 10-year-old would have done, is completely beyond me.

9/11. Now, in fairness, for about 48 hours, nobody had the faintest clue what the hell was going on; and it fell to the Mayor of New York City to hold the country together. And while I generally don't think too highly of Rudy, I have to admit, I put credit where it's due: he handled the crisis well.

So, now we're well into September of 2001; and in the week following 9/11, Bush had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to cultivate international goodwill. We had countries which, a year ago, would just as soon have pissed on the american flag pledging their support. Iran offered their support, France, England, just about all of Europe and Asia, most of Africa. For the first time in history, we had a whole world offering their contolences and asking what help we needed.

Now, maybe I'm old fashioned, but it seems like it's just good manners to respond: "Thank you. We appreciate your offers. If we need anything, we will let you know." Instead, Bush snarled "you're either with us, or you're against us." Dirty Harry is not a guide to international diplomacy. Basically, he threatened half the world into do exactly what they'd promised to do anyway. Effectively, he squandered the tragic events' one silver lining: an opportunity to cultivate international goodwill, something which would have proven useful in a time when the major enemies are international terrorist organizations.

So Bush invades Afghanistan. And he had a lot of help doing it. Everyone in the US, and several other countries supported that invasion. Incidentally, contrary to any conservative nut that tells you otherwise, Gore was a full supporter of the invasion of Afghanistan. How can one legitimately call Bush a hero for doing exactly what absolutely anyone else would have done in his position?

And in a time of national unity unparallelled since the second world war, Bush squandered the one opportunity he had to ask us for sacrifice, and make significant changes to domestic policy. Presidents during wartime have a long history of asking for, and getting, shared sacrifice from citizens willing to give it, proudly united in the service of a common cause.

He could have called for energy conservation. He could have called for us to get off Middle East oil entirely, or called for an Apollo-caliber project for total energy independence. He could have used the tragedy of 9/11 to change the course of history for the better. I truly believe that the nation would have risen to it.

Instead, he suspends whatever liberties he wanted to, and subsequently let bin Laden escape from Tora Bora. He then went on to further abuse the memory of the thousands who died on September 11th to justify an invasion of Iraq, and furhter trashed international relations and national security.

In short, a real hero would have pretty much done exactly the opposite of what Bush did at every step of the way.