More Firsts and Flashbacks
Albert Gore Jr. easily won nomination by the Democratic Party to run for the
presidency in 2000. After the Y2K scare passed, attention turned to Gore’s difficult
dance in wanting to associate himself with the economic gains of the Clinton years while
distancing himself from the corruption of the Clinton administration. The Republican
Party’s choice for a candidate, however, was not as clear. They looked desperately for a
candidate who had strong conservative positions against gun control, abortion, and taxes.
They found him in an unlikely place, George H. W. Bush’s family. George W. Bush
graduated as a C student from Yale and became a lieutenant in the Air National Guard
where he flew F-104 fighter planes. He took his education more seriously in graduate
school and became the first president to earn an MBA from Harvard. After a wild youth
where his wife told him to choose alcohol or her (he chose her) he failed in the oil
business but succeeded as the part-owner/manager of the Texas Rangers professional
baseball team. After serving as governor of Texas, he campaigned for the presidency
becoming the first modern candidate to specifically name Jesus Christ as the chief
influence on his life. The Reagan Conservative Movement seemed to have new life, and
George W. Bush became the greatest political fund-raiser in US history, breaking the
records set by Bill Clinton by a wide margin. Thus began one of the most curious
episodes in presidential election history.
The Republicans worked hard to defeat an incumbent party during a peacetime
good economy. Black, Hispanic, Asian, female, and disabled speakers were all a part of
the convention as the Republican Party broke the stereotype that it was the party of rich
white men. The Democrats underestimated Bush and/or overestimated Gore’s debating
skills because a surprised nation acknowledged that Bush won all three of the televised
debates. A record of a DUI in Bush’s past and the entrance of Ralph Nader of the Green
Party (who would take votes only from Gore), turned the Election of 2000 into the
tightest race in US history.
Florida was the key. A Bush lead of 10,000 votes (which is not much) dwindled
to 537, and then went back up to 950 at which point Gore called Bush to concede the
election. An automatic recount was triggered by Florida law because of the closeness of
the race. Bush’s lead dropped to 327 votes, so Gore called Bush back to retract his
concession and called for recounts in heavily Democratic counties. After the third count
of ballots, this time including overseas ballots, Bush’s lead went back up to 930 and he
went on national television to claim victory. The partial recount had taken days, and then
Gore appealed to the US Supreme Court to demand an extension to allow state-wide hand
recounts. State officials said there were 43,000 ballots with no discernible choice. With
the constitutional deadline approaching for Florida’s electoral votes to count, the
Supreme Court voted 7-2 that hand-counting violated federal equal protection clauses
because of a lack of standards for determining the votes on punched (or not-punched)
cards. The Supreme Court voted 5-4 to reverse the Florida Supreme Court’s ruling that
prohibited the certification of the original election results to gain time for recounts.
George Bush was declared the winner of the Election of 2000. Later surveys conducted
by media outlets indicated that a hand-counting process would have given Bush 152 more
votes, anyway. Perhaps never again will voters on the West coast stop and turn around
without voting after news agencies “call” states on the East coast!
A deep red/blue division was revealed in the United States. A county-by-county
map revealed that the blue counties that voted for Gore lay along the coasts and in
various other pockets like along the Mississippi River from Minnesota southward.
Virtually all of the interior counties voted for Bush and were colored red. Gore had
carried 677 counties while Bush had carried 2, 434 with an almost exact division of the
country in the popular vote. Elites offended middle-Americans by referring to their states
as “fly-over states.”
Perhaps embittered by the reflection the election cast on his own presidency,
Clinton issued 140 pardons and 36 sentence commutations his last day in office. Every
president has the power of pardoning criminals, but none had done it quite to this extent.
As Clinton left Marine One, the presidential helicopter, for the last time the Marine
guards failed to execute a right-face to stand facing the back of the departing President.
This gesture was interpreted as a response to his failure to earn the respect of the military.
Soon the House of Representatives, the Senate, the presidency, and the majority on the
Supreme Court were in the hands of conservatives and/or Republicans.
The margins in Congress were slim, however. Bush advocated a tax cut, partial
privatization of Social Security, education reform, and deployment of Reagan’s SDI plan.
Even some Senate Democrats supported the tax cuts, which included a rebate check for
American taxpayers, but then Jim Jeffords switched parties in May of 2001 and gave the
Senate to the Democrats. For a time it seemed that the US government would be bogged
down in obstructionism and delay. Bush could not even get judicial nominations for
federal courts in place. Then his presidency and all life in America were dramatically
changed.
On the morning of September 10th, 2001, the news carried word of the criticism
by the National Academy of Sciences of Bush’s executive orders restricting the use of
stem-cells for research using federal funding. A California Congressman, Gary Condit,
was under investigation for the disappearance of another Washington intern, Chandra
Levy, with whom he had a sexual relationship. Pressure was mounting on Bush to do
something about an economic slowdown that followed the tax increases under Clinton.
Needed reforms in the Immigration and Naturalization Service were discussed. A mother
was about to be tried for the drowning of her five children in a bath tub.
On the morning of September 11th, 2001, President Bush was in Florida to read a
book to elementary school children to push his No Child Left Behind education proposal.
While on national television, an aide leaned in to speak in the president’s ear. He told
President Bush that a plane had flown into one of the World Trade Center’s Twin
Towers. In fact, a terrorist had announced on the radio after taking over American
Airlines Flight 11, “We have some planes.” The plane had been fueled to make a nonstop cross-country flight, and when the hijacker/pilot flew it into the North Tower the
fuel ignited a fire that burned at upwards of 1,800 degrees. News cameras had just
enough time to set up to cover the “accident,” as many in the public supposed, when a
second jumbo jet, United Flight 175, flew into the South Tower. Bush had only enough
time to deliver a terse message to the nation before a third plane, American Flight 77, was
flown into the Pentagon.
By that time, a totally unprecedented command was issued to all of the aircraft
over the United States of America. All flights were told to land as soon as possible, and
all flights bound for the United States from abroad were canceled. This action is thought
to have saved Big Ben and the Parliament building in England by thwarting planned
hijackings. It did not save the passengers aboard United Airlines Flight 93 who rushed
the cabin of their hijacked jetliner. The plane, which had turned around and was flying
toward Washington, D. C, crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. The
passengers had heard of the previous terrorist attacks by cell phone calls, and passenger
Todd Beamer led them in an attempt to stop their own plane’s becoming a missile with
the words, “Let’s roll.”
By then the World Trade Center towers were doomed. At 9:50 the South Tower
collapsed taking an incredibly long ten seconds to fall. The North Tower soon followed.
The fires started by the jet fuel had so weakened the steel supporting the tops of the
towers that they collapsed, and the bottom portions of the towers were not designed to
absorb such a massive amount of weight falling from above. Original estimates were that
over 10,000 people were killed. While the final number of passengers, office workers,
and rescue personnel killed was just under 3,000, the attacks on September 11th still
constituted the worst terrorist attack on US soil and the worst attack against the
continental United States by a foreign enemy since the British invasion during the War of
1812. President Bush declared a DefCon 3, the highest level of military readiness in 28
years. He announced on television, “These acts of mass murder were intended to frighten
our nation into chaos and retreat. But they have failed. . . . Terrorist attacks can shake the
foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America.”
The CIA and the FBI quickly determined that the attacks were the work of Osama
bin Laden’s Al Qaeda terrorist network based in Afghanistan. Having committed himself
to a holy war throughout the world, a videotape surfaced in which bin Laden exclaimed,
“America! Full of fear. . . . Thank God for that.” He was also glad, I’m sure, to see our
stock market have to shut down to prevent a panic. With a loss of confidence, the Dow
fell 500 points upon reopening. With the damage done to the airline industry and others
directly or indirectly impacted by the attacks, an estimate is that they cost the United
States $2 trillion. An analysis of how 19 hijackers could kill roughly 3,000 Americans
and damage the nation’s economy so severely led to the largest reorganization of the
federal government since the New Deal. The Department of Homeland Security was
created to facilitate the workings of the CIA, FBI, and the National Security
Administration (NSA) along with other agencies responsible for immigration and
national security.
As rescue and recovery efforts frantically began on the smoking pile of collapsed
rubble, Bush spoke at a memorial service at the National Cathedral:
On Tuesday, our country was attacked with deliberate and massive cruelty. We
have seen the images of fire and ashes, and bent steel. Now come the names, the
list of casualties we are only beginning to read. . . . They are the names of people
who faced death, and in their last moments called home to say, “Be brave, and I
love you.” War has been waged against us by stealth and deceit and murder. . . .
This conflict was begun on the timing and terms of others. It will end in a way,
and at an hour, of our choosing.
After his speech, Bush flew to Ground Zero and walked out on the pile of rubble. Bush
tried to speak to the assembled rescue workers through a bullhorn. When the device
failed momentarily, the workers shouted, “We can’t hear you,” at which point the
president responded, “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!” He later told Congress what
became known as the Bush Doctrine, a new foreign policy stance for the US. “This is a
turning point in history,” he said. “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”
Bush told his Cabinet on Sept. 17th, “It starts today. The purpose of this meeting is to
assign tasks for the first wave of the war against terrorism. I want the CIA to be the first
on the ground. We’ll attack with missiles, bombers, and boots on the ground.” Bush told
the press he wanted bin Laden “dead or alive.”
The operation to unseat the Taliban from ruling Afghanistan was called Enduring
Freedom. The Taliban had supported Al Qaeda, and Osama bin Laden was thought to be
in Afghanistan still. As Special Forces units called in airstrikes on enemy positions and
quickly killed over 1,300 Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters, the press, which had united
along with the country to demand retribution, quickly turned pessimistic. Within a few
weeks the words, “Vietnam” and “quagmire” were heard regularly. A Newsweek reporter
asserted that 250,000 troops would be necessary to win, when the total was actually
20,000. The White House correspondent for ABC said, “I think the bad guys are
winning.” Meanwhile, US air power dominated the battlefield just as in the Gulf War
and with even “smarter” weapons. When the truth came out about the progress in the
war, one war analyst simply said, “I’m glad we are not fighting us.”
Within months the Taliban was evicted from Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden
driven into hiding. US forces killed hundreds of Al Qaeda terrorists and arrested
thousands of others for questioning while much of the worldwide network that was
funding Al Qaeda was shut down. While terrorist attacks and bombings continued
around the world, certain definite results came from American and allied efforts:
Richard Reid was stopped from igniting his shoe that contained explosives on a
passenger jet.
Several hundred Al Qaeda members and suspected terrorists were detained at
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
About two dozen of Al Qaeda’s top leaders were killed or captured (but not bin
Laden).
A democratic government was installed in Afghanistan to replace the Taliban.
A “dirty bomb” attack was thwarted, Al Qaeda “cells” were captured, and four
allied countries had captured Al Qaeda operatives.
Millions of dollars of Al Qaeda assets were frozen.
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, was
captured.
A raid in Pakistan captured an Al Qaeda computer expert leading to the capture
of dozens more operatives and breaking up another planned attack on the US by
2004.
Evidence was found that Saddam Hussein had links to Al Qaeda terrorists, and the
dictator of Iraq also refused to cooperate with United Nations weapons inspectors, so Iraq
appeared as the next target in the “War on Terror.” President Bush listed three nations
that he deemed state supporters of terrorism and called them the axis of evil—Iraq, Iran,
and North Korea—in his 2002 State of the Union Address.
Mid-term elections gave the Republicans back the Senate, and Bush brought a
war resolution to Congress which passed it. The United Nations gave the United States a
new resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq after George Bush listed the ways
Saddam Hussein had violated eleven of the UN’s previous resolutions—even Syria voted
yes. Unlike Reagan, though, at home Bush used his majority to push expansions of
federal power including education reform and the largest entitlement program since the
Great Society, the Medicaid prescription drug bill. On the other hand he used executive
orders to restrict abortions on federal property and with federal funds and signed into law
in 2003 a bill Congress had passed banning partial-birth abortions, a procedure in which a
fetus is partially delivered (feet first) before being killed.
As American military forces were being built up to invade Iraq, Bush allied with
British Prime Minister Tony Blair to make the case that Hussein was not in compliance
with UN inspections and likely had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). Weapons
inspectors reported violations and stalling on the part of the Iraqi dictator who had
possessed and used WMDs before. With a bombing campaign poised to launch,
President Bush gave Hussein and his sons 48 hours to leave Iraq or face war. Three days
later, the US launched a single intensive air strike against a location informants had said
was where Hussein and his sons were. Hussein had just left the location about one hour
before, so a full-scale invasion was launched. While predictions had been made that the
Republican Guard, restored since the Gulf War, would fight for every inch of Baghdad,
allied forces swept through the desert and into the center of Iraq’s capital in just two
weeks. They faced little opposition and mostly from irregular troops.
Once the citizens of Iraq realized Hussein was gone, large celebrations began in
which local residents threw flowers and shouted “Bush, Bush, Bush,” and “We love
America!” The citizens of Baghdad, with the help of American vehicles, pulled a statue
of Hussein down, severed its head, and dragged it around town while Iraqis beat it with
their shoes and spat upon it. The precision of American weaponry was such that tanks
hiding under bridges were destroyed without damaging the bridges. Hussein’s command
and control buildings were destroyed while shops next door remained open for business.
American capacity to conduct such a war prompted Libyan dictator Muammar al Qaddafi
to announce he would give up his arsenal of WMDs. By June an interim free Iraqi
government was in place, the whole allied operation having started in March. Saddam
Hussein was eventually found hiding in a hole, captured, tried, and hanged for crimes
against humanity. His sons had been killed in a shootout with US troops during the
invasion.
US troops are still in Iraq, and its government is still not stable. Osama bin Laden
remains at large, and 7,000 additional troops were called for to go back to Afghanistan
where the Taliban is making a resurgence. Iran is supplying Al Qaeda and other terrorists
with weapons to use against US forces in Iraq and has just refused to talk to the US about
its rogue nuclear program. North Korea has also pulled out of talks. Perhaps the only
consolation is that terrorists are attacking US military personnel in a foreign country
rather than US civilians in America, so far. Sorry, but “May you live in interesting
times,” is an old Chinese curse. I hope that you will one day live in boring times where
you can focus on supporting yourself and your family in a growing economy. Choose
your definition of success wisely, and then pursue it. Learn. Teach. Agree. Disagree.