Yes, there are people this stupid

As some of you know, every now and again, I take my local newspaper in South Carolina, The State, to task because it is run by idiots and ideologues.  Here is another of these times.

The State published a letter by Mr. Springs as a “guest columnist” entitled, “President Bush kept America safe”.

I have sent this letter in response to every person I could think of…

In the November 13th, 2008, edition of The State newspaper based in Columbia, South Carolina, a letter by Mr. Cliff Springs was published titled, “President Bush kept us safe.”  That this letter was published by The State newspaper proves, once again, the total lack of journalistic integrity, partisanship, and total avoidance to the truth, much less reality, that The State’s editorial division displays under Mr. Brad Warthan, Editorial Page Editor and VP of The State newspaper.

Mr. Springs states in his letter, “For me, President Bush’s legacy is clear: For seven years since 9/11, he kept my family safe.  Think back to that day. We watched the horror, the precision with which the terrorists massacred innocent people. They bloodied bodies and our national psyche. We assumed that 9/11 marked the beginning of an era in which we would face each day with the threat of terrorism.”  

That may be true for Mr. Springs and it is certainly his “opinion”, but, for the rest of the nation who acknowledges reality, President Bush has not kept America safe.  The tragedy that was 9/11 occurred 8 months into President Bush’s administration.  For Mr. Springs, and anyone else, to give President Bush “credit” for “keeping America safe” after 9/11 is an insult to those who died on that day.

George Tenet was appointed as the Director of the CIA in 1997 under President Clinton.   During Mr. Tenet’s time as Director of the CIA; Al-Qaeda attacked two United States embassies in 1998 in Africa and the USS Cole in 2000 in Yemen.  The CIA under George Tenet was able to keep America’s shores safe, that is, until President Bush took office.  

Robert Mueller was nominated for the post of Director of the FBI in July, 2001, only 2 months prior to 9/11, and, was confirmed on September 4th, 2001, only 7 days before the attack.  The Director of the FBI under President Clinton, Louis Freeh, was able to keep America safe from September, 1993, until June, 2001, when he resigned.  As many remember, the first World Trade Center bombing occurred in February, 1993, only 8 weeks after President Clinton was sworn into office and before he was able to get his own confirmations through Congress.

Mr. Springs writes, “Be honest with yourself: Could you imagine we would be here seven years later without another attack?”  In fact, we don’t have to imagine it.  The time between the first World Trade Center bombing and the second attack on the World Trade Center was 8 years and 7 months.  The better question is how could two services that were able to keep America safe for almost 9 years fail so utterly only 8 months after President Bush took office?

Mr. Springs continues in his letter, “Other than some new procedures for air travel, very little of our day-to-day life has changed. Brave men and women of our military, homeland security and law enforcement carry this burden for us and ensure that America remains America.”  Let’s examine that for a minute.

In response to the first World Trade Center bombing, President Clinton’s administration used the agencies already in place, the FBI and the CIA, to track down the perpetrators of the attack.  In March, 1994, only a year and one month after the attack, four of the terrorists were convicted of the crime.  In November, 1997, two other terrorists involved in the plot were convicted for their crime.  President Clinton did not need to start brand new agencies, invade any countries, or attack our Constitutional liberties in order to bring six of the terrorists to justice.

In response to the second World Trade Center bombing, President Bush’s administration created the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration.  He attacked the training camps of Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, but, failed to capture Osama Bin Laden.  His administration pushed the Patriot Act through Congress, yet, Osama Bin Laden remains free while the FBI misused the new powers in thousands of known instances against American citizens.  His administration pushed through the Military Commissions Act, imprisoned thousands, whether in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo Bay, or in secret “black” CIA sites, yet, Osama Bin Laden remains free.  His administration pushed for a torture exemption for the CIA, called the Geneva Conventions “quaint”, has tortured an unknown number of people around the world in these prisons, yet, Osama Bin Laden remains free.  In fact, President Bush, in 8 years of being in office, with even more power, more agencies, secret prisons and using torture, has been unable to do what President Clinton did in 1 year; hold those accountable responsible.  In addition to the above, President Bush invaded Iraq, a country that had no connection to Al-Qaeda or the attacks of 9/11, and mired our military into a war of choice that has seen 4200 American military members dead, tens of thousands of our service members wounded, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi’s dead and tens of thousands of Iraqi’s imprisoned for the crime of fighting our illegal invasion.    

I challenge any American citizen to live through what we have wrought on the Iraqi people; where you only get power for a few hours a day while living in 140 degree heat, where your infrastructure was destroyed and years later is still in shambles, where you live without a job because your city was destroyed unable to feed your family your children, where you saw your government deposed and a new government installed whether you wished it to happen or not, where you have foreign soldiers invade your house, kill or imprison members of your family, and where you cannot even drive down the streets of your own neighborhood without having your car, with your family in it, fired upon by foreign soldiers at will.  No American citizen would stand for it, yet, people like Mr. Springs cheer what we have done to Iraq because our country was attacked by a group of terrorists who had no connection to that country – all because HE feels safe.  Mr. Springs probably hasn’t been to Iraq since our invasion in 2003, but, I have.  I have seen firsthand the destruction of that country that President Bush unleashed.  That action, in and of itself, begs for President Bush and all who engineered the war against Iraq be tried for war crimes.  

Mr. Springs ends his letter writing, “Bush knew it wasn’t enough just to be safe. He knew America had to feel safe too. Anything less, and the terrorists win. His message was succinct. It was perfect. He asked us to do something mundane, something utterly normal and beautifully free. Eventually, magically, our fears subsided.  He said, “Go shopping.” Because he did, my children will grow up in the same America I did. He didn’t just defend American people. He defended the very heart of what America is.”

The America I grew up in did not condone torture.  In fact, the America I grew up in held those who condoned torture accountable and tried them for their crimes.  The America I grew up in did not arbitrarily invade a nation, depose its government, kill its people, imprison them, and try to force our western ways upon their populace at the point of a gun.  The America I grew up in did not kidnap people off the street, send them to a foreign country to be tortured, and keep them imprisoned for years without even being charged with a crime.  In the America I grew up in, we did not toss our Constitutional rights into the garbage whenever our country faced a terrorist action committed upon our shores whether it was abortion clinic bombings or the first attack on the World Trade Center.

In addition, to be told, “go shopping” as a nation while our government destroyed our constitution, tortured people, and invaded a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 was nothing more than President Bush saying to the citizens of our country, “don’t mind what we are doing, it doesn’t concern you”.  But, it does concern us, every one of us American citizens who hold our rights dear to us, who fought in our military to protect those rights, and who mourned those who came before us to keep those rights sacred.

I don’t know the America that Mr. Springs grew up in, but I know the world that he lives in and it is called fantasyland.  That The State newspaper and Mr. Warthan gave Mr. Springs a platform to spout his revisionist history and total disregard for reality speaks volumes about the lack of journalistic integrity, the partisanship, and the desire to merely pander to the “base” that we have come to expect from The State newspaper.