On the 20th anniversary of the deadliest terrorist attack on America in history, former Republican President George W. Bush called out his own party’s continuing support for “violent extremists at home,” the home-grown terrorists he identified as “children of the same foul spirit.”
It was important moment in our nation’s history. But whether it makes any difference to his party’s future depends upon how far gone the Republican Party already is in its refusal to accept the results of free and fair elections in our American democracy.
In his 9/11 speech in Shanksville, PA, Bush drew a direct comparison between the foreign terrorists hijacking planes 20 years ago and crashing them in Shanksville and into the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington killing 3,000 Americans with the violent attack Jan. 6 on the U.S. Capitol by hundreds of supporters of former President Trump attempting to stop Congress from certifying President Biden’s election.
Defiling National Symbols
The terrorists came from different cultures here and abroad, Bush said, “But in their disdain for pluralism, in their disregard for human life, in their determination to defile national symbols — they are children of the same foul spirit and it is our continuing duty to confront them.”
What made Bush’s public declaration so significant was his acknowledgement of how important 9/11 had been in uniting all Americans —Republicans, Democrats and independents—behind his presidency. Once again without naming Trump, Bush contrasted America’s unity then with the hatred and anger Trump intentionally fed throughout his presidency to divide Americans against each other.
“In the weeks and months following the 9/11 attacks, I was proud to lead an amazing, resilient, united people,” Bush said. “When it comes to the unity of America, those days (now) seem distant from our own. A malignant force acts in our common life that turns every disagreement into an argument . . . So much of our politics has become a naked appeal to anger, fear and resentment.”
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Malignant Force
That malignant force inflaming all those angry political divisions, of course, was Trump. And right on cue, Trump viciously attacked his Republican predecessor. “(Bush) shouldn’t be lecturing us about anything!” Trump raged. “The World Trade Center came down during his watch. Bush led a failed and uninspiring presidency. He shouldn’t be lecturing anybody!”
Bush’s presidency was certainly flawed. The national unity of 9/11 was frittered away with two unpopular wars, torturing political prisoners in violation of international law and the worst U.S. economic crisis since the Great Depression. Bush’s reputation was partially revived by the far greater disaster of Trump’s incompetent response to the pandemic killing 600,000 Americans that destroyed eight years of economic gains under President Obama in a single term.
One factor adding credibility to Bush’s criticism of the hatred and bigotry Trump stoked within the Republican Party is that Bush, an evangelical Christian, actively worked as president to reduce a rise in hate crimes against American Muslims after 9/11. Bush attended a mosque and declared America’s war was against the religious extremists who attacked us, not against Islam. Sadly, Trump’s religious and racial bigotry did just the opposite and won strong support from many other white evangelicals.
Pathetic Rally
Most elected Republicans are doing their best to ignore Bush’s criticism of all the violent terrorists Trump attracted to their party even as die-hard Trump supporters held a pathetic Rally Around the Trump Insurrectionists Rally in Washington on Saturday.
As the first pro-Trump rally since Jan. 6, a security fence and hundreds of police officers were in place protecting the Capitol. Organizers claimed as many as 700 supporters of the insurrection might participate, almost as many as rampaged through the Capitol causing five deaths, including a police officer, and injuring 140 other police, many severely beaten with baseball bats, iron pipes, hockey sticks and flag poles.
Instead only a couple hundred showed up Saturday, accompanied by nearly as many media, counter-protesters and casual observers. Without a raging defeated president egging them on, violently overthrowing democracy is no longer the exciting, hot ticket event it was under Trump’s administration.
Bush explicitly denounced the dangerous, unAmerican forces Trump welcomed into the Republican Party that are destroying it from within as a legitimate, conservative American political party. Racial and religious bigotry and the destruction of free and fair elections are not conservative American values. They’re anti-American values.
Republicans have to rid themselves of the unAmerican, anti-democracy haters Democrats drove out of their own political party by supporting the civil rights of all Americans regardless of race, gender or national origin during the 1960s. It’s long past time for Republicans to do the same.
American voters will continue to reject candidates in 2022 and 2024 who remain silent as the “children of the same foul spirit” as the 9/11 terrorists within the Republican Party continue their destruction of the beautiful ideals of American democracy.
