George W Bush’s Flight 93 Memorial Service Speech: Read & Watch It For Yourself
Of all the many memorials, tributes, and events occurring for the 20th anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks, the speech that seemed to grabbed the interwebs attention and debate was the one by former President George W. Bush. The president at the time of the attack, Mr. Bush along with current Vice President Harris was speaking at the Flight 93 Memorial Service in Pennsylvania. Social media erupted into a debate as to the meaning of some of Bush’s Flight 93 Memorial remarks about both internal and external threats. So, watch and read for yourself, and discuss Bush’s Flight 93 Memorial remarks and how they landed for you.
Watch the full remarks of former President George W. Bush’s Flight 93 Memorial Service, September 11, 2021 here:
The transcript of the full remarks of former President George W. Bush’s Flight 93 Memorial Service, September 11, 2021.
Via CNN:
Thank you very much. Laura and I are honored to be with you. Madam Vice President, Vice President Cheney. Governor Wolf, Secretary Haaland, and distinguished guests:
Twenty years ago, we all found — in different ways, in different places, but all at the same moment — that our lives would be changed forever. The world was loud with carnage and sirens, and then quiet with missing voices that would never be heard again. These lives remain precious to our country, and infinitely precious to many of you. Today we remember your loss, we share your sorrow, and we honor the men and women you have loved so long and so well.
For those too young to recall that clear September day, it is hard to describe the mix of feelings we experienced. There was horror at the scale — there was horror at the scale of destruction, and awe at the bravery and kindness that rose to meet it. There was shock at the audacity — audacity of evil — and gratitude for the heroism and decency that opposed it. In the sacrifice of the first responders, in the mutual aid of strangers, in the solidarity of grief and grace, the actions of an enemy revealed the spirit of a people. And we were proud of our wounded nation.
In these memories, the passengers and crew of Flight 93 must always have an honored place. Here the intended targets became the instruments of rescue. And many who are now alive owe a vast, unconscious debt to the defiance displayed in the skies above this field.
It would be a mistake to idealize the experience of those terrible events. All that many people could initially see was the brute randomness of death. All that many could feel was unearned suffering. All that many could hear was God’s terrible silence. There are many who still struggle with a lonely pain that cuts deep within.
In those fateful hours, we learned other lessons as well. We saw that Americans were vulnerable, but not fragile — that they possess a core of strength that survives the worst that life can bring. We learned that bravery is more common than we imagined, emerging with sudden splendor in the face of death. We vividly felt how every hour with our loved ones was a temporary and holy gift. And we found that even the longest days end.Many of us have tried to make spiritual sense of these events. There is no simple explanation for the mix of providence and human will that sets the direction of our lives. But comfort can come from a different sort of knowledge. After wandering long and lost in the dark, many have found they were actually walking, step by step, toward grace.
As a nation, our adjustments have been profound. Many Americans struggled to understand why an enemy would hate us with such zeal. The security measures incorporated into our lives are both sources of comfort and reminders of our vulnerability. And we have seen growing evidence that the dangers to our country can come not only across borders, but from violence that gathers within. There is little cultural overlap between violent extremists abroad and violent extremists at home. 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.
After 9/11, millions of brave Americans stepped forward and volunteered to serve in the Armed Forces. The military measures taken over the last 20 years to pursue dangers at their source have led to debate. But one thing is certain: We owe an assurance to all who have fought our nation’s most recent battles. Let me speak directly to veterans and people in uniform: The cause you pursued at the call of duty is the noblest America has to offer. You have shielded your fellow citizens from danger. You have defended the beliefs of your country and advanced the rights of the downtrodden. You have been the face of hope and mercy in dark places. You have been a force for good in the world. Nothing that has followed — nothing — can tarnish your honor or diminish your accomplishments. To you, and to the honored dead, our country is forever grateful.
In the weeks and months following the 9/11 attacks, I was proud to lead an amazing, resilient, united people. When it comes to the unity of America, those days seem distant from our own. A malign force seems at work in our common life that turns every disagreement into an argument, and every argument into a clash of cultures. So much of our politics has become a naked appeal to anger, fear, and resentment. That leaves us worried about our nation and our future together.
I come without explanations or solutions. I can only tell you what I have seen.
On America’s day of trial and grief, I saw millions of people instinctively grab for a neighbor’s hand and rally to the cause of one another. That is the America I know.At a time when religious bigotry might have flowed freely, I saw Americans reject prejudice and embrace people of Muslim faith. That is the nation I know.
At a time when nativism could have stirred hatred and violence against people perceived as outsiders, I saw Americans reaffirm their welcome to immigrants and refugees. That is the nation I know.
At a time when some viewed the rising generation as individualistic and decadent, I saw young people embrace an ethic of service and rise to selfless action. That is the nation I know.This is not mere nostalgia; it is the truest version of ourselves. It is what we have been — and what we can be again.
Twenty years ago, terrorists chose a random group of Americans, on a routine flight, to be collateral damage in a spectacular act of terror. The 33 passengers and 7 crew of Flight 93 could have been any group of citizens selected by fate. In a sense, they stood in for us all.The terrorists soon discovered that a random group of Americans is an exceptional group of people. Facing an impossible circumstance, they comforted their loved ones by phone, braced each other for action, and defeated the designs of evil.
These Americans were brave, strong, and united in ways that shocked the terrorists — but should not surprise any of us. This is the nation we know. And whenever we need hope and inspiration, we can look to the skies and remember.
God bless.
President Bush is not wrong.
President Bush also fails miserably, regularly, and on purpose to take any ownership of his role and the Republican Party’s role in bringing us here.
At least he showed up, unlike “Fighting Don”Report
I’ve been struggling to understand my own feelings towards 9-11 and why it seems so unimportant. It appears in my mental file like one of those things that happened long ago and faraway.
Part of it, as I’ve written, is that I am much more aware now that there have been far greater catastrophes suffered by many other people- often as a direct result of our reaction to 9-11.
But now I realize that another factor in my ambivalence is that the events of the past year or so have been a far greater assault and inflicted a deeper wound on America than anything Osama Bin Ladin did.Report
I think the challenges we’re facing today have been exacerbated by the response. In the years immediately following the attack our government and a number of other institutions proved their own incompetence, hubris, and lack of commitment to stated values. We’re still dealing with the ripple effects, of which the implosion of one of the major political parties is but one. The sad part is I do not think it had to play out this way. We could probably still dig out if we wanted to but I have my doubts that we will.Report
One of my own theories I tag as “reverse New Yorker cover.” I mean the iconic Saul Steinberg View of the World From Ninth Avenue cover. For a whole lot of people who live in the Mountain and Pacific time zones, the East Coast is someplace way over there that you might visit from time to time. It’s not quite real for them.Report
It felt at the time like love of America was an ill-fitting costume that some liberals wore for a few days at most. I remember people around the country and the world pouring out love, and New Yorkers actually saying “don’t attack us, we didn’t vote for W”. While we prayed, donated, and studied up on the new enemy, they made jabs about “My Pet Goat”. I don’t know if that’s part of your ambivalence; I hope not.Report
Some conservatives will never except that liberals love america. It often comes out differently then conservatives say it and you can find those on the left who hate. But we love this country, we don’t wave the flag but we love our towns, cities, communities and country. Always has been that way.
I often, very correctly mind you, mock the BSDI crap that so many people throw out. Not because it’s completely wrong. It isn’t. There are things all sides do that are destructive. I’m saying all sides because plenty of people who don’t identify as R or D do the same damn toxic things. So you tell me libs joked about a book Bush was reading which burns in you. I can find an example of toxic sleaze from an R about liberals. That is the BSDI that exists. There are shit slingers all over on every bodies team. If we want to move past them we need to stop focusing on them and stop thinking only the other side does it.Report
Some of us jokes about W, some of us cheered for torture. BSDI.Report
Conservatives seem to be of the mind that America can do no wrong, therefore they love it. Those on the other side profess love despite America’s flaws. You can choose which one is the healthier relationshipReport
Well yeah. Strong agree. I know which is healthier but i also want to try to break through the cherry picking of a bit of sleaze just to justify anger. Lord knows that is what twitter is for.Report
Both “sides”, at their best, love America despite its flaws. The right can underemphasize those flaws, while the left is prone to exaggerating them.
9/11 came at a tough time for liberals. It was sandwiched between two presidential elections that the Democrats claimed were stolen. There wasn’t a lot of leftwing identification with America at the time. The left side of the aisle also strongly sympathizes with the developing world over the developed.
I spent a lot of time on the internet back then, too. I remember the left had fallen into conspiracy theories. I spent a lot of time arguing against the “fire can’t melt steel” crowd. They claimed that 9/11 was an inside job, that Bush and the Saudis were looking for a war, and they also spread a lot of that particularly ugly kind of prejudice that neither party is immune to. Arguably, if 9/11 had occurred on a Democrat’s watch, the left might have rallied around the country. But it didn’t, and they didn’t, anywhere near as much as conservatives did.Report
An important distinction is between “the left ” and liberals. Granted these are general definitions with some overlap but they aren’t the same groups.Report
I’ve used the terms left, left-wing, liberal, et cetera to refer to the 40% or so on the American continuum on that side, as I use the complementary terms for the 40% on my side. It’s an imprecise shorthand, I know, but in this case it seemed better than a four-paragraph intro.Report
I’m not attributing this position to you personally, but it seems to me that a lot of left-leaning Americans hate everything about the US that makes it different from Sweden or France or whatever.
While I do think that much of this sentiment is rooted in ignorance, it’s not an inherently illegitimate opinion to have. But what does it mean to say that you love America if you hate all the things that make it different from Western European countries? If you tell your wife that you love her but wish she were less like herself and more like her cousin in every imaginable way, that’s not going to fly.
Maybe we should just acknowledge that it’s not inherently virtuous to love your country, and that it’s okay not to, so that people don’t have to pretend anymore.Report
This is straight up laughable. I’m as skeptical of the left’s excesses and incoherence as anyone. But right now we’re talking about a right that cynically loses it’s collective s— over symbolic crap while leading the country into 2 pointless wars, spearheading the surveillance state evisceration of the constitution, and getting all teary-eyed over soldiers coming home in flag-covered coffins while forking over hundreds of billions to contractors who profit on just that. The ‘conservative’ we just had as president whipped up a frothing mob of pathetic people to disrupt a constitutional process. Yea, they were never going to succeed, but it’s hilarious how conservatives apparently no longer care about the most important symbol of America, the peaceful transfer of power. As though Hilary and her sour grapes, sad as that was, or the ‘2000 election was stolen’ talking point is somehow justification for this type of escalation.
The reality is the right has, at best, a very shallow form of patriotism, that puts the importance of a flag-pin lapel over what the state is actually doing, and whether those who operate it are living up to what is important and most great about America. We talk about the left’s cultural insanity plenty here, but what about the right’s culture of bootlickers more interested in contrived displays at ballgames than whether the police respect the 4th Amendment?
No, our right wing is just as decadent and selfish. If the left is always talking about how much better America’s cousins are, then the right is obsessed with America’s ultra DDD breast implants but nothing else, and sure as hell has no time for her mind or personality.Report
As much as I like trashing the left, that’s not really what my comment was about. This was not an entirely rhetorical question:
What does it mean? I don’t actually know.
I think we have a culture which inappropriately equates loving your country with personal virtue. It’s okay not to love your country. If you (not you personally) think your country sucks, you should feel free to say so, and if people criticize you, it should be for the substance of your criticism, not for not loving your country enough.Report
Hey, even though I agree with much of what you said, I also read it as trashing the left.
We don’t have a good way to describe the thing you’re talking about. It’s something I touched on in my earlier comment about the frustrated feelings the left had toward 2000 AD America.
As an American, I’d sacrifice anything but my faith for this country. I’ll admit that means I put my solidarity with Catholicism above my solidarity with America. If you called me unpatriotic I’d resent it, but honestly you’d be a little bit right. It’s not a one-to-one thing, where it’s loyalty toward the US versus loyalty toward France. There’s no necessary conflict between a devotion to a nation and a devotion to a belief system.
The left (broadly defined) has a devotion to the US that includes a devotion to internationalism. There’s an aspiration toward Swedishness and a feeling of abandonment when the country doesn’t act in that way. I can’t think of a way to talk about this stuff without it coming across as a slur though.Report
Look, I probably end up trashing the left more than the right despite the oddities of American politics making me nominally part of it. But I would respond to you by saying, merits of the argument aside, one of the best things about America is the ability to think and say we should be more like Sweden and advocate for that. Defining that attitude as ipso facto unpatriotic is a massive error and misunderstanding of what America is and is about. Our system exists to allow disagreement on the direction of the country and even to think other countries do things better. There are still, even today many places where they put you in prison for that, or worse.
It seems to me that before you make the assertion you at least have to define what patriotism is in an American context. That’s why I bring up the counter example of the weird mirror image on the right. Like, is the definition of patriotism covering my pickup truck in flags and knee-jerk support for a specific grouping of images and sentiments? Because I have my own questions about whether that is really love of a country, particularly a country like ours and the principles on which it is founded, which includes a lot of questioning authority of various kinds.
Edit- sorry, threading error, this was meant to reply to Brandon.Report
I think you, me, and Brandon might be saying the same thing. If we had words for it, even Greg and Slade may agree.Report
If there is one thing the Trump years have done, is forever dispel the ability of conservatives to claim the high ground of love of country.Report
A 20-year reminiscence on Covid would be odd if it didn’t include the politics at the time, for better or worse. If we’re trying to conjure up what 9/11 was like (which we’re doing) but can’t quite get there (which I think we all admit), it’s fair to bring these things up.Report