George W Bush’s Flight 93 Memorial Service Speech: Read & Watch It For Yourself

Andrew Donaldson

Born and raised in West Virginia, Andrew has been the Managing Editor of Ordinary Times since 2018, is a widely published opinion writer, and appears in media, radio, and occasionally as a talking head on TV. He can usually be found misspelling/misusing words on Twitter@four4thefire. Andrew is the host of Heard Tell podcast. Subscribe to Andrew'sHeard Tell Substack for free here:

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20 Responses

  1. Philip H says:

    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

  2. Chip Daniels says:

    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

    • InMD in reply to Chip Daniels says:

      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

    • Pinky in reply to Chip Daniels says:

      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

      • greginak in reply to Pinky says:

        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

        • Slade the Leveller in reply to greginak says:

          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

          • greginak in reply to Slade the Leveller says:

            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

          • Pinky in reply to Slade the Leveller says:

            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

            • greginak in reply to Pinky says:

              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

              • Pinky in reply to greginak says:

                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

        • Brandon Berg in reply to greginak says:

          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

          • InMD in reply to Brandon Berg says:

            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

            • Brandon Berg in reply to InMD says:

              As much as I like trashing the left, that’s not really what my comment was about. This was not an entirely rhetorical question:

              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?

              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

              • Pinky in reply to Brandon Berg says:

                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

              • InMD in reply to Pinky says:

                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

              • Pinky in reply to InMD says:

                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

      • Chip Daniels in reply to Pinky says:

        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

      • Pinky in reply to Pinky says:

        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