It’s All Coming Back to Me Now
I was disappointed after the Cole bombing.
See… my parents were in town. They noticed this spot where one flag was at half-staff and another wasn’t. “Well… looks like war,” either my mother or my father said.
It didn’t really look like war to me. It looked like war post-poned. Gore and Bush didn’t want to touch this with a ten-foot pole, because they both didn’t want to throw it into the dullard conservative battle of attrition that was, even before the post-election Florida mess, Election 2000. Neither wanted to tip off the balance of their careful bean-counts with this wild card. (Remember, this wasn’t too far after Trent Lott said on CNN concerning Kosovo “Give Peace a Chance.”)
The conversation that followed: who would benefit: Bush or Gore… Gore because you don’t switch horses in midstream; Bush because, y’know… he has the “Grown Ups” of his father’s administration coming on in… and people trust Colin Powell.
But this all somehow rang false…
And the election was held. Bush was propped into the White House. The extended honey-moon followed… He racked up a few legislative and executive accomplishments… a huge tax cut… generic drugs to fight AIDS in Africa, believe it or not… “No Child Left Behind” — a program that garnered Democratic support — including Teddy Kennedy’s, support which disappeared when George W Bush didn’t bother to fund the danged thing… And while we’re at it: Pull out of the Kyoto Treaty (which was what initially spurred the US- World rift, restored post 9/11, ripped apart during the build-up to Iraq)… limit stem cell research — major bones thrown to the right-wing base.
And then came the extended month-long vacation. The best example of the effect I got from this long vacation comes from this Lloyd Dangle Troubletown cartoon, published either the first week or second week of September in the nation’s urban “alternative” newspaper/ slash/ sex-worker pamphlets… A take-off of Calvin and Hobbes, it had the flurry of Bush/Calvin’s wistful days (think “Calvinball”) with Hobbes, with the final panel “Okay, George. Summer’s over. Back to seriousness.”
Parody can sometimes belie brutal truths. It’s all coming back to me now.
This was, as it is now known, the “Summer of Threats.” And, believe it or not, time and time again, somehow the fact this this was the “Summer of Threat” managed to work its way into the evening news casts… beyond the news of Andrea Yeats and the news of that California congressman’s (whose name escapes me) missing intern. I remember it. It’s all coming back to me now. There were 24-hour news cycles in which we were all informed that well-healed sources and experts were concerned that America was strikingly vulnerable to terrorist attacks. Front page news items. Top of the hour news items.
These 24-hour news cycles were quickly interrupted by other 24-hour news cycles in which we went back to the asinine nature of inane coverage of Andrea Yeats and the original Survivor squad.
And in this atmosphere, we jump over to the debate that was occuring on the topic of “National Security”. The Democratic side, for lack of any better spokesperson, was represented by Delaware Senator Joseph Biden. The Republican and Bush administration side was represented by Condelleza Rice.
Condi Rice, who at the time was exerting an increasing amount of influence in the administration, believed that we needed to devote our resources toward creating a Star-Wars missile defense. (Didn’t the Chinese downing of our spy-plane tell us anything?)
Joseph Biden thought our resources were better served preparing ourselves from the risks of low-tech terrorism. (Didn’t the Hart-Redman Report, the first major moment when the “Summer of Threats” broke into the 24-hour news cycles though this one during the Spring, tell us anything?)
And we jump over to the current zeitgist-items for dissection. Bush’s comments in Woodward’s standard soft-ball pitching to the powers that be as only Woodward can work it — Bush at War. Page 39.
Not paying attention to that, indeed.
During the “Summer of Threats”, mind you…
Juxtaposed, as it in the current land of various echo chambers, with Condi Rice’s testimony, and answer to the question “What was the title of the memo of August 6, 2001?” Answer: “Bin Laden Determined to Strike the U.S.”
Maybe even with airplanes… which strikes us back to the bizarre comments Condi made that “we’d have no idea that they might strike with airplanes”. (Not reading enough Tom Clancy, I guess…)
And we’re stuck with the creeping question: Didn’t these two watch the news, filtering in only the important parts?
Well… no. Bush, you see, was clearing brush on his ranch. And… hanging out with Barney. Who was having a blast.
And Rice was selling a missile defense shield to protect ourselves from… China, I guess.
Any other items to spit back from out of the memory hole?