“We can’t hear you”
I saw this yesterday on the blog of a New Yorker now living in London:
We all remember the moment when Bush, in an almost disapointingly routine fashion, began speaking to the firemen amidst the rubble of Ground Zero.
Most audiences, even in times of crisis, listen dutifully to the Commander in Chief–even when they can’t quite make out what a President is saying.
But not this crowd. A fireman, with typical NYC insouciance and chutzpah, shouted to the President: “George, we can’t hear you”.
The off the cuff words that Bush next uttered, indelibly encrusted in so many of our minds, signaled to me that we were moving on from a muddied pastiche of varied emotions–profound grief, incredulity, and rumblings for revenge.
“I can hear you, the rest of the world hears you, and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.”
Gosh, I thought, thank you Mr. President. I physically and mentally felt rejuvenated, back on even keel, more stolid.
And then the fireman began to chant: “USA. USA. USA.” And I thought–more than visiting the Pentagon, more than the ceremony at the National Cathedral the day before, Bush is getting it now.
He realizes the massive scale of carnage at Ground Zero. The unadulterated barbarism of the perpetrators. The need for strong, focused, remedial action. The fact that the nation is at war–and for a long time.
As a passionate fan of NYC, I think back to that moment. How NYC, its fireman in particular, helped Bush realize just how enormous the events of 9/11 were. Indeed, world-historical in scope.
Belgravia Dispatch calls this the moment the Bush presidency effectively started. The instincts that have guided American policy in the war — “that terrorists would love nothing more than to devise ways to kill 30,000; 300,000; 3 million”, that we must address the root causes that give rise to this apocalyptic thinking, that we cannot hope to succeed with the judicial strategy of the past — were crystalized at Ground Zero, with the help of NYC fireman working the site.