http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14753927/site/newsweek/


An Alternate 9/11 History
By staying 'humble,' as he promised in 2000, Bush preserved much of the
post-9/11 good will abroad.

By Jonathan Alter
Newsweek

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14753927/site/newsweek/


An Alternate 9/11 History
By staying 'humble,' as he promised in 2000, Bush preserved much of the
post-9/11 good will abroad.

By Jonathan Alter
Newsweek

Sept. 18, 2006 issue - Five years after 9/11, the world is surprisingly
peaceful. President Bush's pragmatic and bipartisan leadership has kept
the United States not just strong but unexpectedly popular across the
globe. The president himself is poised to enjoy big GOP wins in the
midterm elections, a validation of his subtle understanding of the
challenges facing the country. A new survey of historians puts him in
the first tier of American presidents.

As Bush warned, catching terrorists wasn't easy, but he kept at it. At
the battle of Tora Bora, CIA operatives on the ground cabled Washington
that Osama bin Laden was cornered, but they desperately needed troop
support. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld immediately dispatched fresh
forces, and the evildoer was killed. While bin Laden was seen as a
martyr in a few isolated areas, the bulk of the Arab world had been in
sympathy with the United States after 9/11 and shed no tears. After
their capture, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and other 9/11 terrorists were
transported to the United States, where they were tried and quickly
executed.

Today, Al Qaeda remains a threat but its opportunities for recruitment
have been scarce, and the involvement of the entire international
community has helped dramatically reduce terrorist attacks worldwide.
Because Bush believes diplomacy requires talking to adversaries as well
as friends, even Syria and Iraq were forced to help. By staying
"humble," as he promised in 2000, he preserved much of the post-9/11
good feeling abroad, which paid dividends when it came time to pull
together a coalition to handle North Korea and Iran.

At home, some aides suggested that Bush simply tell the nation to "go
shopping." But the president knew he had a precious opportunity to ask
Americans for real sacrifice. He took John McCain's suggestion and
pushed through Congress an ambitious national-service program that
bolstered communities and helped train citizens as first responders.

Soon Bush put the country on a Manhattan Project crash course to get off
oil. He bluntly told Detroit that it was embarrassing that Chinese
automakers had better fuel efficiency, he classified SUVs as cars, and
he imposed a stiff gas tax with a rebate for the working poor. To pay
for it, he abandoned his tax cuts for the wealthy, reminding the country
that no president in history had ever cut taxes in the middle of a war.
This president would be damned if he was going to put more oil money
into the pockets of Middle Eastern hatemongers who had killed nearly
3,000 of our people. To dramatize the point, he drove to his 2002 State
of the Union address in a hybrid car. Sales soared.

When Karl Rove suggested that the war on terror would make a perfect
wedge issue against Democrats in the 2002 midterms, Bush brought him up
short. Didn't Rove understand that bipartisanship is good politics?
Lincoln and FDR had both gone bipartisan during wartime, he reminded his
aide. So when evidence of torture at the prison camp in Guantánamo Bay
surfaced and Rumsfeld was forced to resign, former Democratic senator
Sam Nunn got the job. With post-9/11 unity still at least partially
intact in 2004, Bush was re-elected in a landslide.

Taking a cue from Lincoln's impatience with his generals, Bush was
merciless about poor performance on homeland security. When the head of
the FBI couldn't fix the bureau's computers in a year's time to "connect
the dots," he was out. And Bush had no patience for excuse-making about
leaky port security, unsecured chemical plants and first responders
whose radios didn't communicate. If someone had told him that five years
after 9/11 these problems would still be unsolved, Bush would have
laughed him out of the office.

In 2003, Vice President Cheney advised the president to take out Iraq's
Saddam Hussein militarily. But Bush was beginning to understand that his
veep, while sounding full of gravitas, was in fact reckless. When it
became clear that Saddam posed no imminent threat, Bush resolved to
neuter him, Kaddafi style. When the president found, after a little
asking around, that the 10-year cost of invading Iraq would be a
crushing $1.2 trillion, he opted out of this war of choice.

Five years after that awful September day, even Bush's fiercest critics
have learned an important lesson: leadership counts. Imagine if we'd
done the opposite of these things. This country-and the world-would be
in a heap of trouble.

© 2006 Newsweek


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