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For those easily duped by media propaganda, there would be no more staggering surprise than George W. Bush’s masterful response to a devastating terrorist attack seven months after he took office. Never was the myth of a “dumb” Republican shattered with such dispatch. Stupid old Reagan won the Cold War, but that took time. It was the gradual, if inevitable, outcome of Reagan’s massive defense buildup, military invasions, support for anti-communist insurgents around the globe, and, finally, walking away from the table at Reykjavik.
Unfortunately for liberals, a surprise attack on America on September 11, 2001, would test George W. Bush like no other president in United States history. It was precisely the risk of something like a terrorist attack happening that sent the media into anxious reveries about Bush’s performance on Andy Hiller’s pop quiz. How on earth could Bush be expected to handle a national crisis if he couldn’t name the Prime Minister of Swaziland?
Bush’s alleged weaknesses — subjected to side-splitting ridicule throughout the campaign — were precisely those that would be most severely tested in the crucible of war. Contrary to urgent news bulletins throughout the campaign, Bush was a masterful leader. War was where the rubber met the road and Bush was the consummate wartime commander. The media’s campaign portrayal of Bush as “not the sharpest knife in the drawer” was not simply wrong in the sense of being untrue. It was the opposite of true. The media had lied and now everyone knew it.
Far from smirking bravado, Bush exuded calm deliberation. He didn’t overreact with a quick ostentatious display of pyrotechnics, as Democrats are wont to do. Indeed, in a direct rebuke to the Clinton administration, Bush pointedly said: “When I take action, I’m not going to fire a $2 million missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt. It’s going to be decisive.”
The very opposite of an incurious frat boy, Bush inspired the nation and showed the world America’s resolve. In one of the most eloquent speeches in American history, he proclaimed, “As long as the United States of America is determined and strong, this will not be an age of terror. This will be an age of liberty here and across the world.”
Describing a new and confusing enemy, Bush said we have “seen their kind before”: “They are the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the twentieth century. By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions, by abandoning every value except the will to power, they follow in the path of fascism, Nazism, and totalitarianism. And they will follow that path all the way to where it ends: in history’s unmarked grave of discarded lies”…
In word and deed, the president emboldened a jittery nation: “The course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome is certain. Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war. And we know that God is not neutral between them… Fellow citizens, we will meet violence with patient justice, assured of the rightness of our cause and confident of the victories to come. In all that lies before us, may God grant us wisdom and may He watch over the United States of America.”
Ann Coulter
Chapter Seven: The Joy of Arguing with Liberals
Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right
