george w bush

I’ve just watched George W. Bush – The 9/11 Interview, produced for the National Geographic Channel’s Remembering 9/11 series. Whenever I think back on the events of that day, I suffer many mixed emotions, as strong today as they were at the time. Again, after watching the interview, I have those feelings again

Here’s a trailer.

The full video is available in parts on YouTube, but I downloaded it in full and watched it tonight. It’s a fascinating insight into the mind of the man who stood in the centre of the ruins of America and how he tried to think properly in what is arguably the highest pressure situation any one has been placed into.

I didn’t like Bush’s rhetoric at many times during his presidency. I didn’t like how he jumped to conclusions and acted upon them before gathering true and undeniable facts. His pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and execution of Saddam Hussein angered me to the core, not because I am a Saddam sympathiser – quite the opposite – but because it was done with seemingly little planning or thought for the consequences thereafter.

Today we know many thousands of soldiers from numerous nations have died in operations that continue in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and other places known to harbour alleged terrorists. Osama bin Laden is dead, his al-Qaida movement perhaps weakened, but I cannot forgive Bush his many misguided actions in the latter years of his time in The White House.

However, I do sympathise with the man, more still having watched this interview. I saw a man still visibly trying to come to terms with the horrific events of that day. He appears a shadow of the man that stood aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln to deliver his Mission Accomplished speech on 1 May 2003.

He looks tired, haunted, and despite claiming a sense of closure on the night that current US President Barack Obama called him to pass on news of bin Laden’s death, Bush still appears to me to be very much living with the demons of 9/11 and all that followed that awful day.

One of the best images in the aftermath of 9/11 is this one of George W. Bush, clearly affected by what he saw at Ground Zero from Marine One after he saw the devastation for the first time. I think it was taken by Eric Draper.

So he should, you might say. But really, who can blame him? While in the interview he does not directly admit to errors of judgement, he does recognise that many of the decisions he took during those days, weeks, months and years post-9/11 were considered very controversial. He admits to knowing that at the time. He defends himself by saying all the decisions were made in “the fog of war”, and reiterates they were all made to the best of his ability with the information he had available and in the hope that they would protect the people of the United States. He seems honest enough when he says nothing was done for political gain. He shows a true protective instinct when talking of his family, of the children that sat before him at the Emma E. Booker Elementary School when White House chief of staff Andrew Card whispered into his ear that America was “under attack”. He talks of the contrast he felt in the innocence of their faces and the hatred of those that wanted to harm the country in which they freely lived and went about their business.

I believe him. If you’ve seen Oliver Stone’s excellent biopic W, you might believe him too. That movie, more than any documentary or interview I’ve seen, displays how poorly advised Bush was and how he was not a man able to make decisions based on his own knowledge because he simply didn’t have it. He was manipulated cruelly by his colleagues in the West Wing, and I think in some ways he is still coming to terms with that as well.

It’s sometimes hard to remember how different the world was before 9/11. Today we often assume we’ve always had to remove half our clothes and abandon liquids and sharps before security checks at airports. So much of our lives, particularly when travelling, has become routine now, which isn’t a bad thing. But we’re all naturally more suspicious too, which is a sad and seemingly insurmountable hangover of 9/11.

Many people blame Bush and his reaction to that day for all the world’s problems today – the war on terror, dead soldiers, a more angry and unstable Middle East than we’ve ever known, a failing world economy, the list of negatives is long. But I ask you: what would you have done if you’d been in his shoes that day?

His interview opens with him saying he never wanted to be a wartime president. His demeanour now is the greatest symbol I’ve seen as to why he’d say that.

Personally, I don’t have the first clue about what I’d do. I remember feeling incredibly shocked, saddened and angered by what had happened. I panicked for the safety of my cousin, who was in the thick of Manhattan when the planes struck the World Trade Centre. I felt a desperate sense of sadness for my other cousin, whose birthday falls on that day and who was serving in the US Marine Corps. I remember working at Channel 7, pitching in as a news reporter and editor on 12 September, despite being a sports editor, scouring image wires of the horror and making picture galleries, taking a moment to cry in the toilet after seeing images of people jumping to their deaths from the burning ruins of the World Trade Centre while trying to imagine how desperate and helpless I’d have to be to take such terminal action myself.

I remember being in Salt Lake City with Channel 7 for the Olympic Winter Games in February 2002, barely six months after the attacks, and being overwhelmed and a little nervous at the levels of security that lined every route I travelled there, the imposing nature of the amour that was deployed to protect the venues, public buildings and streets. I remember being told by our executive producer and head of sport before leaving that we could pull out of travelling if we didn’t feel it was safe to go to the US at the time and how uncomfortable that made me feel. (For the record, none of us did.) Those memories remain vividly available in my head, and I suspect they always will.

But those are a mere fraction or what was no doubt going through Bush’s head at the same time. He had the responsibility of a nation to contend with, of desperately wanting to seek revenge, of having to listen to a myriad of opinions about what was the correct course of action to follow, and he had to make big decisions quickly. My experience made me tired. He must have been consumed with exhaustion, both mental and physical. He made mistakes, we all know that now. But like us he is human, and mistakes in such situations can be guaranteed.

We are all experts in hindsight, but I urge you to watch this interview if you get the opportunity. I’d like to know how it affects your opinion of his leadership at the time, not so much in the years that followed. I wonder if like me you recognise that in the heat of the moment, we can err. I defy you to say you never have.

George W. Bush was by no means a perfect president, but he showed pretty solid leadership and stoicism on 9/11 and the weeks and months that followed. Frustration got the better of him in the end, and I’m sure somewhere deep in his soul he feels annoyed about that. He seems the sort of bloke that hates to be wrong. It will eat away from him until the day he dies. But I think he can feel proud of how he handled himself in a situation I hope never challenges anyone in his position ever again.

If you haven’t seen White House Through The Lens, I highly recommend you do so. It’s an hour-long documentary, filmed I think by National Geographic, centred on White House staff photographers, chiefly the one for the current Barack Obama administration, Pete Souza.

It’s Souza’s second stint in the role, having shot Ronald Reagan’s presidency previously, and with the possible exception of John F Kennedy, he could not have hoped for two more charismatic presidents than he was handed.

What was most inspiring about the documentary – which is a fascinating insight not only into Souza’s role but also life among the White House staff – was the amount of work everybody involved in an administration gets through on a daily basis. The most astonishing statistic was that 16 months into his term, Souza has taken more than 1 million pictures, 30,000 of them around the health reform negotiations and speeches alone. He’ll take as many as 80,000 shots month, and by law, none can be deleted.

When you think about Souza’s job, it’s more than being a photographer. He’s also a historian, recorded moments in time that shape not only a nation, but also the world at times, such is the power and reach of the US administration. There is enormous pressure with such a job, although the way Souza conducts himself, you’d never know it.

Not surprisingly, he loves it. But it’s “a grind”, he says. He regularly puts in 13-hour days, has to travel wherever the President goes, and essentially surrenders his personal life to the job.

I started to think about some of the most iconic shots of US presidents past – John and Robert Kennedy strolling outside the White House as they discussed the Cuban missile crisis, Lyndon B Johnson being sworn in with freshly widowed Jacqueline Kennedy at his side on the day JFK was assassinated in Dallas, George W Bush as a staff member whispers the news that planes have crashed into the World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001, Richard Nixon, who was perhaps not surprisingly very restrictive to his photographers, looking back at the White House as he boarded Marine 1 having just resigned the presidency in the wake of the Watergate scandal. So many moments in history that, without a photographer there to document, would arguably hold a lot less significance.

Even in this age of video and fast moving graphics, I truly believe the photograph as a document has more weight than any other medium. Even now, Souza’s shots carry enormous emotion, not just in the frames featuring Obama, but also in those around him. Souza’s got a great eye for emotion, and captures it so well. He really does make you feel like you’re a fly on the wall at times. His work, to my eyes, is truly exceptional.

I thought I’d spool through the White House’s Flickr page for some of my favourites. There are many, but here is a rough top 10. You can visit the page yourself to see more, and find favourites of your own.

P012009PS-1185 January 20, 2009