An odd sense of sacrifice

August 30, 2006

The president sat down with Brian Williams yesterday for an interview, and the NBC anchor raised a question I haven’t heard mentioned in a while.

WILLIAMS: The folks who say you should have asked for some sort of sacrifice from all of us after 9/11, do they have a case looking back on it?

BUSH: Americans are sacrificing. I mean, we are. You know, we pay a lot of taxes. America sacrificed when they, you know, when the economy went into the tank. Americans sacrificed when, you know, air travel was disrupted. American taxpayers have paid a lot to help this nation recover. I think Americans have sacrificed.

I can appreciate that the president didn’t want to say, “Nope, no sacrifice necessary,” because that would appear shallow. But the reality is, the fact that Bush came up with such a vague answer is telling.

Consider the president’s examples. We “pay a lot of taxes,” but this isn’t a sacrifice Bush asked the nation to take after 9/11; it’s a sacrifice he asked us not to take by cutting taxes (repeatedly). The “economy went into the tank,” but that’s not a burden Bush intentionally sought out and asked Americans to take on; it’s a burden he hoped to avoid.

Air travel “was disrupted,” but that, in essence, means longer lines at the airport. So, confronted with a reasonable question about sacrifice in the face of a national crisis, the best the president could come up with is the need to get to the airport earlier than we used to.

After 9/11, I think Americans were probably prepared to do a lot more. They just weren’t asked.

Nearly 3000 soldiers dead and 10x as many maimed – uh, what about that sacrifice?

On top of that, the sacrifice is clearly evident in the latest census report – life stinks for everyone but the rich. The one claim the administration tries to cling to is that median incomes are finally rising. Hmmm, wonder why, when earnings for men are falling and women mostly flat…it’s more likely that two earner households are more prevalent due the the desperate situation of most households budgets.

So we’ve sacrificed the standard of living for most Americans to make the rich even more obscenely rich, while doing jack for the poor, and basically saying f-you to people like Katrina victims who suffer dispproportionately.

That interview was downright scary – and a few more important things to note about it –

1) the new catch phrase “i never accused saddam of ordering the attacks” – this has go to be the fear of a dem house talknig

2) the body language – when Brian gets tough on him, can you see how Bush nearly lunges at him, as if someone or something is magically restraining his arms from strangling the interviewer. It’s a rather awkward invasion of personal space.

3) the look on BWs face when Bush talks about sacrifice – says it all – it’s so sad, because Brain can see just clearly this guy doesnt get it, and how he will never see that he is taking our country into the dustbin of history

  • G2000 – I think that you are referring to Average income, not Median.
    Average income went up because the Haves and the Have-mores incomes are pulling up the average, even though ordinary incomes are not increasing.

  • Americans have paid taxes for decades, and he acts like post 9/11 the government instituted a whole raft of new taxes when in reality they were cut, and may be cut more – where the hell is the sacrifice in that? And to repeat this again, just shows how weak the argument is by repeating a weak (but strongest of the points) talking point.

    We sacrificed when air traffice was disrupted? HUH? Because we had to wait longer? Still don’t get this.

    Sure Americans gave of themselves for the families who lost people on 9/11 and because the economy is rather soft they are having to consider financial issues, but the first isn’t sacrifice and the second has, and will happen again regardless of 9/11.

    And all of those “sacrifices” equal individually or in total, those that either lost someone on 9/11 or the soldiers (and their families) who fought or are fighing in Afghanistan and Iraq. Now that I think of it, of course the president would think this – to him sacrificing money and convenience is a big.

  • Good catch, Steve. To put it in the bluntest possible terms, sacrifice means that you deliberately give up something. It’s not about things that are out of your personal control, like following the law in paying taxes, like standing in longer lines, like paying higher prices. Those aren’t sacrifices, any more than it’s a sacrifice to say, “My favorite restaurant didn’t honor my reservation last night!” The soldiers in Iraq and elsewhere, they’re making sacrifices, but of course Williams was talking about “all of us”.

  • I saw the interview yesterday. It needs to get extensive airtime. It really presents Bush as the extremely self-serving, self-satisfied, limited thinker/leader bunghole that he truly is.

  • It seems like what he said is that his really poor handling of post 9/11 America both foreign and domestic was a burden on Americans and therefore we sacrificed. I think this is a case where he told the truth and didn’t mean to.

    Has Bush ever said ” […] when the economy went into the tank”? I thought the economy was ripping along at a fantastic pace and we all had better get shoipping before our pile od money fall over and crush us in our sleep!

    I agree that longer lines at airports is annoying but J.C. how spoiled are we when we have to wait an extra 2 hours in the airport for NATIONAL SECURITY and that is a huge burden? Americans seem to think an airplane is a car that we should just be able to walk onto and poof we are in Hawaii. I’ll check my bag and put my KY in the checked bag. Who really gives a crap. I’ll take the extra 15 minutes to go to the baggage claim.

    Oh, and that taxes thing…If we all got rebates for our last 5 years of taxes paid Busah would still claim we were burdened. I, for one, am not burdened by passable roads, public schools, clean water, and the higway Patrol! If he is so concerned about how much I am taxed we can leave Iraq and the $6BB per month cost. I’ll gladly accept that money back. I’ve been looking for some extra cash to give to Ned Lamont.

    Whew! That man can piss me off like almost no other.

  • Nope, I’m refering to median. There was a 1.1% gain overall, but median incomes are still falling for most age groups (rising for 45 to 54 and 65+). Remember, median household incomes can be propped by more two earner households, even while each earner earns less.

    That said, I do agree with what you are saying about average incomes, but that is a slightly different issue.

  • It has always disgusted me that Bush and the GOP asks the generation fighting and dying in the war in Iraq to also pay for it, through the deficits and debt service added through the direct costs of the war and of cutting taxes for the wealthy.

    In 2003, I asked a Republican woman what sacrifices she had made for the war in Iraq she was loudly supporting. She told me she had baked a casserole for the family of a soldier sent to Iraq.

    We’re going to need a lot more casseroles.

  • Oh, we’re sacrificing all right. First, our civil liberties, as Beth said. Also, we’re sacrificing the strength of our economy, our respect around the world, our security, our alliances, the structure of our government, our privacy, our military effectiveness, and numerous other advantages we enjoyed before Bush’s election. Our children and grandchildren will sacrifice more, so in a way, we’re sacrificing them too.

  • “You know, we pay a lot of taxes.” – George W. Bush, 43rd President of the United States

    What a brilliant observation. Now if we just paid any taxes to actually support his damn war, then we’d be sacrificing. Right now, we’re just borrowing the money from Communist China.

    Alibubba has a very good list of the real sacrifices this guy is causing America. The destruction of our military is perhaps the most insidious.

  • The rich not only didn’t sacrifice, they got bribed on both ends of the income stream to support the war. On the back end, with huge cuts in ordinary income taxes, taxes on capital gains, estate taxes, taxes on dividends and the vast array of corporate tax cuts and subsidies (the rich own the corporations, remember), and on the front end as in guess how much of the hundreds of billions needed to fund the war wound up in their pockets as corporate profits?

    It’s absolutely obscene, this rape of the middle and lower classes.

  • Oh, we’re sacrificing all right. First, our civil liberties […] –Alibubba (#10)

    As RSA (#4) points out, sacrifice is when someone gives something up, voluntarily. We are not sacrificing; we are being victimized. Not the same thing at all.

  • Webster gives this as a definition of sacrifice: something given up or lost.

    If using that definition I would say that we have sacrificed (lost) our national sanity.

  • This “sacrifice” of civil liberties biz — everybody’s right. However, as a practical matter, it seems to me that if you don’t protest being robbed of your rights, you’ve pretty much voluntarily parted with them. That’s what pisses me off. The media are silent, the congress is silent, and a majority of Americans are silent. There won’t be any hurry to give them back, either, which is dangerous.

  • I think a lot of people did voluntarily give up their civil rights for the illusion of safety.

    Of course, that sort of sacrifice evokes the great words of Benjamin Franklin:

    “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

  • I’m sure my grandfather, who was drafted during World War II, as well as my other relatives who have passed away, and who endured rationing, blackouts, and other REAL sacrifices during the 1940s, are throwing out some rather colorful language aimed at Dubya.
    Hope it doesn’t get them kicked out of the Great Gig in the Sky.

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