It was only a matter of time before the left gleefully adopted the narrative that George W. Bush failed to keep us safe during his time in office.
MSNBC host Chris Matthews picked up where GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump left off, furthering the claim that George W. Bush failed to keep America safe by citing the terrorist attacks of 9/11, which happened eight months into the Bush administration, as evidence.
Matthews took Trump's comments and expanded on them, predictably segueing into a condemnation of the Iraq War before implying that those who criticize Hillary Clinton for the Obama Administration's reaction to the Benghazi attacks in 2012 were hypocrites for not joining in the chorus attacking Bush.
"What brings this matter back is the atrocious way in which the Republican Party is trying to blame Hillary Clinton for the deaths of four Americans serving in Libya in 2012. Three years later, they continue to hunt her, hunt her down you can say, on the groundless argument that someone must be to blame. Well, you follow that argument and the trail of 9/11, and you end up with George W. Bush," said Matthews on MSNBC's "Hardball" Monday night.
Of course, the two attacks are hardly comparable. The Benghazi attacks occurred after repeated requests from U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and officials at the Benghazi consulate for increased security personnel. The attacks happened four years into the Obama Administration and eleven years after America was awoken to the serious threat of Islamic terror on 9/11. Clinton and the Obama Administration then proceeded to blame the act of terror on a YouTube video and did so for weeks, despite intelligence that showed that the video had nothing to do with the assault on the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi.
George W. Bush did nothing of the sort following the attacks of 9/11 in 2001. The administration quickly identified the enemy, informed the American people as to the details of what happened and went after the perpetrators. To this day, it is still unclear to what lengths the Obama administration has gone in order to track down those responsible for the attack on the Libyan embassy.
The left-wing media has wanted to pin the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Bush Administration negligence for years. It would appear that Trump gave them that opening -- the implication being that Bush could have prevented the attacks had he paid more attention to warnings of an impending terrorist effort to strike American targets.
However, one has to wonder how Bush would have safeguarded the American people from Al-Qaeda's devious and unprecedented use of box cutters to hijack American airplanes and fly them into buildings. Had he shut down airports or introduced the types of high level TSA security measures that were implemented following the attack, or proposed something akin to the Patriot Act before an attack occurred, the left would have been among the first to cry foul. Claims that Bush was shredding the Constitution on the path to implementing martial law would have been on the lips of every liberal in America.
Did the 9/11 attacks happen under the watch of George W. Bush's presidency? Yes. But implying that he neglected to pay attention to specific plans by Al-Qaeda to attack specific targets in the way the terrorists did is at odds with the facts.
One has to wonder if Matthews would blame Franklin Roosevelt for failing to keep us safe due to the attacks on Pearl Harbor that happened during his administration. Or pin responsibility on President Bill Clinton for the Oklahoma City bombing or the attack on the World Trade Center in 1993.
I'm guessing not.