9/11 MOMS OPEN LETTER TO BUSH

[Guest guest]

9/11 Mom: An Open Letter to George W. Bush

t r u t h o u t | Letter

By Donna Marsh O'Connor, Liverpool, NY,

Mother of Vanessa Lang Langer,

WTC Tower II, 93rd floor

Friday 22 October 2004

 

On the Thirty-third Anniversary of My Daughter's Birth

cc: Senator John Kerry

 

Sometimes, Mr. Bush, it's the smallest of details that makes

everything click. The smallest of details. Right now, Mr. Bush, I am

looking at your watch. It's an item of clothing accessory and, unlike

your other costumes, it is one that is particularly revealing.

 

On Halloween my daughter would be thirty-three years old. Her

child would be almost three. Seven weeks before her twenty-ninth

birthday, Vanessa, four months pregnant, ran from the falling towers

of the World Trade Center. She did not make it. Her body, and in it

the small body of her unborn child, was pulled from the rubble of the

fallen towers on September 24th, just ten feet from an alley between

towers IV and V. It is important for me to tell you that she was on

the phone to her uptown office five minutes after the first plane hit

tower I, explaining how she and others in tower II were " safe. "

 

Here is what you did regarding specifically the events of that

morning: You vacationed before, during and after August 6th, the day

you were handed the presidential daily briefing that said very

clearly Vanessa Lang Langer and many other Americans were not safe.

After the first plane hit tower I, the fact of the PDB did not click

in your mind, did not cause you to act, to turn on a television, to

contact the Pentagon. You sat so that you did not frighten a group of

children. You did not worry about Vanessa's brothers, or the young

children who would certainly be directly affected by that event. You

did not, like her fourteen year-old brother, rush from your seat and

head for a phone, desperately trying to reach out, to fix, to save.

You sat. You said, two weeks to the day before the general election

of 2004, that you would protect Americans; that is, according to you,

your primary responsibility as Commander-in Chief; no terrorists

would get us, no terrorists would attack us (you said this with your

arm extended), and I you said and I quote, on your watch. You said

this with no sense of irony, no sense, no indication of how that text

would sound to those you failed miserably to protect. You never

notified officially the airlines, flight schools, persons who lived

or worked in our tallest structures. You failed in your watch and on

it.

 

Help me to understand this, because I was looking so closely at

your watch. Five minutes, Mr. Bush. Five minutes. In that five minute

space my sons lost a best friend, a future that included a loving

sister and her future family. And my daughter lost the only thing in

life I ever knew she really wanted. In fact, you stood on September

13th, on the rubble that covered my child's bones and you began your

move to have the war you had been planning since the beginning of

your term in office. You, Mr. Bush, used my daughter's murder to

perpetrate the most hideous example of racism with the direst of

consequences and you did it standing literally on her bones.

 

I am going to be very honest with you, Mr. Bush. I suspect that

your culpability does not begin with your failures that day. It may

be imprudent to mention this now because evidence is difficult to

produce, but I am one of those pragmatists that rely on some basic

fundamentals in crime solving. So let me say, when a crime is

committed we are to find suspects by exploring motive, by looking at

who had most to gain. You did, Mr. Bush, you and your friends at

Halliburton and your friends in Saudi Arabia. And you have never

answered for this. Don't you think with all that has happened it

would be in order for you to explain all you have come to gain, now

and in the future, in terms of both money and power?

 

On September 11th, I was in Canada. When I heard the news I was

walking in the street, enjoying what was to be the last of the purely

beautiful sunny mornings of my life. My cell phone rang. And every

second after that call was a mix of panic, dread, calm because this

couldn't be happening, and utter, absolute need to touch my daughter.

What would you have done, Mr. Bush? What would your instincts have

been? As a parent? I ask this because Senator Kerry during the second

debate mentioned you are a " good father. " Are you? Have you made

Americans, including your own daughters safer? Let me tell you what I

wanted that morning. I wanted to fly to New York, to put my feet on

my home soil as fast as humanly possible. I wanted to get to an

airport and get home. Not an option for me, Mr. Bush. My husband and

I just made it over the border before it closed. And on that morning,

when no American citizen was allowed to fly in our airspace, on that

morning and the mornings to follow, Americans were grounded. But bin

Laden's family flew. They flew home to Saudi Arabia. Before they were

vetted by the F.B.I., by the C.I.A. And worst of all, you never were

made to tell the truth about why that was so. I'm sorry, Mr. Bush. I

will never understand this. Never. But still: your responsibility was

then and is now to explain it. And to explain while that watch of

yours leading up to the election is still ticking.

 

Right now there is a report from the C.I.A. that names explicitly

your administration's culpability regarding those events. Bipartisan

leaders have requested, even demanded that those reports be turned

over now to congress. You, according to reports, have refused to

allow the C.I.A. to release them, just as you refused to testify

under oath before the 9/11 commission. Now, Mr. Bush, release them.

Before the election.

 

Right now, Mr. Bush, there are wide-spread rumors of vote

tampering all over this country. And let me be clear about this: the

rumors are that Republicans are benefiting from this tampering.

Instead of enumerating our safeties, perhaps you could show some

leadership, Mr. Bush, and demand that it stop now. Demand, Mr. Bush,

that in this country our right to vote is protected. Because without

that, we are not safe. Wouldn't you agree?

 

After the 2000 election, where there were in Florida widespread

problems with voting, Mr. Bush, voting in African American

communities, you also did nothing. Absolutely nothing. You did

nothing to counter the rumors that your brother handed you Florida.

Nothing to smooth over what must have felt to African Americans (even

if this was just rumor) the painful and the absolute, clear enactment

of racial prejudice, not encoded in the ordinary acts of ordinary

citizens, but in the very structure of the government that must be

protective of all citizens of this country and the world. Why, Mr.

Bush, did you fail to go to Florida and demand that these persons'

rights were protected? Or, at the very least, to apologize and

guarantee that this would never happen again? What does America mean

to you? In August of 2001, the United Nations hosted a conference on

racism and Colin Powell, your Secretary of State wanted to attend.

You did not allow this because, you said, we don't have problems with

racism in America. Do you see the pattern I am pointing at, here, Mr.

Bush? In each case, the problems in this country have been enacted

and exacerbated by you and you have attempted to cover them up. How

could you do that to Colin Powell? How could you do that to another

man?

 

When your children are young, Mr. Bush, they are often

rebellious. They often admire you, but buck you at the same time. One

way a mature parent feels this love is sometimes in the very ways in

which your children buck you—by using the very part of your example

they most admire. Vanessa confronted me every day of her life,

especially on the days when she acted most loving. Parent/child

things. The kind of things that all someday are made into family

jokes when the child becomes a parent and sees that the very methods

of touching and teaching and learning come from actions the parent

used without thought. I never had that fully with Vanessa, the day

when she consciously, because she was parenting herself, used my

methods on another generation. But one day, almost there, Vanessa

said to me, " Mom, you always made Christmases at home so beautiful… "

and then she said, " And you taught us how not to be racist. You have

no idea, Mom, how much racism there is and white people don't always

see it. "

 

I cannot tell you in shorthand, Mr. Bush, how important it was

that she said those words before I lost her because unless she did, I

would always have wondered, was I in any way that mattered a good

enough parent to a woman who would die so young. I can tell you some

of the methods I used with Vanessa and her brothers, but let me show

you what you did that I had to explain and counter with all three of

them:

 

You refused, when you met face-to-face with James Byrd's daughter

(You remember him, I am sure. He's the African American man whose

head was ripped almost off of his body in Texas by three white men

who tied him to their pickup and dragged him along a Texas road.),

you refused to sign a hate crimes bill as she begged you, crying. You

didn't even, as Molly Ivins reported, offer her a tissue. In that

sense, Mr. Bush, you functioned as a very hostile branch of

government, one that we might have predicted would not care if

persons of color or persons of the other party were denied the right

to vote.

 

But then, Mr. Bush, you used this tendency of yours, this refusal

to get behind most Americans' desires to eradicate racism by

pretending Osama bin Laden is the embodiment of Saddam Hussein and

vice versa. One man equals the other. They are both Arabs. Do you own

a globe, Mr. Bush? Do you know where Afghanistan is? Do you know

where Iraq is? Have you been there since the war began to examine

what you have done to the civilians you were going to protect?

Interesting detail (and perhaps a warning from G-d): Vanessa, when

she got one of her first jobs, bought me a daily planner with a map

on it. The map on this particular piece of canvas has in its center

Afghanistan. To the right of this small country is a larger country—

Iran and to the right of that—Iraq, also small, even smaller

(geographically and metaphorically speaking) of Afghanistan. Just

under Iraq, writ very large on my daily planner is Saudi Arabia. You

know, Saudi Arabia, Mr. Bush. I know you do because the families of

9/11 who got together to bankrupt terrorism, those people who are

bringing suit against the Saudis got no help from your

administration. None. Though you should know that a coalition of the

willing, including France, Spain, Great Britain and Germany have

offered help to the families of 9/11 as they try to connect the

events of 9/11 to the real perpetrators. There are connections

between the Saudis and the terrorists, the terrorists who, no doubt,

now that you have opened up a haven for terrorism in Iraq, are

growing in number and resources How much time do you have left, Mr.

Bush? What is on your watch? Am I taking too long?

 

What costume will you wear on Vanessa's birthday this year, Mr.

Bush? Will you dress up as the head of the military or a foot soldier

of Prince Bandar or Dick Cheney? Will you wear a white sheet with a

cone head, Mr. Bush? Will you pretend you're a plain speaking, Texas

cowboy, with your shirt sleeves rolled up, proclaiming happily how

safe you'll keep us as you point to your watch? Will you dress up

again as a good Christian? Will you dress up as a Republican? You

are, you know, not a Republican. You have shamed Republicans. I know

one thing, Mr. Bush: I am going to try very hard not to have you

dress up anymore as Commander-in Chief. In more ways than I have

articulated here, that costume does not fit you. I am a proud

American citizen, Mr. Bush, who is disgusted that you try to portray

yourself as patriotic. You have trampled every value of decency

America ever held dear.

 

Do you believe in G-d, Mr. Bush, really? Really? Because, to me,

as a flawed parent, flawed person, flawed citizen, I ask G-d to help

me fix my flaws, to forgive me my trespasses. And here's what I hear

Him telling me:

 

Don't let him speak for Me. If you do, it is you who fail to

watch over your children. You.