George W. Bush: "Islam is Peace"

a useful reminder of an event that should not be forgotten. W, speaking off the cuff, from the heart.

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Six Days After 9/11, Another Anniversary Worth Honoring
By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN

In the coming days, the calendar will bring the anniversaries of two signal events. One, of course, is Sept. 11, a Tuesday this year, as it was in 2001, when Al Qaeda terrorists in four hijacked planes killed more than 3,000 Americans. With public memorial services and private tears, those deaths will be recalled and mourned.

The other anniversary is of the visit President George W. Bush made to a Washington mosque just six days after the attack, where he spoke eloquently against the harassment of Arabs and Muslims living in the United States and about the need to respect Islam.

This act of leadership and statesmanship, however, has all but vanished from the national collective memory. It deserves, instead, to be noted and heeded and esteemed.

In its immediate moment, Mr. Bush’s appearance at the Islamic Center of Washington may have helped to quell vigilante assaults on American Muslims and on those, like Sikhs, who were mistaken for them. At the policy level, the president’s words also served notice that unlike Franklin D. Roosevelt after the attack on Pearl Harbor, he would not intern or in any way collectively punish innocent American citizens who happened to share a religion or ethnicity with foreign foes.

After hailing American Muslims as “friends” and “taxpaying citizens” in his comments at the mosque, Mr. Bush went on to say: “These acts of violence against innocents violate the fundamental tenets of the Islamic faith. And it’s important for my fellow Americans to understand that.” He quoted from the Koran: “In the long run, evil in the extreme will be the end of those who do evil.” Then he continued in his own words: “The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That’s not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace. These terrorists don’t represent peace. They represent evil and war.”

Eleven years after the fact, Mr. Bush has been treated like a prophet without honor in his own land. He was barely mentioned at the Republican convention last week, and former presidential candidates like Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann have regularly inveighed against Muslims. The only allusions to Mr. Bush at the Democratic convention in Charlotte, N.C., this week were for the war in Iraq and the economic collapse that struck in his final months in office.

Yet there was always another side to Mr. Bush, present in his self-definition as a “compassionate conservative,” in his deep faith and respect for all religions. He was probably the most colorblind Republican president since Lincoln, appointing Hispanic and black Americans to meaningful cabinet positions — national security adviser, secretary of state, secretary of education, attorney general.

During Mr. Bush’s campaign for the Republican nomination in 2000, he spoke at a mosque, making him the first candidate in either party to do so. During a debate against his Democratic opponent, Al Gore, he denounced the profiling of Arab-American and Muslim-American airline passengers. Mr. Bush’s appointment schedule on Sept. 11, 2001, until tragedy intervened, included a 3 p.m. meeting with a delegation of American Muslim leaders.

“His entire concept of human liberty cannot be understood apart from his elemental view of the spiritual nature of all men and women,” said Tim Goeglein, a White House staff member involved in planning the mosque visit and author of “The Man in the Middle,” about the role of religion in the Bush administration. “This is one of the very important narratives of the Bush presidency.”

As Mr. Bush recounted in his own book “Decision Points,” in the days after Sept. 11, he was disturbed by reports of bias crimes against American Muslims. And he had heard firsthand accounts of the Japanese-American internment from one of its victims — Norman Y. Mineta, a Democrat who served as Mr. Bush’s transportation secretary.

Out of that combination of historical perspective and visceral decency, Mr. Bush sent instructions to the White House’s Office of Public Liaison to arrange for him to visit a mosque. For the men and women in that office, the stakes were instantly clear.

“In the aftermath of 9/11, when every move the president made was being watched extremely closely, it was important to demonstrate that American Muslims were not the same people who attacked the U.S.,” said Matt Smith, the liaison office’s associate director at the time. “When you show that these people are Americans, it goes a long way.”

One of several Muslim members of the White House staff was Suhail Khan, who worked in the liaison office and took a leading role in deciding which mosque the president should visit. The Islamic Center of Washington struck him as nearly ideal. President Dwight D. Eisenhower had laid its cornerstone in 1957, and its congregation included diplomats, business executives and other professionals. Unlike several other Washington mosques, it had been built for Muslim worship, not converted from a previous use. So television and still cameras would be able to capture the image of an American president in a visibly, indelibly Islamic setting.

Within about 24 hours, the mosque was checked by the Secret Service for security, a briefing memo was prepared for the president and an advance team was dispatched to the Islamic center. Then, on the afternoon of Monday, Sept. 17, Mr. Bush and all the attendant news media went to the mosque.

Mr. Bush removed his shoes, in accordance with Islamic practice, before entering the mosque’s prayer room. He met for about 45 minutes with leaders of several American Muslim organizations, including Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Afterward, standing before a tile wall of characteristically Islamic patterns and near a woman wearing a hijab, Mr. Bush, speaking in a grave and subdued tone, issued his appeal for tolerance and unity.

“I think in those days, so many people here and around the world watched that clip,” Mr. Awad said recently. “And it should be played over and over to remind people that what made America great is respect for religious freedom and zero tolerance for hate crimes against innocent people.”

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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/08/u...sary-worth-honoring.html?_r=3&ref=todayspaper

 

W was a wonderfully compassionate president, and an even better human being.

[rquoter]The Value of Service
Commentary by Lt. Col. Mark Murphy
354th Maintenance Group deputy commander

EIELSON AIR FORCE BASE, Alaska -- I learned a big lesson on service Aug. 4, 2008, when Eielson had the rare honor of hosting President Bush on a refueling stop as he traveled to Asia .

It was an event Eielson will never forget -- a hangar full of Airmen and Soldiers getting to see the Commander in Chief up close, and perhaps even shaking his hand. An incredible amount of effort goes into presidential travel because of all of the logistics, security, protocol, etc ... so it was remarkable to see Air Force One land at Eielson on time at precisely 4:30 p.m.--however, when he left less than two hours later, the President was 15 minutes behind schedule.

That's a big slip for something so tightly choreographed, but very few people know why it happened. Here's why.

On Dec. 10, 2006, our son, Shawn, was a paratrooper deployed on the outskirts of Baghdad . He was supposed to spend the night in camp, but when a fellow soldier became ill Shawn volunteered to take his place on a nighttime patrol--in the convoy's most exposed position as turret gunner in the lead Humvee. He was killed instantly with two other soldiers when an IED ripped through their vehicle.

I was thinking about that as my family and I sat in the audience listening to the President's speech, looking at the turret on the up-armored Humvee the explosive ordnance disposal flight had put at the edge of the stage as a static display.

When the speech was over and the President was working the crowd line, I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to see a White House staff member. She asked me and my wife to come with her, because the President wanted to meet us.

Stunned, we grabbed our two sons that were with us and followed her back into a conference room. It was a shock to go from a crowded, noisy hangar, past all of those security people, to find ourselves suddenly alone in a quiet room.

The only thing we could hear was a cell phone vibrating, and noticed that it was coming from the jacket Senator Stevens left on a chair. We didn't answer.

A short time later, the Secret Service opened the door and President Bush walked in. I thought we might get to shake his hand as he went through. But instead, he walked up to my wife with his arms wide, pulled her in for a hug and a kiss, and said, "I wish I could heal the hole in your heart." He then grabbed me for a hug, as well as each of our sons. Then he turned and said, "Everybody out."

A few seconds later, the four of us were completely alone behind closed doors with the President of the United States and not a Secret Service agent in sight.

He said, "Come on, let's sit down and talk." He pulled up a chair at the side of the room, and we sat down next to him. He looked a little tired from his trip, and he noticed that his shoes were scuffed up from leaning over concrete barriers to shake hands and pose for photos. He slumped down the chair, completely relaxed, smiled, and suddenly was no longer the President - he was just a guy with a job, sitting around talking with us like a family member at a barbeque.

For the next 15 or 20 minutes, he talked with us about our son, Iraq , his family, faith, convictions, and shared his feelings about nearing the end of his presidency. He asked each of our teenaged sons what they wanted to do in life and counseled them to set goals, stick to their convictions, and not worry about being the "cool" guy.

He said that he'd taken a lot of heat during his tenure and was under a lot of pressure to do what's politically expedient, but was proud to say that he never sold his soul. Sometimes he laughed, and at others he teared up. He said that what he'll miss most after leaving office will be his role as Commander in Chief.

One of the somber moments was when he thanked us for the opportunity to meet, because he feels a heavy responsibility knowing that our son died because of a decision he made. He was incredibly humble, full of warmth, and completely without pretense. We were seeing the man his family sees.

We couldn't believe how long he was talking to us, but he seemed to be in no hurry whatsoever. In the end, he thanked us again for the visit and for the opportunity to get off his feet for a few minutes. He then said, "Let's get some pictures." The doors flew open, Secret Service and the White House photographer came in, and suddenly he was the President again. We posed for individual pictures as he gave each of us one of his coins, and then he posed for family pictures. A few more thank yous, a few more hugs, and he was gone.

The remarkable thing about the whole event was that he didn't have to see us at all. If he wanted to do more, he could've just given a quick handshake and said, "Thanks for your sacrifice." But he didn't - he put everything and everyone in his life on hold to meet privately with the family of a Private First Class who gave his life in the service of his country.

What an incredible lesson on service. If the President of the United States is willing to drop everything on his plate to visit with a family, surely the rest of us can do it. No one is above serving another person, and no one is so lofty that he or she can't treat others with dignity and respect.

We often think of service in terms of sacrificing ourselves for someone in a position above us, but how often do we remember that serving someone below us can be much more important? If you're in a leadership capacity, take a good look at how you're treating your people, and remember that your role involves serving the people you rely on every day.

- See more at: http://www.blackfive.net/main/2008/08/the-reason-to-d.html#sthash.th6yYzZB.dpuf[/rquoter]