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| Bush: "I can hear you!" |
| 2001-09-15 |
NEW YORK - To the malevolent and still smouldering heart of the very city that in other days has mocked him most cruelly as Dubya, the clown president both curiously privileged and unaccomplished, George Bush arrived yesterday afternoon. He wore one of those little beige windbreakers that American dads have always donned on weekends to signify that now they are at home, with the family. Again and again, he flashed a thumbs-up, that dated gesture most often seen on this country's playing fields, to a huddled mass of firefighters. He kept a constant arm around a tremulous fireman who was at his side, and when Mr. Bush was moving through the throng of rescuers, he shook about 400 hands and patted hundreds more of strong and unbent backs, as though he simply could not bear to go long without the warmth of human touch. The President clambered onto a great mound of debris -- more than 10,400 tons of this grim rubble already has been removed from the World Trade Center crime scene -- grabbed a bullhorn and began to speak to the men with the lousiest job in the world, those sifting through buckets in which are both the remains of a nation's innocents and the shards of her innocence. These men began to raise their fists and chant, that chorus heard on Olympic podiums and that so often has irritated even America's friends, "USA! USA! USA!" "I can hear you!" President Bush said into his bullhorn. The crowd of rescue workers, fire, police and volunteers, wretched and wet under rubber coats and hard hats, roared. "The rest of the world hears you," he said, to more cheers and hoots. "And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!" It was another president, Abraham Lincoln, who said, of moments when the dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present, "The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise to the occasion." It seems this 55-year-old man who looked so small, wounded and stricken may be doing just that. For many Americans, the moment of truth may be found in this picture of Mr. Bush, thumb cocked in fetid air. For others, it will be the sight of their Commander-in-Chief yesterday waving a small U.S. flag from the platform he carved for himself, like the country boy he is at bottom, smack in the middle of the most enormous and evil dump on Earth. Some will find it in the magnificent speech the President gave yesterday morning at the National Cathedral in Washington, on the day he proclaimed one of remembrance and prayer, and that saw the sound of military boots on hard floor mix with the peal of church bells and the sweet voices of a children's choir. There, Mr. Bush invoked "those who in their last moments called home to say 'Be brave' and 'I love you,'" "passengers who defied their murderers," men "who wore the uniforms of the United States and died at their posts" and "the ones whom death found running up the stairs and into the fires to help others." Now come the names, he said, and "We will read all these names and linger over them and learn their stories, and many Americans will weep." In the grace of the lost and those who now labour to reclaim them, Mr. Bush said, America sees a reflection of her national character. "Our fellow Americans are generous and kind, resourceful and brave." |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |