Bye, Bye Rudy

I really hope you forgot the sarcasm font.

No one expected the towers to collapse. No one expected terrorists to use innocent folks and jumbo jets as weapons.

Trust me, I'm not Rudy's biggest fan, but you can't ignore his work in making big parts of the city safe in the 7.5 years preceding 9/11.

I do have to admit, though, you've tossed some tasty bait out there.

 

Oh for Heaven's sake, it's not "Bye Bye Rudy." :

Our society can't remember crap for more than 2 seconds.

Just look at the case of Jim Webb:

July '06: Jim Webb: "Savior."
Sept. '06: Jim Webb: "Pervert."
Jan. '07: Jim Webb: "Next President."
March '07: Jim Webb: "Who?"

 

No one thought that the building next to you has a plane sticking out of it and you probably should evacuate this one.

No one thought that there would ever be a time when the police and fire departments might need to communicate and coordinate with each other in an emergency.

No one thought that anyone would ever try to attack the world trade center.

 

I will say this about Rudy -- he did nothing to stop the obvious and dangerous rivalry between the FDNY and NYPD on the issue of cooridnation of their respective emergency response systems. The two departments literally could not talk to each other on 9/11 because their radios weren't on the same system.

Rudy sided with the NYPD at every turn and went out of his way to piss off the leadership of the FDNY. If these guys had their acts together on 9/11, then a lot of FDNY deaths in the north tower would have been prevented.

 

My point is it is easy to act tough when there is a snarling pit bull in front of you.

It's easy to say soothing and determined things after a tragedy.

It's harder to get people working to gether and thinking and planning to prevent or lessen tragedies.

Rudy, to me, doesn't seem to have done as much as he could have to lessen the losses of 9/11 but he sure gets a lot of credit for soldiering on afterward.

Good for him. Wouldn't want him as president, though.

 

Rudy Giuliani should face 300-plus counts of negligent homicide then?

You people amaze me.

You act as if the police/fire issue is an NYC-only thing. It's the case in many big cities. EMS/fire issues also are prevalent in lots of places (Boston included).

Ace, the fear about evacuating the other tower was that people would be hit by falling debris. At the time of the first impact, no one knew it was a terrorist attack.

It was unprecedented in human civilization. I guess Rudy should've called Osama and asked him for a copy of the attack plans.

 

I don't make it a point to regularly, or even irregularly, read the Weekly Standard, but one of my favorite features on Slate.com is the "In Other Magazines" feature which highlights articles you should read, and in the WS this week, there was, I thought, an interesting piece on how conservatives have decided, for the most part, that terrorism and Islamofacism are the new "abortion" (the one issue that everything else should take a back seat to) and for that reason, they're willing to get behind Guliani. The article basically points out that Guliani can get the GOP nomination if, instead of abandoning his beliefs, he ephasizes the "process" (that gay marriage and abortion should be legislated, not decided by judges) and simply continues to say stuff like John Roberts and Sam Alito are the kind of judges he'd appoint to the bench.

The article does make, I think, an interesting point that I agree with, and one that's been discussed on this thread in regards to Richardson: One of the dumbest ways to pick a president is to make them start out by groveling and begging for support from interest groups that are powerful within the party, but won't budge an inch on issues like abortion. It's sort of like missing the forest for the trees, I guess. If the process were like it is now in 1860, Lincoln couldn't have made it to the general unless he first got approval of various fringe interest groups who were rigid on social issues. And in some ways, Republicans are now more willing to make that trade off. Maybe they think Guliani is their modern-day Lincoln, and beating terrorism is like winning the Civil War, and that leadership in crisis is more important than how friendly you are with gays or what your stance is on abortion.

I'm not sure if I believe the article, but I suppose I would like to, because I think the same is true for Democrats. Personally, I don't really care about Barak Obama's position on abortion or if Bill Richardson wanted to legalize drugs or thought he was drafted by the Kansas City A's. Those aren't the most important issues to me. I just want a competant, intelligent leader who is willing to listen and respect other people's beliefs. I don't know if that's Guliani. In fact, I doubt it, at least for me personally. But it's an interesting article, and if true, a good first step toward changing how we pick presidential candidates.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/013/370rvrau.asp?pg=1

 

My point is that standing tough afterward is easy. I'd rather have a president who thinks ahead.

 

Backpedaling a tad?

No one thought of a jumbo jet smashing into a 110-story office tower and using thousands of innocent civilians as victims. If you can find me one official, elected or otherwise, who did, I'll gladly eat crow.

To say that because he didn't see 9/11 coming means he didn't think ahead is horsemuffins.

 

No I am not. I am saying he gets all this credit for how he acted after the attack but that's easy. What did he do to prevent the 3,000 deaths?

No, people didn't expect a plane to fly into the towers, but they sure did expect an attack on the WTC. It had been done before.

So, considering that the WTC is a demonstrable terrorist target, it should have clicked with someone immediately to evacuate both buildings.

And you aren't the mayor of Peoria. You are the mayor of New York. It would be behoove you to push for a radio system so that your police and fire could communicate in an emergency.

 

No, but don't tell me that you should be elected President primarily because you are the person who is best suited to deal with threats when you do nothing to resolve a readily identifiable problem which had been written about for years and which proved to be an issue in other crises in the city during your tenure.

I'm certainly not blaming Rudy for the planes going into the building, that would be asinine. But there is a ton of blame to go around to the FDNY, the NYPD and the mayor's office for the unnecessary deaths of firefighters in the north tower who were sitting around waiting for instruction when the NYPD had already informed its people about the south tower collapse and had issued an evacuation order.

 

Please, everyone, google "Wayne Barrett" repeatedly throughout this election cycle. If people had done the same for "Lou Dubose" in 1999, we wouldn't be in this mess today.