Today marks a year since the death of Osama bin Laden, the patron and leader behind the attacks of Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001. At the risk of politi­ciz­ing those events, let’s look into how those events have been, well, politicized.

From the begin­ning, the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion in par­tic­u­lar, and the Repub­li­can Party in gen­eral, have used the al Qaeda attacks for polit­i­cal advan­tage. On May 1, 2003, Pres­i­dent Bush took a vic­tory lap, in an immense staged event on an air­craft car­rier, pro­claim­ing that “Major com­bat oper­a­tions in Iraq have ended.” Of course, they hadn’t ended, and things went so badly so quickly that in 2007 the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion had to engage in a mas­sive “surge” to make up for the dis­as­ter of the Iraq war. It was not until August 31, 2010, that a dif­fer­ent pres­i­dent, Barack Obama, could hon­estly declare an end to com­bat oper­a­tions in Iraq.

There is a pat­tern here, not only of Repub­li­cans politi­ciz­ing national secu­rity issues, but of Pres­i­dent Obama clean­ing up for­eign pol­icy messes left by Pres­i­dent Bush. The response of the Repub­li­can Party has been to fur­ther politi­cize these events, and attempt to min­i­mize the suc­cesses that Obama had but that Bush couldn’t achieve.

Do remem­ber that the George and Dick’s Excel­lent Iraq Adven­ture was itself a polit­i­cal maneu­ver. We invaded Iraq on false pre­tenses. There were no weapons of mass destruc­tion, and there was no con­nec­tion between Sad­dam Hus­sein and al Qaeda. Pres­i­dent Bush pushed the idea, as early as his State of the Union address of Jan­u­ary 29, 2002, of an “Axis of Evil”, con­sist­ing of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. Already, the actual per­pe­tra­tors of the Sep­tem­ber 11 attacks were nearly for­got­ten, except as boogey­men lurk­ing behind who­ever the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion wanted to invade.

Recall that Feb­ru­ary 7, 2003, Defense Sec­re­tary Don­ald Rums­feld said the war in Iraq “could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months,” and “What is, I think, rea­son­ably cer­tain is the idea that it would take sev­eral hun­dred thou­sand U.S. forces I think is far from the mark.” It was sup­posed to cost, at most, per­haps a bil­lion dol­lars, and Deputy Sec­re­tary of Defense Paul Wol­fowitz declared in Con­gres­sional tes­ti­mony, March 27, 2003, that “The oil rev­enues of Iraq could bring between $50 and $100 bil­lion over the course of the next two or three years…We’re deal­ing with a coun­try that can really finance its own recon­struc­tion, and rel­a­tively soon.”

The “Axis of Evil” meme was floated in an attempt to gin up enthu­si­asm for the inva­sion of Iraq. Not just Iraq, how­ever; the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion had plans to invade Iran as well. This was naked polit­i­cal cal­cu­la­tion (though prob­a­bly eco­nomic also, since the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion encour­aged war prof­i­teer­ing). Even before being elected Pres­i­dent, back in 1999, Bush said, “If I have a chance to invade Iraq, if I had that much cap­i­tal, I’m not going to waste it. I’m going to get every­thing passed I want to get passed and I’m going to have a suc­cess­ful pres­i­dency.” He was con­vinced that the key to being a suc­cess­ful pres­i­dent was to be a wartime pres­i­dent, and he was going to have a splen­did lit­tle war, no mat­ter what. Sep­tem­ber 11 was a dis­trac­tion, forc­ing a prac­tice inva­sion of Afghanistan before he could go after Mid­dle East­ern oil.

But since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were pros­e­cuted with such utter incom­pe­tence, Iraq never became the safe and secure beach­head that the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion wanted to use as a base to con­quer Iran, Syria, and per­haps other Mid­dle East­ern coun­tries. Bush did use Iraq as a polit­i­cal tool, how­ever. As only one exam­ple: a big theme in the 2004 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign was to remind the pub­lic of Sep­tem­ber 11 and to use fear of another attack as an argu­ment for reëlection.

Nor was Bush the only Repub­li­can to use the Sep­tem­ber 11 attacks as a polit­i­cal tool. Through­out the Bush pres­i­dency, the idea of crit­i­ciz­ing a wartime pres­i­dent was held up as an exam­ple of dis­loyal anti-​​patriotism, bor­der­ing on trai­tor­ous actions and sedi­tion. It took the folksi­ness of Joe Biden to call out Rudy Giu­liani for bas­ing his entire short-​​lived 2008 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign on sen­tences that con­tained “a noun, a verb, and nine-​​eleven.” Repub­li­can polit­i­cal games­man­ship over the Iraq war and Sep­tem­ber 11 was per­va­sive and nearly omnipresent in our pub­lic discourse.

It took Pres­i­dent Obama to cor­rect the errors of the pre­vi­ous admin­is­tra­tion. Today, not a sin­gle Amer­i­can sol­dier is fight­ing in Iraq. Iran hasn’t been invaded, and has been forced to the bar­gain­ing table to deal with its nuclear pro­gram. After a promised and successfully-​​executed period of con­cen­tra­tion on the Afghan war — atten­tion, fol­low­ing years of Bush’s neglect, that has now dec­i­mated al Qaeda — the Pres­i­dent announced a 2014 with­drawal date for troops in Afghanistan, putting the Afghan gov­ern­ment on notice that it must step up to see to its own defense.

Per­haps most impor­tantly, a year ago today, Osama bin Laden was killed in an oper­a­tion ordered by Pres­i­dent Obama. Bush declared, on Sep­tem­ber 17, 2001, that bin Laden was “wanted, dead or alive” — and then Bush promptly stopped wor­ry­ing about bin Laden, and became “truly not con­cerned” about him.

Why rehash all this old news? Because it reveals a pat­tern that still con­tin­ues. Repub­li­cans con­tinue to politi­cize these events — while accus­ing Democ­rats of doing so — and con­tinue flip-​​flopping as Bush did on the impor­tance of find­ing bin Laden.

It’s now okay to crit­i­cize a wartime pres­i­dent. Pres­i­dent Obama is actu­ally being pil­lo­ried for not invad­ing Iran, for with­draw­ing troops from Iraq — per­versely also for steal­ing Bush’s credit for the Iraq with­drawal — and for announc­ing the Afghanistan with­drawal.

Repub­li­cans are even play­ing games with the death of bin Laden. After the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion spent seven years fail­ing, Repub­li­cans are now try­ing to down­play the impor­tance of find­ing and killing the world’s fore­most ter­ror­ist. That’s when they’re not try­ing to take credit for it.

And in a supreme act of hyp­o­crit­i­cal chutz­pah, Repub­li­cans are even attempt­ing to crit­i­cize the Pres­i­dent for sup­pos­edly politi­ciz­ing the death of bin Laden.

This charge comes from the party of “Mis­sion Accom­plished” and war prof­i­teer­ing and “a noun, a verb, and nine-​​eleven.”

Clearly, Repub­li­cans don’t want Amer­i­cans to be reminded of Repub­li­can fail­ures and of Pres­i­dent Obama’s suc­cesses. For­eign pol­icy and the econ­omy are sup­posed to be Repub­li­can strong points. The utter dis­as­ter of Repub­li­can rule does not stand up well to the suc­cesses of the cur­rent Pres­i­dent — even in the face of unyield­ing, unstint­ing, unthink­ing opposition.

Those who don’t remem­ber the past are doomed to repeat it. If we allow the Repub­li­can Etch-​​A-​​Sketch to make us for­get the con­trast, the next four years will be a replay. Repub­li­can pol­icy has not altered a smidgen since the Bush years — if any­thing, Repub­li­cans insist Bush did not go far enough.

If you loved the Bush for­eign pol­icy, expect to see a Part Two under a Rom­ney Admin­is­tra­tion. And expect it to be the stuff of con­stant polit­i­cal manipulation.

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