America’s 9/11 President Never Forgets…His Paintings

Former Presidents George W. Bush and Joe Biden, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and Vice President JD Vance attend the 25th anniversary memorial of the September 11 attacks.Pamela Smith/AP Get your news from a source that’s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily. On Friday, former President George W. Bush shared his new collection of self-congratulatory paintings to mark the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, which killed thousands of people while he was in office. In the years that followed, Bush led—and became the face of—the War on Terror era, with its succession of wars abroad. The paintings come from an exhibit titled “Remembering 9/11” on display at the Bush Museum in Dallas, Texas, for the entire month of September. Among the 16 works includes a painting of the infamous moment when Chief of Staff Andy Card whispered in Bush’s ear about the attack while the president was speaking to a classroom of elementary school students in Sarasota, Florida. The George W. Bush Presidential Center website advertising the exhibit describes the series as “works of art to reflect on the courage, sacrifice, and resilience that emerged from one of the most defining moments in American history.” It of course does not address his response to the 2001 attack, launching a “War on Terror” that, among other things, launched the United States’ longest foreign occupation, killed at least 4.5 million people, and saw the founding of the Department of Homeland Security, perhaps the Trump administration’s most powerful asset in rolling back democracy at home.