Bush: ‘Same foul spirit’ in US, foreign extremists
Former President George W. Bush used the occasion of a 9/11 speech to take a thinly-veiled slam at the Jan. 6 insurrectionists and other U.S. political extremists.
“We have seen growing evidence that the dangers to our country can come not only across borders but from violence that gathers within,” Bush said Saturday in Shanksville, Pennsylvania,
at a ceremony to remember the hijacking and crash of United Flight 93, which was commandeered by Muslim terrorists.
“There is little cultural overlap between violent extremists abroad and violent extremists at home,” Bush said.
“But in their disdain for pluralism, in their disregard for human life, in their determination to defile national symbols, they are children of the same foul spirit and it is our continuing duty to confront them.”
Bush’s 10-minute speech — before an audience that included Vice President Kamala Harris and former Vice President Dick Cheney — compared what he called the unity of Americans after 9/11 with the disunity of the present day.
Bush also commended the bravery of the Flight 93 passengers and crew, who by causing the Boeing 757 jetliner to crash in rural Pennsylvania are believed to have foiled the
hijackers’ plans to crash the jetliner into the U.S. Capitol.
“The 33 passengers and seven crew of Flight 93 could have been any group of citizens selected by fate. In a sense, they stood in for us all,” Bush said.
After he left the 9/11 ceremonies in New York, President Joe Biden also arrived in Shanksville, where he laid a wreath at the Flight 93 memorial’s Wall of Names.