Some people have complained that Bush doesn't have the right to make use of any 9/11 related images in his campaign commercials.  I disagree. But I also strongly believe that he needs to tread carefully as to not seem to be exploiting a national tragedy. 

The reason I think he can and should bring up 9/11 is because it was the defining moment of is presidency. I remember thinking as the months passed after 9/11 how thankful I was that Bush had won and not Gore. I could imagine the over-engineered response Gore would have put together. Would Gore have taken out the Taliban? Would some other President have managed to topple the Taliban and disrupt Al Qaeda with so few losses? Who can forget Bush standing at ground zero with his arm around the weary fireman? It was a defining moment in our country's history and Bush was the right man at the right place. He not only should remind us of those times, he has an obligation to remind us of what we've been through and how he handled a dire situation.

Those who cry foul are being hypocritical, to say the least. We don't know a lot about Kerry but we damn well know that he served in Vietnam. That he got a silver star, a bronze star, and two purple hearts. I know this off the top of my head. Why? Because he is constantly making a big fuss about the defining moment of his life. I don't have a problem with that though. Those events demonstrated that in a crunch, Carry is a brave and heroic figure.  Would someone argue that Vietnam was a "national" event that should therefore be hands off? Of course not.  9/11 was a national tragedy as well. And it is important for people to realize how effectively Bush handled that crisis.

Obviously Bush critics won't like that. Their strategy has been to try to make it so that Bush can't talk about anything.  If you try to point out Kerry's deplorable voting record on national security issues, his supporters claim that's off limits because he's a war hero.  Now they're trying to create a scenario where Bush can't speak about what he accomplished.  Honestly now, if I told you on 9/12/2001 that as we enter 2004 the United States would not suffer a single follow-up terrorist attack would you have believed it? Be honest now.  Nearly 3 years later and we've not suffered any additional attacks. Before 9/11 we had been routinely attacked by Al Qaeda -- the embassy bombings, the USS Cole, the first WTC attack. And yet after 9/11, nothing. No matter how you slice it, you have to give some credit to Bush for this. Because, make no mistake, if we suffered a terrorist attack he would almost certainly get blamed for that. We can't have it both ways.

His ads needs to remind us what we've been through. Not just for political purposes but because too many people have already forgotten what happened on September 11. Four airliners were hijacked at the same time. Two of them were rammed into the world's largest building, the WTC and destroyed. The WTC, if you hadn't ever been in it, was the size of a small city. The twin towers could comfortably fit over 100,000 people in them (that's how many people could potentially have died incidentally if the planes had struck about an hour later and at the same time and a bit lower on the buildings). A third hijacked airliner rammed into the Pentagon. The fourth was retaken by the passengers and crashed into the ground while it was on its way to Washington DC. Its target believed to have been the White House (think about that for a moment - if the passengers hadn't done what they did, the White House might have been destroyed). Or maybe the capital building!  Think about that. 

We need to be reminded that we are at war. And that like Kerry in Vietnam, when Bush had his crunch time, he showed that he was a man of integrity and effective leadership.