Well look, if GWB plane was threatened, he wasn't supposed to protect only himself at great risk to the country. That's not how a commander acts properly.
I believe there were actual jets offcourse, and grounding the airforce at least allowed them to smash into the buildings, sentence the people on higher floors to death, and facilitate the ridiculous cover story.
Sometimes I think that cover story was intentionally ridiculous, surely they could have done better if they wanted to fool the upper 1/3 of the population at least. But it sure did create a hysteria.
So we agree he was complicit, probably in the event, certainly in the cover story, even if you say it softer ("Trump doesn't agree with everything he did"). Did W cause it or did he just go along?
Or was it a plan to allow more money to be spent on the conventional military? It would take a lot to convince me that this was necessary to throw off the current Bad Guys, or even that he foresaw someone like Trump getting into office.