Sunday, February 28, 2016
TOW #19 - 9/11 Address to the Nation
George Bush's powerful 9/11 address was perhaps the most important speech in this century. He had to comfort Americans, build their morale, and drive them towards defeating terrorism. He was largely successful in doing so, however time has poked holes in his argument. The gleaming rhetoric of the speech has rotted away and time brings out the fundamental flaws that started here. The most fundamental problem with the speech was the claim that America would continue to be a beacon of freedom for the world. This is far from true. In our own nation, we have the restrictive Patriot Act that allows the government to spy on it's own citizens, and even an FBI case now calls for the government to have an ability to get a back door into iOS. Overseas, we forcefully broke into Iraq, violating the freedom of it's citizens, to looks for weapons of mass destruction, which we never found, but planted seeds of hatred for America in Middle Easterners. Now, we use drones to take out ISIS targets, and kill many innocents in the process. This is far from freedom, as we decided multiple innocent human lives were not worth the life of one evil person. America is no longer the beacon of freedom stated before, but a beacon of oppression and cruelty, one that actually leads many to extremism. The eloquent simplicity of George Bush's brief address seemed to be in unanimous agreement, but the way in which it's goals were carried out contradicted the very hopeful nature of the speech.
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