In A Word - Rhetoric: Meaning no disrespect but, will the real George W Bush stand and be honest.
Gerald Eisman
September 12, 2006
Rhetoric: The art or study of using language effectively and persuasively 2. Skill in using language effectively and persuasively. 3. A style of speaking or writing, especially the language of a particular subject. Language that is elaborate, pretentious, insincere, or intellectually vacuous.
Monday, 9/11/2006, George Bush said this: “Whatever mistakes have been made in Iraq the worst mistake would be to think that if we pulled out, the terrorists would leave us alone. The safety of America depends on the outcome of the battle in the streets of Baghdad.” He went on to say “I am often asked why we are in Iraq when Saddam Hussein was not responsible for the 9/11 attacks. The answer is that the regime of Saddam Hussein was a clear threat. The world is safer because Saddam Hussein is no longer in power.”
How odd to hear those words again when over and over, studies, reports, white papers and who can remember the other ways those words have been proven false. It is all hollow rhetoric, based on the whispers of the wind and the definitive knowledge of a slug. They are the words of a man who seemingly has lost all touch with reality though posturing as the rightful leader of free men everywhere.
The only threat Saddam posed was to Iran, and after more than eight years of warring with that nation, he couldn’t defeat it. When he turned to Kuwait, an emirate of inconsequential size and without an army to speak of, he and his army was soundly trounced by America and its allies when they came to Kuwait’s rescue. Threat? Saddam was as dangerous as a summer shower.
Bush, in his speeches, has attempted to meld several divergent ideas under one unifying banner. Besides elevating a fifth rate power to the rank of world threat, he has painted our present struggle as being a long-term clash between two ideologies, democracy and Islamic radicalism. He has lumped every group he and his speechwriters could think of under a single ism; a totalitarian ideology led by Islamic extremists.
Sitting at his desk in the oval office, Bush said the nation “is being tested in a way that we have not been since the start of the Cold War.” George even went as far as to say we are in “a struggle for civilization.” If ever a scare tactic was employed to frighten the general population and drive them to the polls, this one has to rank number one on the Bush list.
The Democrats, on the other hand, chastised Bush for taking a solemn day and attempting to turn it into a political advantage. Senator Edward Kennedy, no ally of George Bush, had this to day about the speeches delivered on 9/11.
The president should be ashamed of using a national day of mourning to commandeer the airwaves to give a speech that was designed not to unite the country and commemorate the fallen, but to seek support for a war in Iraq that he has admitted had ‘nothing to do with 9/11.”
Bush has, in all the speeches he has given in the past few weeks, employed several already stale arguments to convince Americans of the need for war. These include the old saw of a struggle between ideologies of Islam and Democracy, freedom versus enslavement, good against evil. He lumps all the adversaries into one group; a single movement of all the enemies of the United States banded together to bring the nation down.
His reasoning is flawed, however, in the attempt. al-Qaeda is not the same as Hezbollah which is independent of Hamas, etc., and, though he doesn’t wish to recognize it, Hamas is an elected group that represents Palestinians.
That (Bush’s reasoning and lumping of the different entities) is an oversimplification of the task of dealing with the tactic (terrorism) that is used by many different groups with many different ideologies,” said Paul R. Pillar, a former top CIA analyst and author of a respected book on terrorism. “It leads to a misunderstanding of the need of what is in fact a different counterterrorist policy for each group and state we are dealing with.”
What it all boils down to is that the election is coming up and Bush is on the stump. His concern, unfortunately, is not the welfare of the American public, nor is it the need to find a way to reach those who fight against us, but simply to hold on to the House and Senate. The ultimate reason for his rhetoric is power.
In the words of Tony Snow, White House Press Secretary, “I am not so sure that the views (Bush’s) are chiseled in stone. There’s been a lot of debate, one side that may not have been fully represented in ours. It seems that on a lot of things, people man not have fully understood the approach the president took and his thinking.”
The bottom line is this. The president’s speeches are peppered with statements that can be considered factually deficient leading to many of our allies stating that Mr. Bush is suffering from a credibility problem. Could that possibly mean his rhetoric isn’t spot-on, that Mr. Bush resides in a world he has invented within the confines of his own mind? Perhaps King George’s divine right is fading into the sunset.
Monday, 9/11/2006, George Bush said this: “Whatever mistakes have been made in Iraq the worst mistake would be to think that if we pulled out, the terrorists would leave us alone. The safety of America depends on the outcome of the battle in the streets of Baghdad.” He went on to say “I am often asked why we are in Iraq when Saddam Hussein was not responsible for the 9/11 attacks. The answer is that the regime of Saddam Hussein was a clear threat. The world is safer because Saddam Hussein is no longer in power.”
How odd to hear those words again when over and over, studies, reports, white papers and who can remember the other ways those words have been proven false. It is all hollow rhetoric, based on the whispers of the wind and the definitive knowledge of a slug. They are the words of a man who seemingly has lost all touch with reality though posturing as the rightful leader of free men everywhere.
The only threat Saddam posed was to Iran, and after more than eight years of warring with that nation, he couldn’t defeat it. When he turned to Kuwait, an emirate of inconsequential size and without an army to speak of, he and his army was soundly trounced by America and its allies when they came to Kuwait’s rescue. Threat? Saddam was as dangerous as a summer shower.
Bush, in his speeches, has attempted to meld several divergent ideas under one unifying banner. Besides elevating a fifth rate power to the rank of world threat, he has painted our present struggle as being a long-term clash between two ideologies, democracy and Islamic radicalism. He has lumped every group he and his speechwriters could think of under a single ism; a totalitarian ideology led by Islamic extremists.
Sitting at his desk in the oval office, Bush said the nation “is being tested in a way that we have not been since the start of the Cold War.” George even went as far as to say we are in “a struggle for civilization.” If ever a scare tactic was employed to frighten the general population and drive them to the polls, this one has to rank number one on the Bush list.
The Democrats, on the other hand, chastised Bush for taking a solemn day and attempting to turn it into a political advantage. Senator Edward Kennedy, no ally of George Bush, had this to day about the speeches delivered on 9/11.
The president should be ashamed of using a national day of mourning to commandeer the airwaves to give a speech that was designed not to unite the country and commemorate the fallen, but to seek support for a war in Iraq that he has admitted had ‘nothing to do with 9/11.”
Bush has, in all the speeches he has given in the past few weeks, employed several already stale arguments to convince Americans of the need for war. These include the old saw of a struggle between ideologies of Islam and Democracy, freedom versus enslavement, good against evil. He lumps all the adversaries into one group; a single movement of all the enemies of the United States banded together to bring the nation down.
His reasoning is flawed, however, in the attempt. al-Qaeda is not the same as Hezbollah which is independent of Hamas, etc., and, though he doesn’t wish to recognize it, Hamas is an elected group that represents Palestinians.
That (Bush’s reasoning and lumping of the different entities) is an oversimplification of the task of dealing with the tactic (terrorism) that is used by many different groups with many different ideologies,” said Paul R. Pillar, a former top CIA analyst and author of a respected book on terrorism. “It leads to a misunderstanding of the need of what is in fact a different counterterrorist policy for each group and state we are dealing with.”
What it all boils down to is that the election is coming up and Bush is on the stump. His concern, unfortunately, is not the welfare of the American public, nor is it the need to find a way to reach those who fight against us, but simply to hold on to the House and Senate. The ultimate reason for his rhetoric is power.
In the words of Tony Snow, White House Press Secretary, “I am not so sure that the views (Bush’s) are chiseled in stone. There’s been a lot of debate, one side that may not have been fully represented in ours. It seems that on a lot of things, people man not have fully understood the approach the president took and his thinking.”
The bottom line is this. The president’s speeches are peppered with statements that can be considered factually deficient leading to many of our allies stating that Mr. Bush is suffering from a credibility problem. Could that possibly mean his rhetoric isn’t spot-on, that Mr. Bush resides in a world he has invented within the confines of his own mind? Perhaps King George’s divine right is fading into the sunset.
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