Ethan Flater blog 4

Ethan Flater
“Tonight, we are a country awakened to danger and called to defend freedom. Our grief has turned to anger and anger to resolution. Whether we bring our enemies to justice or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done.”

President George W. Bush, after 9-11 attacks, September 20, 2001

In this quote Bush uses words like justice, freedom, and resolution, to tell us what we are going to do about the attack that was done to us. He does this in a way that softens what he is actually saying. He hides from the bluntness of what the statement is trying to say. The word freedom is the American people; we are going to defend ourselves from being attacked. Resolution is the attacks we are going to give back out of retaliation, and justice is our revenge on the people who attacked us no matter who it is.

The United States of America has been attacked. We will retaliate on the ones responsible. We will have our revenge one the ones who attacked us.

This quote is completely appropriate for this situation. When this was given the people in our country wanted to fight back, they wanted to do something to help. George Bush gave them something that we were going to do in this quote, but he said it in a way that the people could all look at it and think it was the right thing to do. At the time it was the right thing to say. It draws support for what he wants to do later on in the speech. It is powerful the way the president uses words such as: freedom, resolution, enemies, and justice these words all convey a sense that we are going to do something about the attacks done to us on September 11, 2001, but it is not put bluntly or concretely so we don’t seem like we are just mad with rage in what we say. Even though it is what this quote means. This is a classic case of a political speech where the uses of words that are not concrete help to achieve what they want in a certain situation. At the time America needed to hear these words. The people got what they wanted and the government got there support by giving them a quote that was clear but at the same time hiding what they were really saying.