Analysis Of George W. Bush's Speech On September 11

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On the morning of September 11, 2001, Al Qaeda terrorists carried out a set of coordinated suicide attacks using four-hijacked passenger planes and killing around 3,000 people on American soil. The first two planes hit the World Trade center, killing everyone on board and hundreds inside the buildings. Following this attack, the nation was informed by President Bush that these attacks were, “apparent terrorist attacks on our country”(BB PP). The third hijacked plane soon crashed into the Pentagon in Washington D.C. killing multiple people aboard and 125 military and civilian personnel inside the building. The fourth plane was deliberately crashed into a field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, killing all the people and crew aboard after a few …show more content…
Nine days later on September 20, 2011, George W. Bush addressed the Nation in a Joint Session of Congress, in attempt to ease Americans concerning the terror attacks that occurred on our soil on September 11, 2001. Examining political speeches and pointing out rhetoric devices used, experts Miller and Lutz note to the public that politicians resort to the use of propaganda, logical fallacies, and doublespeak to better their speeches and have an emotional take on there audience. With a thoughtful examination of Bush’s September 20, 2001 speech provides strong evidence that Miller, Lutz, and Clark would criticize the speech writers for their excessive use of propaganda, doublespeak, and logical …show more content…
“The “Band Wagon” is a device to make us follow the crowd, to accept the propagandist’s program en masse”(Miller 215). With the amount of times Bush repeats the words “we” and “us” in his speech, he groups together the whole nation against the terrorists and people of there kind. This is backed up when Bush says, “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime”(BB PP Pg.53). With the goal of bandwagon being a mass of people end up supporting you, the words “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists,” (BB PP Pg. 53) gives Bush the upper hand and triggers at the peoples emotions during this time of weakness and fear, resulting in them jumping on his bandwagon of waging war. By saying this, he is saying they only have two choices and this causes a problem of forcing everyone listening to only have a single perspective. The audience of Bush’s speech was looking for a leader and were full heartedly putting there trust into Bush, so by him giving only two choices, it resulted in a large amount of supporters to wage war on Afghanistan. Another example of the bandwagon device being used is quoted, “Great harm has been done to us. We have suffered great loss. And in our grief and anger we have found our mission and our moment.

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