George W. Bush's Farewell Speech to the Nation

George W Bush is infamous for giving inaccurate speeches, and his Farewell Speech today was no different. As President Elect Obama's inauguration draws closer, Bush gave his expected farewell speech today from the White House, in a televised 13 minute effort. Bush presented what I believed to be a very propaganda filled speech as he gets ready to pass the baton to his successor.
The reason that I said that this speech was full of propaganda was because after thanking his friends and family for support, Bush immediately jumped into his favorite discussion, The 9/11 attacks. Its been seen time and time again, that Bush takes pride in the steps he took following the 9/11 attacks and seems to consider that as the main preserver of the otherwise tarnished Bush Legacy. Throughout the speech, Bush went on to speak of himself as someone who saved not only Americans, but other Arab states from 'terrorism'. He seemed to take pride in saying that the US had not seen any other terror attacks after 9/11, making it seem like terror attacks were annual occurrences. He thanks all the allies that worked with him (presumably Former British VP Tony Blair being the main object of affection), and went on to talk of how he had done so much for the countries he invaded by saving them from regimes that demanded "total obedience to an oppressive ideology" . When giving his spin-filled speech, he did not once mention the financial cost of the Iraq war (which was last estimated to overall cost the US a whopping $3 Trillion dollars) or the heavy death toll (100,000 Iraqis and 4,000 US troops dead). Instead he seemed to be more interested in talking about how he had liberated the Iraqi women from the oppressive regime and had made sure that their human rights were reserved by making sure they were provided with education and such.
He then talked about how he had worked extremely hard to improve the schools in America, to improve Medicaid, and proudly announced how much he had lowered income taxes for the American people. After this he went back to his favorite topic, terror, and warned the US people that another terrorist attack could be coming by saying that "our enemies are patient".
And after that, in what I saw as a pathetic effort to promote the Bush legacy, he started talking about how America's character had not faltered and started pointing out live examples of how strong the American character was. These live examples included a principal who started a school in the wake of the Hurricane Katrina disaster, a former inmate turned preacher, and a man who joined the Army as a doctor after his son was killed in action while serving in Iraq. Even though these individuals are impressive people, choosing to bring them out was a misguided idea because they had no relevance to Bush or any of his decisions. He then concluded his speech by stating how "proud [he] was to serve America and be an American citizen", a failed attempt at patriotism.

The main reason that I thought his speech was inadequate was because even though he acknowledged that he had made some mistakes as President, he was almost refusing to accept the gravity of the mistakes. Its as if he had forgotten about how he failed to act in the Hurricane Katrina which cost the lives of more than 1,800 Americans and devastated New Orleans, or he did not mention how he did not act when the US was (and still is) facing financial turmoil. As a matter if fact he claimed that it "would have been worse if we had not acted". How much worse it could get, I don't want to know. And my final grievance with this speech is how he to spoke of himself as someone that had to make a series of inevitable decisions and the criticism he is facing now is a result of this. This is untrue. He was a President that went ahead and took the wrong opinions from the wrong people, invaded a country looking for things that did not exist (Weapons of Mass Destruction, commonly known to Liberals as Weapons of Mass Distraction), completely devastated the infrastructure of a country and cost the US a load of money and countless amounts of fatalities in the wild goose chase that was the search for these WMD's. He is also a President that flew his Air Force One Jet over the devastated areas during Hurricane Katrina instead of helping, and was so hesitant to send help that the lives of 1,800 Americans were lost.He also was was a president whose 8 years in power brought about a $10 trillion deficit. These are just a few examples of the many mistakes committed by Bush, and I'm sure he will be remembered in the US for a long time as one of the worst Presidents we will ever have to face.

The Farewell Speech;
Part 1


Part 2