Hey, he’s not alone. After all, American involvement in combat didn’t start until after Dec. 7, 1941. The point is that the statement is understandable and a common understanding in America, even if it did start in Europe two years earlier.
Our conflict did.
America’s conflict with Japan did. He was talking about D-Day. So he’s twice the moron I thought half an hour ago.
“Like the Second World War, our present conflict began with a ruthless surprise attack on the United States.”
Like the Second World War. IE replace “our present conflict” with “the Second World War” and it should still be a valid statement. Let’s test this out:
“The Second World War began with a ruthless surprise attack on the United States.”
Hmm. Pearl Harbor was 1941 … Germans invading Poland was 1939. Germans didn’t invade the US (and, contrary to the rousing speech given by John Beluschi in Animal House, the Germans didn’t bomb Pearl Harbor).
Trouble is, he didn’t say “Like our role [conflict] in the Second World War”; he said, “Like the Second World War.”
If you look at the fucking quote in the OP, he doesn’t say “*our role in * WW2” or anything similar. He equates WW2 and “our present conflict” (and if that doesn’t include Iraq I’m a monkey’s uncle) and says they both started with surprise attacks against the US.
The suggestion that WW2, or the important part of it, only began when America was attacked is plain wrong and it’s an insult to the rest of the world, even leaving out the fraudulent conflation of Iraq and 9/11.
At least he didn’t try to compare it to Viet Nam.
I think we’re just splitting hairs here, aren’t we? I read it to mean that just like in the case of the Second World War, “our conflict,” as opposed to the battles being fought elsewhere, started with the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. You can read it to infer he meant the the Second World War started with the attack on Pearl Harbor, but I don’t read it that way and I would bet everything I own that he knows WWII itself didn’t start with Pearl Harbor. So then, we’re getting into an area where the question becomes do we want to discuss what he really meant, or do we want to use semantics and hair-splitting to make it appear he meant something else, which would be dishonest and would undercut the intent of the posters making that claim.
Read it again: “Like the Second World War, our present conflict began with a ruthless, surprise attack on the United States.”
That is a lie. An inaccuracy. An error. Whatever you call it, it we ain’t splitting hairs.
And given that he lead up to this statement by talking about D-Day, and given that every one of his speeches is extremely well planned and rehearsed, it seems to be a terribly calculated and obnoxious hijacking of the feelings and emotions surrounding the D-Day anniversary and around other WW2 ceremonies.
Thanks for proving Starving Artist’s point. If you were honest, you would have interpreted it as “Our present conflict in the Second World War, etc. etc.”
See, it’s easy to insult the man if you ignore the important parts of what he says!
So our conflict - “our” meaning “America’s” - in the Second World War DIDN’T begin with a ruthless, surprise attack?
Or what?
Please clarify, because your tongue is tripping over itself so badly that the shockwave is clearly echoing to your typing fingers.
Not really. What should have been said was something like this:
“In the Second World War, as in Operation Iraqi Freedom, our military involvement has followed ruthless attacks on American soil.”
I wouldn’t have recommended making such a comparison in the first place, but then that’s me.
However, any speech GWB makes is (or ought to be) crafted to elicit a specific response. He’s clearly trying to draw a strong parallel between WWII and the current US military action in the Middle East, and trying to say that in both cases we didn’t want to enter into these things, but we were attacked and were sure as hell not going to take that lightly.
He failed, IMO, but then MO has been shown in the past to contain bias.
Oh please. When a president gives a speech, whoever edits it should at least try not to make him sound like an ignorant buffoon. It’s not difficult to edit the language so that it doesn’t sound like GWB thinks WWII started with Pearl Harbor.
But really, how difficult is it to unmuddy this:
“Like the Second World War, our present conflict began with a ruthless surprise attack on the United States.”
Whether bad editing (I’d hope that wasn’t the case), deliberate slant (more probable IMO) or deliberately shortsighted history catering to an audience with a perspective that doesn’t always remember that WWII began not in 1942 but in 1939 (also possible IMO), it’s factually incorrect, and as I showed above it’s not difficult to remedy it.
READ THE WHOLE FUCKING SENTANCE THAT BUSH ACTUALLY SAID!!! He states, absolutely, that WW2 began with an attack on the US, as does the ‘present conflict’. Which is BULLSHIT.
He said “The Second World War”, not “our involvement in the Second World War”.
Respectfully, and as a person who has absolutely no love for Bush, I do not parse that sentence the same way you do. While the phrasing is slightly ambiguous, it seems to me that the most likely interpretation is that he is refering to American involvement in WW2, and not the whole of the conflict.
Leaving aside the “our conflict began” statement for a moment, how do you feel about Bush comparing the War on Terror to WWII?
And if the War on Terror isn’t focused in Iraq, then where is it focused?
I don’t think it’s hair-splitting.
In theory, Bush knows that WWII didn’t begin with Pearl Harbor. But this speech is a speech–it’s supposed be above the level of his usual flub-filled discourse! As it is, though, it is an illiterate and potentially offensive thing to say–that is, par-for-course Bush.
This dumbfuck truly doesn’t understand, well, anything!
Anywhere the American electorate believe the bogeyman lurks. If only Orwell was alive to see it…
If he was a smart guy, I’d say he’d deliberatlely introduced a hint of ambiguity so that he could evade the kind of accusations that we’re throwing at him Hell, that’s how Clinton would’ve played it. But I can’t see that being the case with Bush.
What city or cities in the US did the Japanese attack? Is this the prelude to nuke a city in Iraq or other country with a low yield weapon?