Ryan Redler
English 15 2/23/06
Essay #2 Rhetorical Analysis
Pride Comes From the Most Unlikely of Places
On September 11th, 2001, our nation experienced nothing like it ever had before. Two planes were deliberately crashed into the Twin Towers in New York City, one into the Pentagon in Washington DC, and one into an open field in rural Pennsylvania. These planes were hijacked by terrorists of a foreign nation in order to try and destroy our country’s pride. Our president gave a speech on national television that day to address our country and to show that nothing could shake us. Although not lasting very long (8:30 P.M.-8:35 P.M.), this speech was the most memorable speech in our generation. It brought us closer together than ever, we remembered the fallen victims of this horrible act and showed our pride as the world’s most powerful nation. On this night we did not have very much information about who was to blame for these attacks, but as time went on we found out it was Osama Bin Laden, the leader of a terrorist group named Al Qaeda who took credit for these despicable acts of terror. Still in the process of finding him, our country’s military overtook Afghanistan and Iraq in order to make these countries democratic and not run by oppressive governments.
President George W. Bush is one of the most confrontational presidents that we have ever had; he is the only President ever elected that did not win the majority vote of the nation’s people, and has been criticized by numerous media and political organizations for choices that he has made. Although not very popular, he came on TV on 9/11 with one thing in mind. He wanted to show that our country could not be broken by such a dirty act of terror. “The pictures of airplanes flying into buildings, fires burning, huge structures collapsing, have filled us with disbelief, terrible sadness, and a quiet, unyielding anger. These acts of mass murder were intended to frighten our nation into chaos and...