Bush Pays Tribute to African Slaves

FoxNews ^ | July 08, 2003 | James Rosen

[joesnuffy]

DAKAR, Senegal

[NormsRevenge]

President Bush peers through "The Door of No Return", where slaves are said to have passed through to board ships taking them to the Americas and the Carribean, while touring the Slave House on Goree Island, Senegal. CHARLES DHARAPAK, AP

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[TheCrusader]

I thought President Bush's speech was unbalanced, incomplete, politically correct, and utterly lacking in testosterone. Nobody will ever mistake President Bush for an historian, I'm sure. As he rambled on and on with the lurid details of the slave trade, and painted our American ancestors as criminals with cold hearts, he failed miserably to mention the white abolitionists who assisted tens of thousands of slaves to freedom, and who ultimately brought about their freedom. He only mentioned the hundreds of thousands of white Americans who died in the Civil War fighting to end slavery in a passing thought. He never mentioned the Northern States that ended slavery decades before the Emancipation Proclamation.

Starting during the Revolutionary War and ending in the early 1800s, each Northern State adopted separate plans to abolish slavery. A boundary, called the Mason-Dixon Line was established between the Northern States where slavery was illegal and the Southern States where slavery continued. As a result, slaves began to flee across the Mason-Dixon Line and claim freedom in the Northern States. Nor did the President shed any light on the fact that in America's infancy, as we had not yet existed long enough to define ourselves as a nation, much of the rest of the civilized world condoned slavery, and had done so since pre-Biblical times. Bush didn't seem to know that slave trading was abolished in the U.S. in 1807 as a powerful first step towards abolishing it completely. America abolished slave trading long before Spain, France, Sweden, Netherlands and some South American nations did. His indictment of America's past "crimes" was a shallow, ass-kissing venture into Liberia - and he came out with his nose a lot browner that when he went in.

[Burkeman1]

Your talking about the history of the Republic which is all but dead. Bush was making a speech to advance the Empire. Get with the program!

[Bogolyubski]

I find it interesting that there was not a word about the slavery and genocide being carried out at this very moment by our good friends in Khartoum. It's easy to be passionate about slaves that have been dead for over a century, of course. This kind of cheap talk is something one would expect of Bill Clinton. What's next - reparations?

[Mears]

Bush is losing it!!!!

He's become a panderer,period.

[HairOfTheDog]

Good grief..... talk about political correctness.... What you want him to do is political correctness of your own flavor...... In the land where we bought people, you want him to try to soften that by saying "Not all white people were bad"....

Ridiculous. That is not the time and place for it. That is the place to acknowledge the wrong of what happened for a day. For one speech pause and say yeah - we own this history and we aren't proud of it. Enough! We aren't there now.

[meenie]

He failed to mention the economic slaves that he left behind in America toiling to make it possible for him to bring gifts. Another item that caught my attention was the request by the high poobah of Senegal for military equipment to farm with. Am I missing something here, or is an Abrams tank the ultimate machine for tilling the land in Senegal?

[1rudeboy]

LOL

"What happened here was a terrible tragedy, but I am here to assure that not everyone agreed with what was going-on,"

[HairOfTheDog]

or is an Abrams tank the ultimate machine for tilling the land in Senegal?

I saw that..... All men like really cool power tools.

[1rudeboy]

Or,

"From this building, hundreds of thousands of human beings were sent into slavery, to a country where some people were abolitionists, never to return."

[HairOfTheDog]

LOL! - Yes, I think it is important for our president to stand in that building and accentuate the positive. yeesh.

Good enough speech in a tough room is what I say.

[TheCrusader]

"Ridiculous. That is not the time and place for it. That is the place to acknowledge the wrong of what happened for a day. For one speech pause and say yeah - we own this history and we aren't proud of it. Enough! We aren't there now."

The wrong was acknowledged nearly 200 years ago when the U.S. abolished slave trading. The wrong was further acknowledged in the Northern States in the early 1800's by abolishing slavery. The wrong was again acknowledged by the Emancipation Proclamation, and by the deaths of hundreds of thousands of white Americans who fought against slavery. The wrong was permenantly etched in American history when we altered our Constitution to prevent slavery from happening again. The wrong was perpetually acknowledged in the 20th Century through Civil Rights Leglislation, Affirmative Action Programs, and the granting of "minority status" to African-Americans. Today's speech was a side show, utterly unneccessary. I like President Bush, but he's off the wall with this one. It's always easy to acknowledge the "wrongs" of others from generations past, because they aren't there to defend themselves. History always needs to be viewed from the perspective of the times if you're going to paint an accurate picture. Slavery was a legal enterprise in almost every civilized country in the 1700's and early 1800's. When we grow up exposed everyday to something like that it tends to lose much of its shock value, much like abortion, divorce, loose sexual mores, and street violence in our nation today. I'd prefer the President condemn the heinous crime in his own America of slaughtering 1.5 million babies per year in the abortion mills, and let him speak as forcefully, eloquently, and in all the gory detail as he did today. Will some future President call President Bush a criminal for not doing enough to stop abortion in his own day, (though you and I do not feel that way today, it is altogether possible). What is really a test of courage, is to acknowledge your own wrongs.

[Corin Stormhands]

For one speech pause and say yeah - we own this history and we aren't proud of it.

Exactly. And we paid dearly for it with the blood of hundreds of thousands of young men on both sides. And it was paid for with the destruction of the southern economy and a huge drain on the resources of the Union.

I am a southernor. I am proud of my southern heritage. But some of it stinks.

It is true that slavery has been with mankind just about as long as there has been mankind. It is true that many people, from the Dutch to the colonists to the African chieftans who sold their own people bear the responsibility for the horror that was American slavery. It is true that many fine, upstanding people - people of faith, people of honor, people of integrity, were horribly wrong about slavery.

But, it is mostly true that the price has been paid. America owes no debt to the descendants of slaves. We can acknowledge it was wrong. But we own no-one an apology.

That debt has been paid.

[HairOfTheDog]

It isn't a campaign platform, just a visit, a part of a trip.... that he would be remiss to not acknowledge in a humble way, much as a visit to Aushwitz would mean he would have to speak of the horror that occurred there.

I agree that we can't and shouldn't carry guilt for actions before our time..... But it isn't impolite to apologize to those long dead on behalf of a country when in such a place.

[Corin Stormhands]

Acknowledge, yes.

Apologize, no.

That's all I'm sayin'.

[TheCrusader]

"This kind of cheap talk is something one would expect of Bill Clinton. What's next - reparations?"

I wouldn't be surprised. This speech sure as heck gave all the ammunition the reparationists could ever ask for.