On September 20th, 2001, hardly a week
after the terrorist attacks of September 11th, President George W.
Bush faced a terrified American public, and delivered his State of the Union address.
In this speech, the President consoled the wounded American spirit, by
asserting that the United States of America was proving itself to be as strong
as ever. Through the course of the address, President Bush explained that the United
States Military would be taking action against the terrorists, and countries
whose governments functioned in ways that aided in the training of al Qaeda.
Along with this, President Bush also took time to address the terrorists
themselves. In doing so, President Bush spoke in ways that asserted the traits
of masculinity that the terrorists possessed.
President
Bush made a point to make it clear that the terrorists that attacked the World
Trade Centers were individuals that were a part of a group that functioned
under a belief of radical Islamic ideals. President Bush stated that “The terrorists' directive commands them to
kill Christians and Jews, to kill all Americans, and make no distinctions among
military and civilians, including women and children.” This statement expresses
an extreme form of masculinity that the terrorists possessed. They were
horribly aggressive, and would not stop at anything in order to achieve what
they believed in. Violence is also a trait that is considered to be masculine.
President Bush went in depth into the prior attacks on American people that al
Qaeda had committed in the past. By revisiting attacks on American embassies in
Kenya and Tanzania, as well as the bombing of the USS Cole, President Bush is
trying to prove how violent this group can get. By stressing their apt for
violence, he is also stressing their internet masculinity, which in this case,
is an extreme, negative, form of masculinity. Their masculinity is put to the
point where it is almost unhuman, and animal like in nature, or at least
barbaric.
When it comes to gender stereotypes, hatred is often seen
as a trait associated with masculinity. In his address, President Bush plays up
the amount of hatred that these people possessed, and as a result, played up
their sense of masculinity. From hatred of the United States as a whole to
hatred of the concepts of freedom and democracy, the terrorists are framed as a
group that will accept nothing other than their extremist views. The terrorists
are portrayed as being unwilling to spare even women or children in their
effort to dominate over the cultures that they are attempting to dismantle.
From the perspective of George Bush during this speech, he sees this as being
an example of their pure hatred.
Something interesting that President Bush makes a point
of in this speech has to do with the religion of the terrorists. In his speech,
Bush makes it clear that the religion of Islam is in no way to blame for the
attacks, but instead, a group of individuals which have skewed the teachings of
Islam in order to conform to their violent desires. In doing so, President Bush
exhibited excellent foresight into the future discrimination that Muslim
Americans have been unjustly subjected to since these attacks. Many of the
reports of these attacks, as well as other attacks that have been carried out
by Muslim extremists, often times stressed the fact that they were simply
radical Muslims. They disregarded any other motivation for their atrocious
crimes, and instead, simply reported to the American public that these
individuals were carrying out were encouraged by the faith of Islam. This
notion simply isn’t true, and is what led to the horrifying acts of
discrimination, based on ignorance, and disregard for the actual teachings of Islam, substituting in this violent bastardization of the Muslim faith.
President Bush’s speech after the terrorist attack of
September 11th provided a sense of safety and pride, to a country
that had so recently been attacked on its own soil. The United States, being a
part of the Americas, has been so isolated from the rest of the world that an
attack on home soil had seemed to be such a foreign idea. Faced with a
challenge that many presidents before him had never even had to consider,
President Bush gave hope to a fearful population. In doing so, he characterized
the enemy that the military was looking to take down. This characterization of
the terrorists, for better or for worse, built up the concept of their
masculinity.
