Effects Of The Cliché “Actions Speak Louder Than W

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Effects of the Cliché “Actions Speak Louder Than Words” On the 11th of September 2001, the entire world was affected by the terrorist attacks on the United States of America. On the Sunday after these attacks, then U.S. President George W. Bush made a speech announcing his plan to “rid the world of the evil-doers” who traumatized his country earlier that week. Bush also inadvertently drew a parallel from this event to another event that traumatized many: The Crusades that took place during the Middle Ages. "This crusade, this war on terrorism is gonna take awhile” said Bush. The unintentional reference to the Middle Age’s Crusades George W. Bush made in his response to the 9/11 attacks was justly criticized as it connected the problem at hand to the violence of religious warfare, inflicted anxiety upon a vast amount of the world’s population, and holds a fearsome truth. Whether he meant to or not, George W. Bush’s use of the word “crusade” in his 9/11 response speech portrayed the soon-to-be war as a religious one. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, America’s Best-Selling Dictionary, defines the word crusade as “any of the military expeditions undertaken by Christian powers in the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries to win the Holy Land from the Muslims.” However, The Crusades were not the only violent and gruesome religious wars. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the Protestant Reformation led to a brutal war between Protestants and Catholics. Part of World War II was the fight against Adolf Hitler and The Nazi Party for their genocide, known as The Holocaust, which was (mainly) against those of the Jewish religion. This war resulted in a death toll range of 11 million to 17 million people. It is estimated that over a billion people, give or take, have lost their lives due to religious warfare, justifying the fear that caused the harsh critique of Bush. The
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