President Bush says sorry to African Americans

At 9am, Feb 13/08, the Australian Parliament formally apologised for the hurt and suffering its previous policies had inflicted on the indigenous population. Such policies included the forcible removal of children from their families. “These injustices must never happen again,” the Prime Minister said, “they are a great stain on the nation’s soul”. For thirty minutes, Kevin Rudd held the nation in his hands, as millions cheered, applauded and wept. Watching a broadcast of the apology in the White House, George Bush was transfixed, and he urgently summoned speech writers. RICHARD NEVILLE found himself amongst them, offering suggestions...

President George W. Bush delivers a national apology, Thursday, Feb. 14, 2008, in the Oval Office of the White House:

The genius of our system is that it can absorb shocks and emerge even stronger, despite injustices and mistakes. While our great country continues to be the marvel of the world, we have sometimes hurt people along the way, and today I wish to apologize for their suffering. To Native Americans I say “sorry” for the land we stole, the treaties we violated, the squaws we raped. To African Americans I say sorry for slavery. The first President of the United States, George Washington, is now in heaven, but I know he would want me to apologize to the nation for having enslaved over 300 people of color on his plantation in Virginia. After a time, he switched his crop from tobacco to hemp, so maybe the slaves had a good time. (Chuckles).

I say sorry to all the civil right activists who were beat up by the police in the sixties and hounded by the FBI and even subjected to secret LSD experiments by the CIA, but I’m running ahead of myself. It’s about time we apologized to the people of Mexico. I hate to say this, but I’ve been told to: In 1848, in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, all or parts of 7 different US states were stolen from Mexico. We put guns to the temples of the Mexican officials and forced them to sign away half their land. Sorry about that. But I’m not sorry about what we did three years earlier, when we annexed the State of Texas. Well, we had to. God wanted us to discover oil and use it to make this country great. Hell, if we hadn’t come along, the Mexicans would’ve wasted the oil on cooking tacos.

Let me now apologize for all the nasty stuff we did in Latin America, especially in Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Grenada, Columbia, Peru, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador and Chile, to name a few, but damned if I’m going to say sorry for Cuba. Not only did they whip us at the Bay of Pigs, but Fidel Castro is an atheist! Sure, I know our trade blockade is a cause of immense suffering for its citizens, but the Cubans shouldn’t have voted for him.

Now it’s time to express regret for the numerous crimes against humanity our country has committed in Latin America. Our famous School of the Americas, formerly located in Panama and now based in Fort Benning, Georgia, continues to produce graduates who are skilled in combat, counter insurgency and enhanced interrogation. Most of Latin America’s major dictator’s are graduates from this military school, and I believe it is time to say sorry to all the surviving victims and their families for the suffering we have inflicted, and will continue to inflict in that continent. Why only last month two of our graduates were implicated in the slaughter of 20 people in Bogota.

But all of this is only the tip of the iceberg. When I first looked over this speech earlier today, I was shocked by its length, and insisted that huge chunks be cut out. We Americans are busy re-building the economy right now, and there’s not much time to rake over all the injustices of the past, even though God probably wants us to own up. So I’ll give you a quick run down of other items that can be bundled into this apology, ones that we do need to acknowledge, so we can achieve “closure” and move on to maintaining our total dominance of the 21st Century:

• To Vietnam I say Sorry for invading your county, slaughtering your civilians and poisoning your land with Agent Orange. Our Government is sorry that our actions led to so many children being born with deformities, but we can't turn back the clock.

• To Cambodia and Laos I say sorry for the illegal bombing of your lands. Even today these bombs still kill and maim your children, but what can we do? We are too busy making new bombs to clean up the old ones. But our heart's in the right place.

• To Japan, a really big Sorry! Because they were really big bombs! As there is mounting evidence that your nation was on the verge of surrender in 1945, and that our leaders were aware this at the time, I guess it was wrong and cruel to unleash nuclear weapons upon your cities. So to the families of the hundreds of thousands of citizens who died slow, agonizing deaths, I apologize. But I must admit that the majority of Americans still think we did the right thing, and would do it again in a flash! So watch out Iran.

Pause, muffled voices, silence, speech resumes:

Okay, so we forgot about Korea. Oh, fuck Korea! Oops, the mike’s still on… Anyway, no-one in the White House has a clue about what that war in Korea was about, but we might as well say sorry anyway, ‘cause we dropped a lot of bombs. They tell me that a million civilians were killed in Korea. Sorry about that.

Now a lot of you out there listening to this speech are probably starting to ask yourselves – is he gonna talk about Iraq? You bet I am! There’s a lot to be sorry about for the first Iraq war, the one in 1990, and that’s the fault of my dad. He didn’t go far enough. I’m sincerely sorry for that, and I apologize on his behalf. If George senior had finished job, we wouldn’t be in Baghdad right now, up shit creek.

No, I’m not going to talk about our two big wars of today, except to say how angry I am about the latest announcement from the UN – the United Nations of Communists! They claim things are getting much worse for the Iraqi people: Four million are struggling to feed themselves, half of the country's 27 million population lack safe drinking water, and about 2.5 million have been displaced from their homes. So what! There’s a war going on! And if they think its bad now, wait till John McCain gets elected.

You know, there’s only a limited number of times a man can say he’s sorry and I reckon I’m done.

Related Stories

George Bush - President for Life 25 aug  |  Angry Aussie - George Bush should be President for Life . . read more

The Real State of the Union 30 jan  |  "The State of the Union is strong", according to President George W Bush but many would disagree with that viewpoint. RICHARD NEVILLE has edited Bush's speech to improve clarity. . . read more

Bush Tours America To Survey Damage Caused By His Disastrous Presidency 18 jul  |  George W Bush's time as President of the USA is coming to an end in January 2009. He's currently touring the nation he has almost destroyed in less than 8 years.  . . read more

WhiteHouse.org 27 aug  |  The White House - officious site of President George W Bush . . read more

Bush: Pathological Liar or Idiot-in-Chief? 16 dec  |  Hanged by your own words, convicted by your own deliberate lies... You, sir, have no business being president. MSNBC's polemicist-in-chief Keith Olbermann lets loose over the lies being told about what Bush knew about Iran's nuclear ambitions. . . read more

Leaked Red Cross Report Sets Up Bush For War Crimes Trial 5 sep  |  A leaked report from the International Committee of the Red Cross, the body responsible for safeguarding the Geneva Conventions, shows that there's a growing mountain of evidence being gathered to try Bush and members of his administration in an international war crimes trial. . . read more

Bush's Depraved Indifference to Democracy 9 sep  |  President Bush's visit to APEC was not big news in the USA but his surprise visit to Iraq on the way to Sydney has made headlines as it revealed one of Bush's biggest lies of the war. MSNBC's Keith Olbermann lets loose. . . read more