"The terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States - and war is what they got"
About this Quote
A sentence built like a gavel strike, Bush's line turns the messy ambiguity of September 11 into a clean legal and moral structure: they "declared war", so America simply responded. The wording matters. "Declared" suggests formality and intention, granting terrorists a kind of state-like agency while also locking them into the rules of retaliation. It's a rhetorical judo move: by framing the attack as an act of war rather than a crime, Bush widens the toolbox from courts and policing to armies, alliances, and open-ended force.
The second clause - "war is what they got" - carries the swagger of certainty, a promise of consequences delivered in plain language that plays well on television and in grief. It's also strategically vague. "War" isn't defined, bounded, or geographically anchored. That ambiguity is the subtextual permission slip for a campaign that can expand, migrate, and persist, because wars are measured in years and theaters, not indictments and verdicts.
Context is doing heavy lifting here: a traumatized public demanding safety, a government needing legitimacy for extraordinary action, and an international moment when sympathy for the U.S. was high but conditional. The line is designed to harden resolve and simplify moral accounting: the terrorists chose the terms, America is merely answering. It's persuasive because it offers emotional closure - clarity, agency, payback - even as it quietly converts a specific atrocity into a potentially permanent posture.
The second clause - "war is what they got" - carries the swagger of certainty, a promise of consequences delivered in plain language that plays well on television and in grief. It's also strategically vague. "War" isn't defined, bounded, or geographically anchored. That ambiguity is the subtextual permission slip for a campaign that can expand, migrate, and persist, because wars are measured in years and theaters, not indictments and verdicts.
Context is doing heavy lifting here: a traumatized public demanding safety, a government needing legitimacy for extraordinary action, and an international moment when sympathy for the U.S. was high but conditional. The line is designed to harden resolve and simplify moral accounting: the terrorists chose the terms, America is merely answering. It's persuasive because it offers emotional closure - clarity, agency, payback - even as it quietly converts a specific atrocity into a potentially permanent posture.
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
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