May 1st, 2003: Mission Accomplished
President Bush Addressing soldiers aboard the USS Lincoln.
On May 1st 2003, while aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, President George W. Bush went before soldiers, members of the media, and the world and declared that “the battle of Iraq” was over informing people that the major operations in Iraq had ended. Bush begin the speech by bragging about how the campaign “was carried out with a combination of precision and speed and boldness the enemy did not expect and the world had not seen before” while mentioning various countries that contributed to the effort. He compares the “battle” to the campaign in Normandy in great detail. Bush proceeds to discuss the need to help rebuild the country and the need to stay there to stabilize the government as it begins to get a footing. The necessity to provide assistance to the people in an effort to bring them freedom is mentioned as being of the highest importance. The next few parts of the speech include President Bush lumping “the battle of Iraq” in with “the battle in Afghanistan” as part of “the war on terror” which “began on September the 11th, 2001”. He speaks of the US “hunting down Al Qaida killers”, claiming to search the world high and low to find them. He lists Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms, the Truman Doctrine, and Ronald Reagan’s confrontations with the Soviets as motivation for the conflict. Bush wraps up his speech by speaking directly to the soldiers, thanking them for their job there and telling them of the wonders awaiting them back home, while still reminding them to remember their fallen comrades. Many people criticized bush for this speech, calling it a premature declaration of victory, and also calling out his theatrics in arriving via a an S3B Viking jet (“Navy One”) rather than the traditional helicopter (“Marine One”). The ship was only thirty miles from the coast of California, which would have been a routine flight for a helicopter to a ship. Another denouncement of the performance was the sign in the background hanging on the ship stating “Mission Accomplished” (see above photo). The speech has been cited as one of the many Bush faux pas in the war in Iraq.
