Mellesleg, a topikindításhoz, miszerint Bush nem volt hajlandó bocsánatot kérni (megint csak: forrás?)

Szenegálban, most kedden:
Bush Opens Africa Trip With Denunciation of Slavery
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON

DAKAR, Senegal, July 8 — President Bush opened his African tour today with a forceful denunciation of America's slave-holding past and a pledge to work more closely with African nations to help them build a prosperous and peaceful future.

...
After meeting with the West African leaders and his host for the day, President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal, Mr. Bush rode Mr. Wade's presidential yacht across Dakar's harbor to Goree Island, the westernmost point in Africa and the point of embarkation centuries ago for at least a million slaves.

"At this place, liberty and life were stolen and sold," the president said. "One of the largest migrations of history was also one of the greatest crimes of the century."

Mr. Bush condemned slavery in unflinching and strikingly religious terms that seemed to be aimed as much at an audience at home as to the small crowd on the island that listened to him under the blazing sun.

"For 250 years the captives endured an assault on their culture and their dignity," Mr. Bush said. "The spirit of Africans in America did not break. Yet the spirit of their captors was corrupted.

"Small men took on the powers and airs of tyrants and masters. Years of unpunished brutality and bullying and rape produced a dullness and hardness of conscience. Christian men and women became blind to the clearest commands of their faith and added hypocrisy to injustice. A republic founded on equality for all became a prison for millions."

Mr. Bush credited African-Americans with "exposing laws and habits contradicting" the ideals of God and political freedom. And he cited the contributions of both black and white people, from Frederick Douglass and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to John Quincy Adams and Abraham Lincoln, to ending slavery and addressing its legacy.

"My nation's journey toward justice has not been easy and it is not over," Mr. Bush said. "The racial bigotry fed by slavery did not end with slavery or with segregation. And many of the issues that still trouble America have roots in the bitter experience of other times. But however long the journey, our destination is set: liberty and justice for all."

(New York Times).

Meg:
www.townhall.com
Confronting slavery
Linda Chavez

July 9, 2003

Bush isn't known for his eloquence, but the speech he gave Tuesday at Goree Island, Senegal, was one of his finest. "For hundreds of years on this island peoples of different continents met in fear and cruelty," he said, standing in front of an old slave quarters. "At this place, liberty and life were stolen and sold. Human beings were delivered and sorted, and weighed, and branded with the marks of commercial enterprises, and loaded as cargo on a voyage without return. One of the largest migrations of history was also one of the greatest crimes of history," he said.

Csókolom.