Bush Denounces Bigotry at Storied Island of Slave Trade

GOREE ISLAND, Senegal — Calling slavery “one of the greatest crimes of history,” President Bush on Tuesday launched a five-day African visit with a pilgrimage to this onetime staging area for traders who dispatched their manacled captives to the New World.

Under a punishing midday sun, with the shimmering Atlantic Ocean at his back, Bush spoke of redemption and the triumph of the human spirit as he recalled “one of the largest migrations of history.”

“By a plan known only to Providence, the stolen sons and daughters of Africa helped to awaken the conscience of America. The very people traded into slavery helped to set America free.”

Bush added, however, that America’s “journey toward justice” was not over.

“The racial bigotry fed by slavery did not end with slavery or with segregation,” he told several hundred attentive Senegalese. “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.”

During his tour of five countries, including South Africa, where he arrived late Tuesday night, Bush intends to stress his message of economic development and democracy for a continent that has been racked by poverty, disease and war.

Bush told reporters in Dakar that he has assured West African leaders that the U.S. would “participate” with members of the Economic Community of West African States to restore order in Liberia, which was founded by former American slaves.

Bush dodged a specific question about whether he would commit U.S. troops to that West African nation.

“The United States will work with ECOWAS,” the president said. “We are in the process of determining what is necessary to maintain the cease-fire and to allow for a peaceful transfer of power.”

Bush repeated his call for Liberian President Charles Taylor to step down before any U.S. troops are sent. Charged with war crimes for his role in Sierra Leone’s civil war, Taylor has said he will go but has given no date.

The Bush administration has sent a military team that was greeted by thousands of Liberians in the capital, Monrovia. However, the troops were blocked from touring a refugee camp by Taylor’s soldiers.

Taylor told CNN that the incident was a mistake. “We welcome the troops here and we will take them wherever they want to go,” he said. The team resumed its work later.

There were also questions about the U.S. role in Liberia on Capitol Hill, where Vice President Dick Cheney was questioned during a closed-door GOP luncheon.

Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) summarized the mood of fellow lawmakers after the meeting. “I think most members ... are very much open-minded about it and have some concerns,” Santorum said, adding that he was concerned about “stretching our forces too thin at this time,” given U.S. involvement in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

“We’re not going to send our troops into harm’s way without asking a lot of questions,” said Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas). “I will want to see if it is a peacekeeping mission, and are we going to bring in other countries to be helpful .... And if it’s not a peacekeeping mission, I’m going to have to know what the United States’ security interest is.”

On Goree Island, Bush spoke at precisely the same spot that his predecessor, Bill Clinton, did on his 1998 visit to this bucolic island, just offshore from Dakar, the capital of Senegal.

“At this place, liberty and life were stolen and sold,” Bush said. “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.”

Yet, the president said, “all the generations of oppression under the laws of man could not crush the hope of freedom and defeat the purposes of God.”

Bush ended his remarks with a pledge to help Africa end its civil wars, combat terrorism, fight hunger and conquer disease.

“We know that these challenges can be overcome, because history moves in the direction of justice,” he said. “This untamed fire of justice continues to burn in the affairs of man, and it lights the way before us.”

Accompanied by First Lady Laura Bush, the president arrived in Dakar early Tuesday morning, after an all-night flight from Washington. He delivered his speech after meeting with Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade and then with the leaders of seven other West African democracies: Benin, Cape Verde, Gambia, Ghana, Mali, Niger and Sierra Leone.

Upon reaching Goree Island in Wade’s yacht, the president and Mrs. Bush first toured the rouge-colored Slave House, built in 1776 by a slave-trading Dutch family.

For millions of slaves between the 16th and 18th centuries, that house -- and others like it here -- was the final stop before being forced onto ships for what Bush called “a voyage without return,” separated from their loved ones and bearing only a number.

The Bushes were given a tour of the upstairs residential quarters, used by the owners, and the fetid, low-ceilinged basement where slaves once were chained to the walls. Along one long corridor is a door marked “The Trip of No Return” through which slaves passed as they were herded onto ships.

This 45-acre island, known as “The Point of No Return,” was made famous in America by Alex Haley’s best-selling book “Roots” in the late 1970s. Now a tourist attraction lined with pastel-colored houses and colorful baobab and palaver trees, Goree Island is a scenic dot in the Atlantic.

This is Bush’s third visit to Africa but his first as president. Although he brought little in the way of presidential largesse, Bush’s mere presence in Africa signals a significant shift in his views toward this troubled continent, particularly in the post- 9/11 world.

The trip also provides Bush a fresh chance -- on the international stage -- to demonstrate his “compassionate conservative” political creed.

In each of the five countries on his tour, Bush plans to tout his $15-billion global AIDS initiative, designed largely to help this HIV-ravaged continent. Congress has yet to appropriate the funds, and some AIDS activists, while encouraged by Bush’s intentions, remain skeptical about his follow-through.

The president also brought to Africa a determination to foster economic development and democracy, a combination that he believes would banish the poverty and despair that can serve as breeding grounds for terrorists.

Senegal was among the countries that pioneered democracy in sub-Saharan Africa. Having gained independence from France in 1960, this nation of 9.8 million people has maintained a relatively stable political and social environment.

Bush’s next two stops, South Africa and its northern neighbor, Botswana, are among the continent’s economic powerhouses.

South Africa, the largest U.S. trading partner in Africa, has left its apartheid past behind, and an estimated 13% of its 43.2 million people live in “First World” conditions. Botswana’s economic growth rate has averaged above 7% in the last two decades -- among the highest in the developing world.

In Uganda, Bush plans to hail that nation’s social and human rights progress since the dark days of Idi Amin, a brutal dictator whose regime murdered large numbers of its citizens during an eight-year reign of terror, which ended in 1979. Today, Uganda is on the mend, and its war against AIDS is widely praised as a model for combating the deadly disease. Bush intends to spotlight Uganda’s approach.

Bush’s final stop will be Nigeria, the oil-rich behemoth that was ruled by a succession of military governments for 28 of its 43 years of independence.

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President’s words

These are excerpts from President Bush’s remarks Tuesday at Goree Island, Senegal, as transcribed by the White House:

For hundreds of years on this island, peoples of different continents met in fear and cruelty. Today we gather in respect and friendship, mindful of past wrongs and dedicated to the advance of human liberty.

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....

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Those who lived to see land again were displayed, examined and sold at auctions across nations in the Western Hemisphere....

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Down through the years, African Americans have upheld the ideals of America by exposing laws and habits contradicting those ideals....

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By a plan known only to Providence, the stolen sons and daughters of Africa helped to awaken the conscience of America. The very people traded into slavery helped to set America free.

My nation’s journey toward justice has not been easy and it is not over....

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With the power and resources given to us, the United States seeks to bring peace where there is conflict, hope where there’s suffering, and liberty where there’s tyranny. And these commitments bring me and other distinguished leaders of my government across the Atlantic to Africa.

Source: Associated Press

Staff writers Janet Hook and Nick Anderson in Washington contributed to this report.