Introduction
- Introduction
It's no longer terribly controversial that the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq was a mistake of monumental proportions.1 Even the war's continuing defenders acknowledge that it has adversely affected America's standing in the world and capacity to meet other global threats while also devastating Iraq. Declines in public support for the war leading to Democratic takeovers of both houses of Congress in 2006 evidence the disaster it has been for the Bush administration.2
This special issue takes up the role of rhetoric in the Iraq debacle, beginning with the once ballyhooed crisis rhetoric of the Bush administration in response to the 9/11 attacks.3 All but one of the essays scrutinize the rhetoric that brought America into war; the lone exception deals with presidential signing statements. The authors' critical perspectives are reflected in the questions they pose: Why did we Americans enthusiastically support a preemptive invasion of Iraq when the people and governments of most nations did not? What does this support tell us about ourselves as a people? How did the Bush administration make its case? What fig leafs hid its real motives for war as it put forward its since-discredited weapons of mass destruction (WMD) arguments and its spurious hints of linkage between Saddam and Osama bin Laden? How different was the Bush administration's war hype from that of past administrations? Why did so many leading Democrats go along? Why did the news media, including the opinion columnists and editorialists, lend their support? Should press, politicians, and even the general public have been able to see through the administration's slipshod case for war? Most intriguing for me: did the initial success of the Bush administration's hyperbolic crisis rhetoric in response to the 9/11 attacks prefigure its subsequent failures over Iraq? I address this question, among others, in the issue's context-setting lead essay. This introduction provides a preview of the other essays. [End Page 177]
Preview
John, Domke, Coe, and Graham on Recurrent Themes
I am not alone among the contributors in believing that the 9/11 attacks and the rhetoric that followed in their wake made invading Iraq politically possible. Sue Lockett John and colleagues credit the Bush administration with effectively laying the groundwork for the Iraq invasion in the aftermath of the attacks, while it had the nation's full attention and support and enjoyed near monopoly control over the terms and conditions of debate. The mainstream press obliged in "echoing" the president's discourse, effectively bolstering the Republicans' political ambitions as well as helping prepare the way for war. In the period studied, from June 6, 2002, to November 5, 2002, the president used virtually every speaking opportunity to remind listeners of the horrors of 9/11. Press affirmation continued through to the administration's case for the Homeland Security Act and then for the preemptive invasion of Iraq. The John et al. study is noteworthy for its innovative uses of information search technology in documenting and analyzing thematic patterns.
Ivie on the Bush Administration's Rhetoric of Evil
Robert L. Ivie reframes America's "war on terror" and preemptive invasion of Iraq as indicative of a deep-seated sense of national insecurity, manifested in seemingly inexhaustible capacities for rationalization, projection, and denial, coupled with predilections for unprovoked aggression. These symptoms might appear to require the services of a Freudian or Jungian psychoanalyst, except that the "patient" in Ivie's view is not an individual but a culture—America's own "culture of war." Hence Ivie's turn to culture theories, including Kenneth Burke's rhetoric of religion, as a way of understanding our collective proclivities, including our use of scapegoat mechanisms in a recurring but futile quest for redemption. The critical reader might ask whether Ivie's characterization of American culture is on target; if accurate, whether the problems are cross-cultural; if universal, whether remediable. Ivie offers reason for hope. He looks toward correctives in the Burkean sense that are at once comic and solemn, ways of transforming the violence-prone scapegoat mechanism by way of peace-building, rehumanizing rituals.
