Rhetoric in Martial Deliberations and Decision Making: Cases and Consequences (review)

One of the more commonplace metaphors in the English language describes argumentation as a kind of war. When your argument "defeats" my point, or my response "destroys" your position, we are using the vocabulary of warfare to describe our discourse. Scholars of rhetoric have long understood, however, that the connection between words and war is, all too often, much more than metaphoric. Humans use discourse to construct enemies, to convince entire populations that mass violence is desirable, and to justify the bloodshed of the battlefield. So while we know that argument and war are not the same, we also understand that their relationship is very close.

Ronald H. Carpenter's book Rhetoric in Martial Deliberations and Decision Making: Cases and Consequences makes an important addition to this understanding. Eschewing the language of civilians and political leaders in times of war, Carpenter uses a series of detailed case studies to scrutinize the words of the warriors themselves. His findings, even as they reiterate the powerful connection between the verbal and the violent, offer a rich account of precisely how those tasked with making important martial decisions use discourse to argue for (or against) strategic or tactical options in times of war. The book, although perhaps targeted at a primarily military readership, offers much that will be of interest to scholars of both rhetoric and war history.

The book is divided into six chapters. After setting the stage in chapter 1, Carpenter plunges, in chapter 2, into the first of his complex case studies, an examination of General Douglas MacArthur's 1950 attempt to convince members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to support his idea for an audacious counter-assault against North Korean forces at Inchon. Chapter 3 moves forward in time to the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. In chapter 4, Carpenter turns to World War II with a thorough analysis of the rhetorical antecedents of Japan's decision to attack Pearl Harbor. Chapter 5 shifts emphasis, to a degree, with a more deductive exploration of orality and ethos as vital ingredients in martial deliberations in 1943 and 1944. Finally, in chapter 6, Carpenter summarizes his findings, concluding that "For martial commanders, words are weapons too" (215).

Regular readers of Carpenter's work will be pleased to see that he continues to emphasize the frequent use of archival and contextual detail. Setting out to produce a "microscopic examination informed by understanding of the important individuals involved and the broad backdrop against which they performed their different roles" (64), the book does not disappoint. It provides voluminous background on its various rhetorical situations, relying on memoirs, diaries, oral histories, congressional testimony, media reports, feature films, letters, and at least one obituary. At one point, the analysis focuses on a minute—and useful—discussion of the distinction between "mobile" and "movable" missiles and the importance of that distinction to the Kennedy administration in 1962 (94). At another, Carpenter considers the costliness of a poor military decision in World War II, pointing not only to the "3,946 marines [who] were killed or wounded" in battle at Peleliu (196), but also to the cost of that battle in munitions: "To kill each of the 13,000-plus Japanese on the island, the following ordnance was required: 1,331 rounds of .30-caliber bullets; 152 rounds of .45-caliber bullets; 69 rounds of .50-caliber bullets; 9 rounds of 60-millimeter mortar shells; 5 rounds of 81-millimeter mortar shells" (197), and so on.

Carpenter also leaves no stone unturned in his analysis of the book's many artifacts. To demonstrate the sagacity of Raymond Spruance, for example, he examines the admiral's selective use of underlining in a 1936 lecture at the U.S. Naval War College (150). The analysis of MacArthur's 1950 discourse on Inchon benefits from similar attention to detail. No authenticated text of the general's presentation survives (and probably never existed). Yet Carpenter treats this...