THEY ‘VANISHED INTO THE SANDS’ Productions of Self and Other during the ‘War on Terror’ Jacob Antoine Trigger warnings: violence, racism, sexism
The US had a turbulent entry into the twenty-first century. The attacks on the World Trade Centre in 2001 catapulted the Bush administration into crisis mode. Describing the enemy was an essential task in developing a coherent response to the emergency that would come to be known as the ‘War on Terror’. I will interrogate the rhetorical strategies used by George W. Bush to generate support for US invasions of Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003). I argue the way in which Bush produced binary identities enabled him to delegate sets of narratives and values to different actors; this was a reiteration of imperial power dynamics and an exercise in legitimising and preserving US hegemony. To evaluate these narratives, first, I situate this article in the academic literature on discourse in the ‘War on Terror’. Second, I outline Foucauldian discourse analysis and Orientalism as the epistemological context to my analysis. Third, I argue that the narrative assigned to the Other entailed reductive assessments of the enemy’s perceived barbarity and tyrannical nature, while the people they govern are defined without agency. Fourth, I suggest Bush manufactured the Self in terms of US values and benevolence. This culminated in the normative interaction between the Self and Other which was essentially a narrative of rescue. Historians have frequently used discourse analysis to describe and analyse the ‘War on Terror’. English professor Sandra Silberstein offered a compelling analysis of the evolution of the ‘War on Terror’ narrative as it started to be produced as an act of war, as opposed to one of criminality. She gave particular emphasis to assessing the president’s capacity to influence the symbolic terrains of nationhood by interrogating Bush speeches in the aftermath of 9/11.1 Contemporary philosopher Arshin Adib-Moghaddam looked primarily on the interaction between imperial discourse informed by Orientalist thinking and torture practices of the US military. 2 Other studies have conducted gendered and Orientalist analyses simultaneously, finding instances where Muslim women have been produced as agents by US discourse. This was limited, however, to when there was perceived intelligence, military, or law enforcement utility to their agency.3 Studies typically found (re)identification of subjects (terrorists, dictators, oppressed masses, saviour militaries, democratic supporters at home, and international allies) was central to discourses due to their function in preserving relational power structures and symbolic national border demarcation.4 The international studies scholar Maryam Khalid’s extensive work assessed the implications of identity production on the symbolic boundaries of the nation.5 She finds performances of hypermasculinity necessitated performances of femininity. Nurturing but militarised mothers offered this domestically, but the repressed subjects in Iraq and Afghanistan functioned as the feminised groups that enabled saviour narratives.6 Discourse around Afghanistan was de-historicised and de-contextualised in order for these narratives to maintain a façade of credibility. 7 This detachment and simplification will be evident in the rhetorical strategies assessed later. Drawing on philosopher Michel Foucault’s archaeological analysis model, I will treat discourse as a ‘monument’, rather than allegory or a window into a hidden-from-the-surface ideology.8 Functionally, this is not an attempt at elucidating Bush’s motives, intent, or worldview but rather describing the temporally specific discourse. These particular speeches evidence cases of truth production that constitute an expression of power.9 Discourse forms part of a strategy of struggle in power relations.10 In this light, I view the Bush speeches not just as a strategy in preserving US hegemony over the Middle East, but also strengthening the presidential office and reinforcing relations with allies. They augmented other expressions of US power; military and economic coercive capacity, for instance. These understandings give rise to questions like, how has power affected the kinds of truths that have been produced by political actors? And, how has truth production involved identification of groups with differing ability to exercise power? Orientalism is a system of knowledge that describes the relationship of power, discourse, and identity in interactions between the Occident and the Orient. Through (re)naming, essentialising, homogenising, and describing, the Orient was produced as backward, incapable of self-government, having unrecognisable sensuality, and ahistorical.11 Binaries were instrumental in creating both distance and solidarity between subject and agent, East and West, colonised and coloniser, coloured and white, Other and Self.12 My analysis will be situated in this paradigm by exploring the ways in which Orientalist narratives are evident in Bush speeches, and how identities are produced in order to legitimise his ‘War on Terror’. Terrorist organisations and governments of states in which they operate constituted the enemy group when Bush said, ‘We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them’. 13 Establishing that there is ‘no neutral ground’, Bush prescribed regimented positions that onlooking states must
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