On 20 September 2002, the Bush administration published a national security manifesto overturning the established order. Not because it commits the United States to global intervention: We've been there before. Not because it targets terrorism and rogue states: Nothing new there either. No, what's new in this document is that it makes a long-building imperial tendency explicit and permanent. The policy paper, titled "The National Security Strategy of the United States of America" -- call it the Bush doctrine -- is a romantic justification for easy recourse to war whenever and wherever an American president chooses.
This document truly deserves the overused term "revolutionary," but its release was eclipsed by the Iraq debate. Recall the moment. Bush, having just backed away from unilateralism long enough to deliver a speech to the United Nations, was now telling Congress to give him the power to go to war with Iraq whenever and however he liked. Congress, with selective reluctance, was skating sideways toward a qualified endorsement. The administration had fended off doubts from the likes of George Bush Sr.'s national security adviser Brent Scowcroft, and retreated from its maximal designs (at least on Tuesdays and Thursdays), giving doubters, and politicians preoccupied with their reelection, reasons to overcome their doubts and sign on.
The Bush White House chose this moment to put down in black and white its grand strategy -- to doctrinize, as it were, its impulse to act alone with the instruments of war. Hitching a ride on Al Qaeda's indisputable threat, the doctrine generalizes.
It is limitless in time and space. It not only commits the United States to dominating the world from now into the distant future, but al...
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...gned to take more than passing note of his speech. As a nation, we’re still in a trance. The leadership of the most powerful nation-state on earth proceeds to set out its grand strategy, its unified theory of everything, and its prime channels of information don’t see fit to let the populace in on the news that their government is hell-bent on empire and has said so in black and white.
Nonetheless, Bush’s strategy is now in force. It confirms suspicions and stokes paranoia. In propounding that there are no more than two models for how a society lives in the world, and that those who despise the one must enlist behind the other, it indulges in the same drastic oversimplification that motivates the terrorists. Americans will have to contend with the consequences for generations. This is why the Bush doctrine is dangerous: It’s a gift to anti-Americans everywhere.
Since the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration has been calling every citizens and every nations to support his Middle East policy. Nonetheless, the U.S. has been involved in the middle-east struggle for more than half of the century, wars were waged and citizens were killed. Yet, political struggles and ideological conflicts are now worse than they were under Clinton’s presidency. As “President’s Address to the Nation” is a speech asking everybody to support the troops to keep fighting in Iraq, I, as an audience, am not persuaded at all because of his illogical fallacy in the arguments. In this essay, I will analyze how and what are the illogical fallacies he uses in the speech.
Throughout the speech, the Former President George W Bush strives to empower Americans by instructing them to remain resolute, but to “go back to [their] lives and routines”. He uses the personal pronoun we and the common pronoun us repeatedly to indicate that the people of the United States, who either saw the event on television or experienced this event firsthand, were and still are involved in this national tragedy. He implements this emotional appeal into his speech to involve all Americans--people living in the United States of America, regardless of their ethnicity, race, or culture, and to acknowledge that the American people have endured this together, and that they will continue to advance after this event with stronger resolve, stronger than ever. In addition, he implements personification to motivate and empower the American people. “Our nation, this generation, will lift a dark threat of violence from our people and our future” (Bush, 2001). “This generation”, again a synonym for the American people, with its unwavering resolve, will fight for its freedom persistently. He intimates that the future of America and of democratic freedom is in the hands of the American people: that the American people have the power to control their fate. The next sentence leads into America’s “philanthropically” democratic nature: “We will rally the world to this cause, by our efforts and by our courage” (Bush, 2001). This statement has been followed up by action only a few years later, when the United States intervened in the Iraqi War, Libyan Revolution, and even more civil wars to ensure the freedom of citizens from dictatorships, which in Islāmic nations, were militant groups, like the Hamas and Taliban. Lastly, the president utilized anaphora, specifically a tripartite structure, by affirming that the American people “will not tire”, “will not falter”, and “will not fail”. He implies that the American people will relentlessly fight for the worldwide establishment of peace and democratic institutions, a promise which America has kept even in the face of its own national crisis.
Host: On September the 11th 2001, the notorious terror organisation known as Al-Qaeda struck at the very heart of the United States. The death count was approximately 3,000; a nation was left in panic. To this day, counterterrorism experts and historians alike regard the event surrounding 9/11 as a turning point in US foreign relations. Outraged and fearful of radical terrorism from the middle-east, President Bush declared that in 2001 that it was a matter of freedoms; that “our very freedom has come under attack”. In his eyes, America was simply targeted because of its democratic and western values (CNN News, 2001). In the 14 years following this pivotal declaration, an aggressive, pre-emptive approach to terrorism replaced the traditional
Bush demonstrates that with the use of metaphors, personification, and also repetition. Using metaphor, he compares America to steel, saying that America is like steel, but not pliable. Portraying that whatever dangerous act comes to America, America will stay strong and not move. Personification is to explain the reasoning behind the terrorists’ operations and the motives behind this move. Bush gives feeling and visualization traits to the nation, consequently putting it in the nation’s point of view, highlighting what the nation felt and saw. Repetition is to bring America together and strengthen everyone. It is to show that this heartbreaking event did not just affect the victims, but it affects the entire country. The way Bush uses repetition to get the people of America together makes America stronger because the more a country is together, the more power and strength it will possess. As a final point, President Bush’s usage of these three rhetorical devices grabs the attention of the people and helps Bush express the type of tone he wants to get
In today’s society the word “terrorism” has gone global. We see this term on television, in magazines and even from other people speaking of it. In their essay “Controlling Irrational Fears After 9/11”, published in 2002, Clark R. Chapman and Alan W. Harris argue that the reaction of the American officials, people and the media after the attacks of 9/11 was completely irrational due to the simple fact of fear. Chapman and Harris jump right into dismembering the irrational argument, often experienced with relationships and our personal analysis. They express how this argument came about from the terrorist being able to succeed in “achieving one major goal, which was spreading fear” among the American people (Chapman & Harris, para.1). The supporters of the irrational reaction argument state that because “Americans unwittingly cooperated with the terrorist in achieving the major goal”, the result was a widespread of disrupted lives of the Americans and if this reaction had been more rational then there would have been “less disruption in the lives of our citizens” (Chapman & Harris, para. 1).
President Barack Obama delivered an address to the nation on the U.S. Counterterrorism strategy to combat ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) on September 10, 2014. The recent issue, which became the basis for this speech, has been President Obama’s response to Syria’s Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons against diverse civilians. He delivered this speech to prove to the nation that he has an elaborate strategy along with several tactics to destroy the terrorist group. Obama described the ISIL in his speech by stating, “in a region that has known so much bloodshed, these terrorists are unique in their brutality. They execute captured prisoners. They kill children. They enslave, rape, and force women into marriage. They threatened a religious minority with genocide. And in acts of barbarism, they
Throughout history, only a few documents have changed the way we as a nation view politics and carry out our everyday lives. The document mentioned above was the Declaration of Independence. It changed the course of history because it granted America its freedom from Great Britain. Originally, there was a committee created to compose the document which consisted of John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, Robert R. Livingston, and Thomas Jefferson. After conversing with one another, the committee decided that Thomas Jefferson would be the one to write it with the final approval coming from the other four. After writing it and receiving approval from the committee, Jefferson presented it to the House. What happened here was not what the committee originally expected. Not all of the delegates attending the convention approved the document. However, through compromising for the greater good of the “New Nation” and editing to accommodate everyone’s preferences, the document was finally approved by all thirteen colonies.
It was a brief speech that captivated a lot of matters that concern the American citizens exclusively and the world inclusively. He divided his speech into different sectors which are citizens’ sacrifice, the idea of service, adopting changes, promise of wealth, government harmony and dignity. The language used in the speech was flawless and applicable to the audience, who was the public, since he was using every day vocabulary. Therefore, the speech has a strong structure that can be easily understood by the majority of people. The audience typically will and was the American citizens, but since the United States has many international relationships, President Obama was trying to reach beyond the nationwide concerns and meet a mutual background....
In no field other than politics does the justification for action often come from a noteworthy event and the true cause stays hidden behind the headlines. The United States’ transformation from a new state to a global superpower has been a methodical journey molded by international conditions (the global terrain for statecraft), the role of institutions and their programmed actions, and ultimately, the interests of actors (the protection of participants in making policy’s items and i...
Most of us know that America is one of, if not the most influential country in today’s world. We’re also the wealthiest and most powerful. But as the Roman and Greek Empires have shown us, such nations usually can’t remain in this position forever. So, assuming this will be our fate, when will it happen? When will we stop being “on top of the world?” Bob Herbert and Alan W. Dowd provide their own answers on the matter.
In 1947, Britain announced they could not continue to aid Greece in its civil war fighting communist insurgents. “The American government 's response to this announcement was the adoption of containment the goal of which was to stop the spread of communism,” [Gladdis]. This was followed by President Truman’s foreign policy, the Truman Doctrine. Its objective was to stop the spread of Soviet imperialism during the Cold War, though not by using military force and instead issued financial assistance to those countries fighting communist threat [Beschloss]. Truman’s speech to congress addressing the spread of communism prompted the beginning of the second Red Scare in America. Anti-communist propaganda flooded the country as new media picked up
Howell defies unilateral powers as “…instruments by which the presidents set all sorts of consequential domestic and foreign policy (Paige 1977)” (Howell 242). To explain, Howell argues unilateral actions allow for presidents to bypass Congress in attempt to create domestic and foreign policy. Howell also brings to light “The U.S. Constitution does not explicitly recognize any of these policy vehicles (executive agreements, executive orders, executive memoranda, proclamations, etc.)”, but the president uses them as justifications for his actions. Howell provides his audience historical examples of such unilateral actions.
It is somehow strange for today’s reader to find out that the situation with America’s foreign affairs hasn’t changed much. As some clever people have said, “The History book on the shelf is always repeating itself.” Even after nineteen years, Americans think of themselves as citizens of the strongest nation in the world. Even after the September the 11th. Even after Iraq. And Afghanistan.
The Truman Doctrine was the force for the change in United States foreign policy, from isolationism to internationalism; which was the main reason of the involvement into the two wars of containment and into world affairs. The Truman Doctrine began a major change in U.S. Foreign policy, from its beginning, aid to Turkey and Greece, to its influence on Korea and Vietnam. The aftermath of WWII inspired the U.S. to issue a doctrine that would stop Communist influence throughout the world. However, the U.S.'s passion in the achievement of the Truman Doctrine sent our soldiers to die in Vietnam and Korea for a pointless cause.
When in 1990, President George HW Bush used the phrase “new world order”, his words had an ominous ring both because they implied that this would be an American-d...