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From January 2001 to March 2003 President George W. Bush successfully persuaded the American public and Congress that a war with Iraq was necessary and urgent. He stated his intentions to focus on the invasion during his first meeting with his National Security Council on 30 January 2001 and, as his term in office unfolded, he ran a persistent campaign to create general public support for the war and consequently win congressional authorization for the engagement of U.S. forces in extended military combat in Iraq. He launched an ideological offensive against a regime in Iraq which turned into an intensive and long-term military conflict. Because the reasons for the war have not been clear-cut and the rationales continue to stir discussion and invite speculation, this chapter does not mean to assess why the Bush administration involved the United States in the war but rather analyse the manner in which the arguments for it were constructed and successfully marketed to the American public and Congress. Drawing on the notions of ‘presence’ and ‘communion’ by Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca, the chapter analyses the most complete statements of Bush’s anti-Iraq rhetoric prior to the 3 March 2003 invasion to identify and examine the arguments and argumentation strategies crafted and employed by the president to rationalize the U.S. offensive. The objective is to characterize the way the president communicated with the public and Congress and gauge the degree to which the interaction impacted his decision making.
Author:
From January 2001 to March 2003 President George W. Bush successfully persuaded the American public and Congress that a war with Iraq was necessary and urgent. He stated his intentions to focus on the invasion during his first meeting with his National Security Council on 30 January 2001 and, as his term in office unfolded, he ran a persistent campaign to create general public support for the war and consequently win congressional authorization for the engagement of U.S. forces in extended military combat in Iraq. He launched an ideological offensive against a regime in Iraq which turned into an intensive and long-term military conflict. Because the reasons for the war have not been clear-cut and the rationales continue to stir discussion and invite speculation, this chapter does not mean to assess why the Bush administration involved the United States in the war but rather analyse the manner in which the arguments for it were constructed and successfully marketed to the American public and Congress. Drawing on the notions of ‘presence’ and ‘communion’ by Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca, the chapter analyses the most complete statements of Bush’s anti-Iraq rhetoric prior to the 3 March 2003 invasion to identify and examine the arguments and argumentation strategies crafted and employed by the president to rationalize the U.S. offensive. The objective is to characterize the way the president communicated with the public and Congress and gauge the degree to which the interaction impacted his decision making.
Author:
Abstract
This chapter examines President George W. Bush’s war discourse. In contrast to Rupinder Mangat’s chapter, which focuses on the interaction between the military and the public, this chapter concentrates on the communication between the president and his audiences. It describes the manner in which Bush communicated with American citizens, considering the context within which the communication was conducted, the listeners who were addressed, the speaker’s rhetorical skills, the constraints which determined the effectiveness of the communication, and the exigencies which defined its form and content. The objective is to identify the techniques employed by the president to market his foreign affairs policy to the American public and Congress and suggest conclusions which can be drawn on the basis of the analysis.
Communication decisively impacts upon all our lives. This inherent need to connect may either be soothing or painful, a source of intimate understanding or violent discord. Consequently, how it is brokered is challenging and often crucial in situations where those involved have quite different ways of being in and seeing the world. Good communication is equated with skills that intentionally facilitate change, the realisation of desirable outcomes and the improvement of human situations. Withdrawal of communication, or its intentional manipulation, provokes misunderstanding, mistrust, and precipitates the decline into disorder. This international collection of work specifically interrogates conflict as an essential outworking of communication, and suggests that understanding of communication’s potency in contexts of conflict can directly influence reciprocally positive outcomes.
Communication decisively impacts upon all our lives. This inherent need to connect may either be soothing or painful, a source of intimate understanding or violent discord. Consequently, how it is brokered is challenging and often crucial in situations where those involved have quite different ways of being in and seeing the world. Good communication is equated with skills that intentionally facilitate change, the realisation of desirable outcomes and the improvement of human situations. Withdrawal of communication, or its intentional manipulation, provokes misunderstanding, mistrust, and precipitates the decline into disorder. This international collection of work specifically interrogates conflict as an essential outworking of communication, and suggests that understanding of communication’s potency in contexts of conflict can directly influence reciprocally positive outcomes.