Presidential Rhetoric on Terrorism under Bush, Obama and Trump by Gabriel Rubin

Author:Gabriel Rubin
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030301675
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Fig. 2.3George W. Bush terrorism speeches emphasizing that conflict with terrorists will be a long war

In Wesley Widmaier’s account, Bush’s response to the 9/11 attacks was “marked by fast-thinking moral absolutism which justified a preemptive war in Iraq to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction.” When those weapons were not found, Bush pivoted to a “freedom agenda,” which he touted during his second inaugural address, based on a quest for global democratization.99 In that address Bush stated that “every man and woman on this earth has rights, and dignity, and matchless value… So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.”100 It is important to note here that Bush’s second term saw the Iraq War enter a phase of increasingly bloody sectarian violence, including the infamous destruction of the al-Askari mosque in Samarra in 2006, and a concomitant pressure to seek out diplomatic avenues for recourse.101

Bush’s ramp up to the Iraq War successfully connected al Qaeda’s plans with those of Saddam Hussein’s. Bush did this by portraying Iraq as a “grave threat” to peace that would get “worse with time”102 and by connecting Saddam Hussein’s alleged continued quest to attain weapons of mass destruction with al Qaeda’s goal to do the same.103 The purported plot would be for Iraq and al Qaeda to work together to strike at the United States—presumably with some kind of nuclear or radiological terrorism. Bush and his surrogates repeatedly linked al Qaeda, Iraq, and the 9/11 attacks.104 For instance, the President declared that “The gravest danger facing America and the world is outlaw regimes that seek and possess nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. These regimes could … give or sell those weapons to terrorist allies, who would use them without the least hesitation.”105

The following chart (Fig. 2.4) is telling. Here, like in Fig. 2.1, we again see what terms George W. Bush used to refer to terrorists in his post-9/11 speeches on terrorism. This time, the descriptors are more concrete as here he refers to America’s adversaries as Taliban, some sort of outlaw or terror regime,106 al Qaeda, and Iraqis or Saddamists. Note that Iraq and outlaw/terror regimes (not including the Taliban) become a rather large concern in 2002 before fading away. This is consistent with the policy selling dynamic depicted in Fig. 2.1.107

Fig. 2.4Selling the Iraq War, what George W. Bush called terrorists

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