The authors of this week’s readings bring into question america\u2019s tradition of continual war. For many of us this is not an introduction to this understanding, but rather a more critical approach to comprehending not only the significance of our involvement, but also the problem\u2019s and motivations associated with it. One of the greatest problem\u2019s posited by these authors is not our military involvement, but our citizenry\u2019s passive acceptance that surrounds these military endeavors.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Andrew Bacevich in his work \u201cBarack Obama\u2019s Crash Course in Foreign Policy\u201d provides a fairly biased account of our involvement in the wars in the Middle East. I found Bacevich\u2019s language surrounding Obama\u2019s perceived failures to demonstrate his right wing bias<\/a> most, and as a result found it difficult to consider his work worthy of true academic consideration. For example, in discussing Obama\u2019s accomplishments he likens removing the Cuban Embargo<\/a> to sweeping up elephant defecations in a circus… He does, however, provide some fairly useful contextualization into Obama\u2019s legacy and involvement in the wars in the Middle East.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The NY Times\u2019 Editorial Board\u2019s opinion piece \u201cAmerica\u2019s Forever Wars\u201d provides a solid foundation of this continual military presence. The editorial board asserts that post 9\/11 the United States has remained at war. Interestingly enough my understanding prior to this article was that the United States has almost always been at war. According to a Freakonometrics<\/a>\u2019 article the United States has been at war 222 out of its 239 years of existence. They are right in that our military efforts have been literally continual since 9\/11, but I think a greater historical scope would further benefit their point. The article discusses several reasons for our continued involvement including low risk of drafting, low casualty rates, and the threat of terror. William Astore\u2019s article \u201cWar Is the New Normal: 7 Deadly Reasons Why America\u2019s Wars Persist\u201d further expands upon this line of inquiry. Astore\u2019s article provides a more in depth examination into what he sees as the economic, political and ideological reasons we participate in endless military conflict. The military industrial complex<\/a> is noted as a primary cause, as well as the embracing of the importance of national security by both political parties. Astore also discusses the \u201cSupport Our Troops\u201d ideology and argues it is a \u201csubstitute for thought\u201d. I attempted to find where the term had originated, but was unable to. Noam Chomsky<\/a> does, however, have some interesting things to say about its effectiveness as a meaningless slogan for wartime propaganda. Ultimately, both the NY Times Editorial Board and Astores\u2019s article highlight the problematic nature of these endless war efforts and how normalized they have become in our American culture.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Heidi Hamilton\u2019s article is likely the most rhetorically focused of this week\u2019s readings. Her work focuses on how the pro-war effort has manipulated perceptions of patriotism through ideographic associations. The ideograph according to McGee (1980a) is a \u201cone term sum of an orientation\u201d thus becoming the \u201cbuilding blocks of ideology\u201d(15). She asserts that Ideographs reflect larger ideologies and resultantly indicate how actions like supporting the war effort should be seen. Through connecting the symbolic with the material, the ideograph of patriotism not only defines the acceptable actions in response to the war effort, but also creates a sense of culture that surrounds it. Astore\u2019s \u201cSupport Our Troops\u201d would be a good example of one patriotic ideograph. Hamilton\u2019s article discusses the ideographic response to notions like \u201cSupport Our Troops\u201d by contextualizing the anti-war effort and its characterizations since the 1970s. She begins by discussing the characterization of the anti-war effort as young and radicalized. She argues, in response to these accusations, that the majority of americans actually opposed the war and this was a strategic move to limit public association with the anti-war effort. I find the anti-war movement\u2019s response to these problematic characterizations enlightening for one hoping to understand rhetorical strategy. The anti-war protesters embraced patriotic ideographs of their own, choosing \u201clove of principle<\/a>\u201d over \u201clove of country<\/a>\u201d. Through this rhetorical shift, the anti-war movement aligned itself with our country’s founding values in place of its current legislators. While not entirely effective in preventing war, such a patriotic association was needed to ensure the anti-war effort was not seen as anti-soldier. I find it quite interesting that embracing patriotism was seen as the only way around these negative views, but also that they failed. Does this mean that the ideographic associations for the pro-war movement are just significantly more powerful? Or rather that the economic and political justifications are simply too great? It it likely that we will have to find incidences where nations, through rhetorical strategies of ideographic composition, succeeded in preventing war to answer these questions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The authors of this week’s readings bring into question america\u2019s tradition of continual war. For many of us this is<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2725,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/rhetoric-terrorism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/rhetoric-terrorism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/rhetoric-terrorism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/rhetoric-terrorism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2725"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/rhetoric-terrorism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/rhetoric-terrorism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/rhetoric-terrorism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/rhetoric-terrorism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/rhetoric-terrorism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}