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Rhetorical Alchemy: American Exceptionalism and the War on Terror∗

2008; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 25; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/10584600701807935

1091-7675

Andrew Rojecki,

Media Studies and Communication

Abstract The Bush administration's neoconservative foreign policy for the war on terror competes with two better known models of foreign policy. Detailed in the National Security Strategy of the United States, the policy draws on an eclectic amalgam of realist and liberal international relations theory to justify U.S. primacy at a time when majority mass public opinion favors international cooperation. To build public support for unilateral foreign policy, the administration used a number of appeals that projected an image of the United States as endowed with unique institutional and moral qualities that set it apart from the rest of the world. American exceptionalism proved to be a resonant moral catalyst for elite media support of unilateral U.S. military action. This article analyzes commentary and editorials in the New York Times and the Washington Post prior to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to isolate the mechanism underlying the success of the administration's appeals and the implications of that success for media elites' support of post-9/11 U.S. foreign policy. Keywords: war on terrorAmerican exceptionalismneoconservative foreign policyframingeditorial policy Notes ∗Earlier results of this study were presented at the meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, September 2004. 1. George Washington warned of "passionate attachments" to other nations and, as secretary of state for James Monroe, John Quincy Adams formulated a policy designed to prevent foreign encroachment upon the Western Hemisphere. The two world wars ended U.S. isolation and, eventually, unilateralist foreign policy. Franklin D. Roosevelt revived Woodrow Wilson's failed dream of a peaceful world founded on the spread of democracy and capitalism by his support of principles that led to the founding of the UN and the Bretton Woods system (CitationGaddis, 2004). 2. Self-named the "Vulcans" (CitationMann, 2004), the Bush foreign policy team emerged from the Project for a New America (PNAC), a conservative Washington think tank. Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld (both founders), Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Armitage, and 12 other members were appointed to key positions within the Bush administration. 3. Strauss's political philosophy has inspired a lively debate on his presumptive justification of an elite-led state (see, e.g., CitationDrury; 1997; CitationSmith, 1997). Strauss was a friendly but vigorous intellectual opponent of Alexandre Kojève, who shifted Hegelian analysis from one based on a teleological view of the course of history to one of active human agency. CitationStrauss (1991) argued that a homogenous cosmopolitan state— the telos of Kojève's analysis—would yield a fatally flawed society: an inherent incapacity to provide the deeply felt human need for individual recognition, inevitably leading to an oppressive state led by a universal tyrant. Fukuyama adapted Kojève's analysis for his end-of-history thesis and similarly concluded that such a state would deny human nature its Nietzschean will to power. Fukuyama later became associated with the neconservatives in the Bush cabinet but became disenchanted after the invasion of Iraq (see, e.g., CitationFukuyama, 2006). 4. The 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington crystallized a unilateralist tendency that had begun to steer Clinton foreign policy: Clinton opposed an international treaty banning land mines, refused to put U.S. troops under UN command, and did not join the International Criminal Court (CitationWoollacott, 2000). 5. A separate coder examined 20% of the coding and found over 90% agreement on the detection of the themes. 6. According to CitationMann (2004), Colin Powell's moderate views were confined to social issues, not defense policy. Powell shared Caspar Weinberger hawkish views on foreign policy—a strong U.S. military and avoidance of conflict unless based on overwhelming force and clear political objectives (p. 350).