Browsing by Subject "War on Terror"

The War on Terror has been waged for almost two whole decades now. President Barack Obama pledged to end the “boundless Global War on Terror” during his tenure but there are still US troops present in Middle East and North Africa. Despite the rhetoric on ending the war, the war got even more violent in terms of air strikes and the military budget kept on rising from that of president Bush under Obama’s first term as president. Since these circumstances suggest that there was no considerable change to be perceived in the outcome of the war from Bush to Obama, there seems to exist a process of political meaning-making through which the meanings attached to the US engagement in the Middle East are altered. Thus, this study aims at analysing the underlying fantasmatic logics through which the War on Terror was legitimized to the public during Obama’s presidency. This study contributes to the study of international relations through Lacanian-Žižekian framework, which has only recently been introduced to the study of international politics. The theoretical and methodological background of this thesis is rooted in Lacanian psychoanalysis, discourse theory of Laclau and Mouffe and Lacanian-Žižekian theorizations on ideological fantasies. By adapting the logics approach of discourse theory as a qualitative method, this thesis analyses 105 speeches on terrorism that Barack Obama delivered in 2009–2016. The analysis is focused at analysing discursive articulations, nodal points and master signifiers that partake in structuring the fantasies regarding War on Terror. In this thesis I will argue that it is through the fantasmatic logics that the ideological grip of Obama’s War on Terror becomes intelligible: By structuring the fantasmatic objects of desire at least on three levels, Obama succeeds at granting the illusion that the unachievable and impossible enjoyment – that the subjects of War on Terror desire – is achievable. However, Obama organizes the fantasy in a way that keeps the realization of the ultimate fantasy of lasting peace, safety, prosperity and security always at a distance. The desire is sustained by articulating enemies, such as al Qaeda, Taliban, Osama bin Laden, Assad’s regime and ISIL, as inferior objects of desire that are “forgotten” and replaced by one another in the signifying chain of enmity. In addition to this “forgetting” of inferior objects of desire, there exists a process of “reminding” or “remembering” that sustains the desire of War on Terror’s subjects. I then argue that some of these objects of desire are used to remind the subjects of what the possible enjoyment would feel like when it is finally achieved. These enemies are also articulated as “the constitutive othesr” that prevent the subjects of War on Terror to realize their fantasy of lasting peace. The results show that the signifier “terrorists” functions as a subtle epithet through which various and differential groups can be articulated as enemies.

After the September 11 attacks in 2001 the President of the United States, George W. Bush, declared a global war on terrorism – and a war to rescue the Afghan women from their terrorist men. Feminist scholars and activists worldwide criticized the Bush government for using feminist rhetoric to justify the war. However, the development of this discourse throughout the tiring years of warfare and the co-optation of the U.S. rhetoric by other coalition partner countries have been overlooked in the research. This thesis examines the gendered narratives and the women’s rights rhetoric of U.S. and German state officials in 2001−2002 and 2007−2008. The theoretical framework of this thesis is located on the diverse and interdisciplinary field of feminist security- and international relations studies. The research questions are: How was the Afghan war justified through gendered narratives and rhetorical tools? How did the deployment of women’s rights rhetoric change during and in-between this period? Were there some distinctions in the use of rhetoric and gendered categorizations between the U.S. and German administration officials, two countries with very different foreign policy traditions? The source material of this thesis consists mainly of speeches, press briefings, debates and statements given by the state officials from the United States and Germany in 2001−2002 and 2007−2008. The speech material was collected from the online databases of the U.S. Department of State, the White House, the German Federal Government and the debate records of the German Parliament. The methodological framework of discourse analysis was used for analysing the rhetoric. Especially two tools of discourse analysis were utilized: the analysis of hegemonic discourses and the analysis of rhetoric and argumentation. By de-naturalizing the hegemonic discourses and identifying simplifying narratives, this thesis aims to reveal how discourses can consolidate power, essentialize gender roles and situate the human subjects through discourse to unequal positions of power. However, women’s rights rhetoric practised by major world leaders is not seen as necessarily positive or negative per se: What matters is the framing and the context of the rhetoric. By analyzing the gendered rhetoric, this thesis intends to find more nuanced ways of using and manipulating gendered categories to legitimize domination and control. In the years 2001 and 2002, the first two years of the war, the Bush administration utilized the image of the masculine hero, who must protect his country under threat. Even though this hero could be a woman or man, the virtues that he represented were congenitally masculine: strength, force, heroism and courage. He had to protect the country from a new type of an enemy: the mad, savage- or even animal-like, women-hating terrorist. His sadistic treatment of women was emphasized to show his barbarism. The depiction of a normal and civilized Muslim man was almost non-existent in the discourse, the image of the terrorist Muslim man was dominant. The corruption and human rights abuses of the Northern Alliance members in the Karzai government were left unaddressed. The role of the American woman in this discourse was to be calm, collected and supportive, as embodied in the First Lady, Laura Bush. The Afghan women were treated as one singular, homogenic group in the discourse – as objects to be saved. In the German discourse the masculine protector was not as celebrated as in the U.S., the discourse of the Afghan women was almost identical. The Gerhard Schröder administration also wanted to carry its responsibility towards the women-liberating West. By 2007−2008 the war had turned out to be tiring and extremely challenging, but the masculine protector was still standing strong in the U.S. discourse. There were no signs of hesitation, regret, admitting mistakes or a change of strategy with Karzai’s government, Northern Alliance and its alleged corruption. The situation of Afghanistan’s women was painted as a success story, with no real need to talk about the still prevailing misogyny. There were no separate big speeches discussing the still existing problems in women’s rights sector. The critical voices from the opposition parties were challenging the discourse of the government led by chancellor Angela Merkel in 2007−2008 in Germany. Yet again the German administration utilized the threat of Afghan women falling back in the hands of Taliban and women being massacred to silence the war opposers. Critical voices coming from Afghan women about the warlordization and corruption of Northern Alliance were still ridiculed or silenced, as demonstrated in the case of the Afghan activist and former parliamentarian, Malalai Joya. The voices of silent and grateful women were however accepted easily as representing “all” Afghan women. This thesis sheds new light on the feminist analysis of the War on Terror by demonstrating how easily Bush administration’s rhetoric was co-opted by another coalition country. The analysis shows that even after seven years of warfare, women’s rights were still strongly utilized in the war legitimizing discourse by both countries under scrutiny. This thesis concludes that the utilization of feminist rhetoric by major world powers should not only be criticized but it could also be used to push forward the implementation of feminist policies. The deconstruction of the hegemonic war narratives and listening also to criticism and contestation could open new discursive spaces for building long-lasting peace in Afghanistan.