Ethics, Norms and the Narratives of War

Pamela Creed

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136252068
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Filosofía
• Subtopic: Ética y filosofía moral

This book examines the ethics and values that render a war discourse normative, and features the stories of American soldiers who fought in the Iraq War to show how this narrative can change.

The invasion of Iraq, launched in March 2003, was led by the United States under the now discredited claim that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction (WMD). However, critical questions concerning what we may be able to learn from this experience remain largely unexplored. The focus of this book, therefore, is on soldiers as systems of war – and the internal battle many of them wage as they live a reality that slowly emerges as inconsistent with familiar beliefs and value commitments.

This work offers a reflective study of identity struggle from the perspective of emotional psychology and delves into the 'narrative field' of socio-politics. Going beyond the political contestations over the U.S. military intervention in Iraq, the author analyses original research on the evolving beliefs and value-commitments of veterans of the war, exploring their faith in its 'just cause' and their personal sense of self and national identity.

This book will be of much interest to students of the Iraq War, US foreign policy, military studies, discourse analysis, and IR in general.

Part I

The making of an American war narrative

1	From crisis to consensus

Wallace Martin (1986, as cited in Johnston 2000) argues that narratives provide a sense of patterns for those in a shared community or culture. He divides narratives into three categories: narrative as a sequence of events; a discourse produced by a narrator; or “verbal artifacts” that an audience organizes and gives meaning to. This chapter examines discourse produced by a narrator, President Bush, and demonstrates the verbal artifacts that were woven into the narrative in order to give it meaning. In Part I, I draw from the White House archives and comb through his public addresses and press conferences from 11 September 2001 through the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. From this data I analyze the storyline and the characters as he positions them throughout this period. During this time Bush created a discourse with a beginning, middle and projected end that depended on a shared set of assumptions that are characteristic of American culture and thought. Martin (1986) suggests that these deep narrative structures represent patterns of meaning and reveal the contours of a culture’s shared beliefs. These culturally assumptive “artifacts” surface through time as the narrative is constructed and given meaning by its audience (Johnston 2000).

The use of myth, memory and militant language to create categories of shared understanding shaped the construction of a perception of reality through the hegemonic positioning of a particular narrative. K. R. Phillips, in Framing Public Memories (as cited in Hatfield 2006), refers to this as “public memory” and suggests that public memory, distinct from history, is constructed through the power of symbolic images (and myth) that shape perceptions and reactions to experiences. While history implies accurate objectivity and a singular retelling of the past, “public memory allows for and welcomes multiple ways of knowing the past and of recognizing the interrelationships between the past, present and the future” (Hatfield 2006: 18).

This distinction between history and public memory is critical for understanding how the 9/11–Iraq narrative patterns appealed so provocatively to more than half the nation. According to Phillips in Hatfield (2006: 19), public memory does not refer to one singular “thing” or historical account, but “to complex interactions with the environment over time that is mutable.” Public memory, then, is living. It can change among individuals or groups as people experience new events or interpretations of events. Public memory is socially constructed as events evolve or as myths or historical events are revived. So while “societies are both constituted by their memories, and, in their daily interactions, rituals and exchanges, constitute these memories” the memories are also “open to contest, revision and rejection” (Hatfield 2006: 20).

The interpretation of public memory is powerful. Kosalka, (as cited in Hatfield 2006: 22) further states that public memory contributes to the “the essential nature of man to interpret his identity and what he wishes to be in terms of his appropriations of the past. A communal identity is built on the language of symbols that are inherent in public memory.” Hatfield concludes that the common symbols that create public memory are brought together in the present, through narrative or symbols, “in order to inform the future.” These memories, incorporated into a narrative about a particular event, “conjure an array of feelings, memories, beliefs and attitudes” (Hatfield 2006: 23).

Phillips, (as cited in Hatfield 2006: 23) writes:

The study of memory is largely one of the rhetoric of memories. The ways memories attain meaning, compel others to accept them, and are themselves contested, subverted, and supplanted by other memories are essentially rhetorical. As an art interested in the ways symbols are employed to induce cooperation, achieve understanding, contest understanding and offer dissent, rhetoric is deeply steeped in a concern for public memories. These memories that both constitute our sense of collectivity and are constituted by our togetherness are thus deeply implicated in our persuasive activities and in the underlying assumptions and experiences upon which we build meanings and reasons.

Bodnar, (as cited in Hatfield 2006: 24), supports this by arguing that public memory offers a society a way to understand reality, in this case, the reality of the 9/11 terrorists attacks and the justification for invading Iraq. Public memory often frames an ideological system that is “constituted by symbols, values, beliefs, language and the creation and retelling of stories that emerge as a mechanism of sense-making.”

Finally, a specific cultural memory is often constructed from a crisis – 9/11 clearly amounted to a crisis and as such has now become a public memory. As the following analysis of the 9/11–Iraq War narratives demonstrates, a public memory of this catastrophe was constructed during the year following the event and the particular features of that memory were used to support the Iraq War narrative. Crisis situations present challenges to a group, but public memories of the event help members of a public make sense of it and give members an opportunity to interact (Bodnar, as cited in Hatfield 2006: 27).

All cultures have myths that shape a collective sense of public memory and identity. The United States is not unique in this by any measure. It is also important to note that myths themselves are not dangerous or bad. Myth has been present for as long as human beings have told stories. Furthermore, I don’t mean to suggest that myths are inherently fiction. I refer to “myth” according to the description given by Robert N. Bellah (1992: 3): “Myth does not suggest a story that is not true; it seeks rather than to describe reality, to transfigure reality so that it provides moral and spiritual meaning to individuals or societies. Myths may be true or false (like science), but the test of truth or falsehood is different.”

A considerable size of literature exists on myth itself and on American myths in particular. R. N. Bellah describes the American myths that shape our collective sense of identity and purpose as an American civil religion in the The Broken Covenant (1992). He regards civil religion as “that religious dimension, found in the life of every people, through which it interprets its historical experience in the light of transcendent reality” (Bellah 1992: 3). R. Hughes, in Myths America Lives By (Hughes 2004), argues that many of America’s smaller myths fall under four foundational ones: the myth of the chosen people; the myth of nature’s nation; the myth of the Christian nation; and the myth of the millennial nation. He posits that Manifest Destiny, one of America’s most compelling national myths, is an outgrowth of the four foundational ones. Finally, G. Müller-Fahrenholz (2007) analyzes American civil religious myths in American’s Battle for God: A European Christian Looks at Civil Religion. The myths that support the subconscious assumptions engender an American civil religion and harbor the assumptions that sow tendencies toward simplistic understandings of complex situations. This empowers narratives like the 9/11–Iraq War discourses to be perceived as normative, or “the right thing.”

The myths of the chosen, innocent and hero frame a central argument of this book. The chosen myth is based on the idea that God has chosen America as privileged and as having a special role in the world. The innocent pits America as “good” against forces of “evil” and derives much of its strength from the public memories of World War I and World War II. The hero myth embraces the idea of the warrior-hero: honor, masculinity and militarism all play a significant role in this myth¹ (Bellah 1992; Hughes 2004; Müller-Fahrenholz 2007 and Hartsock 1985).

The analysis of discourse for meaningful linguistic conventions, such as the patterned use of myths, memories and privileged emotions, can lead to plausible interpretations through a three dimensional examination of a body of texts within a particular context. This “constitute[s] a discourse over time” and attempts to “explore how socially produced ideas and objects that populate the world were created in the first place and how they are maintained and held in place over time” (Phillips and Hardy 2002: 6). The texts here are addresses by President George W. Bush, focusing on the “verbal artifacts” he employs; the context is the period after 9/11 through the invasion of Iraq in 2003; and the ideas examined that “populate the world” are those embedded in American cultural mythology and public memories, ideas that shape a shared sense of American national identity. Hence, I draw from the language used by President Bush between 11 September 2001 and 19 March 2003 to address the nation and the military because they reached large portions of the population or because they addressed the particular part of the population that would be directly involved in the realization of the narrative. These texts were also chosen because they deal directly with the arguments for responding to the acts of 9/11 and for invading Iraq.

This critical approach attempts to analyze the narrative patterns that created a collective understanding of reality, which eventually led to general national support for the Iraq invasion. Excerpts of particular texts will be examined more closely in order to reveal the patterns that defined the storyline and the characterological positions that would mediate the broadening of a new local moral order, establishing the ethics and norms necessary to mobilize a nation for war (Moghaddam et al. 2008). A study of President Bush’s rhetoric also uncovers how language was used to appeal to feelings of hidden fears of humiliation by harnessing intense anger and chauvinistic pride in order to build support for a preemptive unilateral invasion of a sovereign nation. Rhetoric organized around national myths and public memories resonated with the American public and provided the justification, rationale and motivation for going to war. Those voices that resisted the narrative were marginalized and disempowered (Phillips and Hardy 2002: 25–27).

Using positioning theory, I locate the storylines, characterizations and the perceived rights and duties of the narrative patterns, which are anchored in the mythological constructs and emotive appeal of many discrete speech acts as the narrative is constituted and reconstituted. According to Moghaddam, Harré, and Lee (2008: 18), positioning theory provides a way to move beyond an issue-based level of analysis to the more obscure background, offering insight into the psychological dimensions of belief systems that underlie conflicts. As these authors argue, exploring implicit beliefs about what is right exposes the moral orders that shape a group’s shared sense of rights and duties and contribute to the formation of group identity. This and the following two chapters attempt to do just that: employ positioning theory to reveal the narrative features that shroud content issues in deep cultural belief systems that define rights, duties, and moral orders and give rise to a tacit acceptance of a sense of national identity and purpose. President Bush dug deeply and broadly, bringing to the surface constructs that too openly brandished can become perniciously normative.

Moghaddam et al. (2008: 4) argue “there are patterns of belief, customs and habits that nourish conflict. In the talk of a community people’s explicit beliefs become visible, and much that is implicit can be brought to light.” Positioning theory, as an analytical framework, shifts the study of conflict from more traditional approaches to a dialogical approach that enhances our insight into dynamic and long-term conflict processes. To this end, the following analysis seeks to examine the 9/11–Iraq War narrative patterns in terms of the positions assigned to self (the United States) and other (the perceived enemy, first Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda and later Saddam Hussein and Iraq) and in terms of the formation of local moral orders evident in the framing of the rights and duties of the main actors. This analysis, in keeping with the scope of positioning theory, does not seek to determine actors’ motivations. Neither does it claim explanatory value for actors’ actions; rather, it examines certain discursive practices for the underlying themes that lie just below the surface of accounts of particular events (Moghaddam et al. 2008: 9–10).

Positioning theory includes three background conditions that contribute to determining how speech acts become meaningful. First, a speech act contains social significance. One speech act may have various social meanings given the context or the person speaking. Second, there are implicit patterns of rights and duties that are often taken for granted. For example, the President of the United States assumes the rights and duties of an authoritative voice on matters of public policy and security. Finally, storylines structure the flow of actions and interactions. An essential part of narrative analysis is to study the origins and plots of storylines, including the implicit ones. In analyzing this particular narrative, therefore, I examine the relevant implicit mythological constructs operating beneath America’s cultural surface and within the 9/11–Iraq War narrative patterns (Moghaddam et al. 2008).

There are many sources for storylines, including folk tales, beliefs about the past and myths. Positions are not usually articulated explicitly but formed according to familiar traditions or customs so that complex patterns of rights and duties emerge naturally with positions taken or held. These aspects are the conditions for the dynamic process of evolving meaningful episodes. Storylines, positions, rights and duties mutually determine each other.

As I analyze this narrative in terms of the above aspects and their relationship, I also explore the local moral orders that are revealed. A local moral order can be elicited by examining the cluster of norms tacitly embraced by actors in a particular cultural setting. Uncovering the accepted norms reveals what actors believe is right to feel or do in a particular situation. It also provides insight into how actors perceive their presentation of self. In any situation there is an explicit moral order, which includes the rights and duties inherent in an actor’s potential to act, their capabilities and their constraints. Through positioning theory I attempt to account for the evolving local moral order in the original narrative and later as soldiers challenge it. This demonstrates that the narrative challenges typical cultural norms and broadens them by “closing the gap between what is possible and what is permitted” (Moghaddam et al. 2008: 13).

President Bush began constructing a causal and explanatory narrative surrounding the events of 9/11 when he addressed Congress and the American people on 20 September 2001. He provided an ordered and coherent explanation that enabled people to begin to make sense of the tragic attacks. In this first address, he began what would become a patterned use of civil religious metaphors extracted from particular American mythological constructs. This narrative quickly established the relationship among a storyline, positions within the storyline and the rights and duties of the actors. Hence, an explanatory account emerged and an appropriate response was prescribed (Moghaddam et al. 2008; Shotter 1993).

Figure 1.1 is a representation of the position and storyline that President Bush established immediately after the attacks of 9/11 and a description of the categories of actors created by the narrative. This outlines the elements of a narrative pattern and its early evolution. At this point, I will consider the narrative itself, not the response to it. Consequently, the representation and analysis in this chapter and Chapters 2 and 3 are based on speech acts culled directly from the narrative as it was presented and as it evolved from 11 September 2001 through 19 March 2003. In short, the presenting narrative can be understood according to Figure 1.1.

An episode is any sequence of happenings in which human beings engage; each episode has a structure. Episodes demand the interaction of actors, writers and audience members. In social settings individuals project a set of roles and rules relative to the unfolding episode. While an actor’s personal identity is constrained by the requirements of a person-type recognized by others, the display of a person-type, if perceived as legitimate, will be recognized, responded to and confirmed in the actions of others (Rothbart 2006). The initial episode of the 9/11 terrorist attacks created a cri...