Carol Winkler in The Name of Terrorism - Presidents On Political Violence in The Post-World War II Era 2006

In the Name of Terrorism
SUNY series on the Presidency: Contemporary Issues

John Kenneth White, editor
SUNY series in the Trajectory of Terror

Louise Richardson and Leonard Weinberg, editors
In the Name of Terrorism
Presidents on Political Violence in the

Post-World War II Era
Carol K. Winkler
State University of New York Press

Published by
State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2006 State University of New York
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Winkler, Carol.
In the name of terrorism : presidents on political violence in the
post-World War II era / Carol K. Winkler.
p. cm. — (SUNY series on the presidency) (SUNY series in the trajectory
of terror)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0–7914–6617–5 (hardcover : alk. paper)—ISBN 0–7914–6618–3
(pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Terrorism—Government policy—United States. 2. Political oratory—United
States. 3. Rhetoric—Political aspects—United States. 4. Presidents—United
States—Language. 5. Ideology—United States. I. Title. II. Series. III. Series:
SUNY series on the Presidency. SUNY series in the trajectory of terror.
HV6432.W56 2005
303.6⬘25⬘0973—dc22
2005000072
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To
Bill, Cori, and Jordan
This page intentionally left blank.
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
1. What’s in a Name? 1
Presidential Discourse and Terrorism 4
Terrorism and Ideology 7
2. The Vietnam War and the Communist Terrorists 17

Labeling the Threat 17
The Terrorist Narrative in the Vietnam War 22
3. The Iranian Hostage Crisis: An American Tragedy 37

Labeling the Captors 38
The Narrative of the Iranian Hostage Crisis 42
Ideology and the Iranian Hostage Crisis 55
4. Origins of Terrorism as an American Ideograph: The Reagan Era 65

The Terrorist Narrative in the Reagan Era 78
5. The Persian Gulf Conflict of 1991: The Cold War Narrative

in the Post-Cold War Era 97
Labeling the Crisis 98
The Narrative of the 1991 Persian Gulf Crisis 105
Ideology and Persian Gulf Terrorism 118
6. Terrorism and the Clinton Era: A Prophetic Moment 127

Clinton’s Terrorist Narrative 136
vii
viii Contents
7. America under Attack: George W. Bush and Noncitizen Actors 155

Labeling the Crisis 159
The Terrorist Narrative 166
8. Terrorism and American Culture 189
Notes 213
Works Cited 217
Index 251
Acknowledgments
N o book like this could have been written without the generous assistance
of the staffs of Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library, the Jimmy
Carter Presidential Library, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, and the
George Bush Presidential Library. Going far beyond providing normal
access to internal documents, the staffs of these libraries helped me puzzle
through various issues that crossed the administrations covered in this book.
My ability to complete the manuscript was possible due to the professional
leave, the travel support to the various libraries, and the graduate research sup-
port that I received from Ahmed Abdelal, Dean of the College of Arts and
Sciences at Georgia State University. I am particularly grateful to Mary Ann
Romski and Carolyn Codamo, who assumed the Georgia State Department of
Communication chair duties in my absence. The patient administrative hand
of Dean Lauren Adamson allowed me complete final revisions.
Many colleagues have contributed thoughtful comments in an effort to
improve this book. My initial interest in terrorism was spawned when I was
conducting research for Dr. Chuck Kaufman at the University of Maryland.
More recently, Mary Stuckey offered not only expert editorial commentary, but
knowledge of resources from allied professional disciplines that spoke to themes
of the manuscript. Other important commentaries were provided by Marilyn
Young, Celeste Condit, Karlyn Campbell, James Darsey, Thomas Goodnight,
David Cheshier, Robert Newman, Cori Dauber, and Gordon Mitchell. I am
also grateful for the comments from the anonymous reviewers of SUNY Press
who provided detailed commentary throughout the manuscript, the watchful
eyes of my copyeditor, Wyatt Benner, production editor Diane Ganeles, pro-
duction assistant Ryan Hacker, and the assistance of Michael Rinella, who
shepherded me through the first part of the publication process at SUNY Press.
Graduate research assistants were invaluable in the collection and cata-
loging of source materials as well as in editorial assistance. My special thanks
ix
x Acknowledgments
to Joseph Valenzano, James Roland, Adrienne Proeller, Leslie Wade, Judy

Butler, Francesca Bianchi, Nayed Tantawy, and Henrietta Aswad. Mark
Carnet and Jarvis Darrisaw helped prepare the manuscript according to the
SUNY’s specifications.
Earlier drafts of portions of various chapters in this manuscript have pre-
viously been published. I am grateful for the generosity of Controversia and
South Bound Press in permitting the use of my earlier work: “Globalized
Manifest Destiny; The Rhetoric of the Bush Administration in Response to
the Attacks of September 11th,” Controversia: An International Journal of
Debate and Democratic Renewal (2002) 85–108; and “Terrorism and Freedom
as Oppositional Forces: Origins and Evolution in Presidential Discourse,”
Studies in Terrorism: Media Scholarship and the Enigma of Terror in the 21st
Century (Penang: South Bound, 2002) 1–17.
Finally, I want to express my heartfelt thanks to my family. Cori and
Jordan were patient and understanding when Mom had to go work on the
book (again!). Bill was a daily sounding board for ideas, a constant source of
new Internet revelations, and my rock-solid system of love and support.
1
What’s in a Name?
T errorism is perhaps the most emotive, pejorative term in the English

language. The nation’s leadership has used it to justify policies and
actions that the American public would abhor in virtually any other context.
US presidents have authorized the use of sabotage, skyjacking, military
coups, mass deportations, and assassination when responding to terrorism.
They have used secret courts to prosecute suspected terrorists based on
hearsay testimony and guilt by association. They have reserved the right to
imprison American citizens and deport aliens who financially support terror-
ist groups, even in cases when those implicated have been unaware of the
illegal activities. They have held Americans accused of terrorist activity in
solitary confinement for more than two years without the benefit of a trial.
They have granted military tribunals jurisdiction over terrorism cases involv-
ing immigrants, abandoned the evidentiary standard of proof beyond a rea-
sonable doubt, and exempted tribunal decisions from appellate review.
Indefinite confinement of alleged terrorists and public contemplation of gov-
ernment-endorsed torture demonstrate the extremes US leadership will con-
sider in the fight against terrorism.
The public will never know the full extent of terrorism’s influence on
American culture. Classified presidential papers, the reluctance of govern-
ment officials to discuss matters of national security openly, and the secrecy
of related judicial proceedings ensure that much of the nation’s battle against
terrorism will remain beyond the scrutiny of the average citizen.
Nevertheless, what can be known about actions undertaken in the name of
terrorism can be revealing. One former senior administration official admit-
ted he ignored a direct order from his commander in chief because of his
confidence in his own plan for responding to terrorism (Turner 67). Another
advocated a military attack on a foreign country allegedly involved in terror-
ism, believing the action would have a positive influence on the outcome of
an upcoming presidential election.1 Still others have leaked false information
to members of the media, including the rumor that a foreign leader believed
to be involved in terrorism was a cross-dresser! 2
1
2 In the Name of Terrorism
The events of September 11 have fundamentally transformed long-

standing debates about what constitutes a governmental overreaction to the
threat of international terrorism. On an empirical level, it is still true that
more Americans have died from crossing the street than from being victims
of terrorist attacks, that only six Americans have died as a result of chemical
or biological terrorism since 1900, and that no American has ever died from
an act of nuclear terrorism (Simon 107–08; Lluma 15). Still, memories of the
World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks have removed many doubts about
the destructive potential of America’s worst nightmare. Anthrax scares and
abandoned al Qaeda laboratories have compounded American’s feelings of
fear and insecurity, rendering worst-case scenarios about weapons of mass
destruction realistic probabilities in the public’s imagination. Relatively few
Americans would now agree with one scholar’s earlier conclusion that the
government’s response to terrorism is nothing more than a “an old and well-
tried trick to divert attention from economic and social problems to focus
attention on an ill-defined and frightening enemy” (Wardlaw 78).3 Security
from terrorism has become a primary concern, whether in conversations of
the mainstream public or in the deliberations of the political elite.
Those who focus on the comparatively small number of civilian casual-
ties to argue that the government’s response to terrorism is disproportionate
misunderstand the role that terrorism plays within American society. The
leadership does not calculate the magnitude of its response exclusively on the
nation’s actual or projected loss of life at the hands of terrorists. The threat
from terrorism appeals at a much more fundamental level. Terrorism func-
tions as a signifier of American identity, defining what the nation stands for
and against. The term divides those who are civilized from those who are
uncivilized, those who defend economic freedom from those who would
attack America’s way of life, and those who support democracy from those
who would disrupt it. Supporting the fight against terrorism enacts political
allegiance; resisting it opens one to charges of disloyalty.
Reconsider the nation’s response in the immediate aftermath of the
events of September 11. Calling for national unity in a televised speech the
day after the attacks, George W. Bush proclaimed: “Freedom and democracy
are under attack” (FDCH Transcripts 9/12/01). The nation rallied to support
the president. The members of a previously divided, partisan Congress
united, singing “God Bless America” on the steps of the Capitol Building
and passing a forty-billion dollar supplemental appropriations bill to aid in
the relief and response effort. Members of the public gave more than a bil-
lion dollars to the families of those killed in the tragic event. National polling
revealed an unprecedented ninety percent approval rating for Bush’s handling
of the crisis (qtd. in “Bush Best Pop in Poll” 21). American flag sales soared.
What’s in a Name? 3
The patriotic surge, made all the more palpable in the face of a danger-
ous, external threat to the nation, reflected the public’s heightened sense of
identification. Had the country been less unified, members of the public and
the media might reasonably have expected Bush to announce that he knew
who the perpetrators were before insisting that he knew why they acted.
Interviews conducted by the 9/11 Commission now reveal that while Bush
suspected al Qaeda as the perpetrators of the attack, he also considered Iraq
and Iran as potentially culpable parties (National Commission, Final Report
334).4 Instead of waiting until he knew who was responsible, Bush publicly
grouped all terrorists, including the perpetrators of 9/11, into a homogenous
collective characterized by opposition to fundamental American values. Bush
proclaimed that terrorists “have a common ideology . . . they hate freedom
and they hate freedom-loving people” (FDCH Transcripts 9/19/01). His
approach defined the clash as one between those who supported America’s
foundational principles and those who opposed them. Bush reaffirmed
America’s sense of self by defining the nation’s mission as the defender of
freedom around the globe.
The notion that depictions of the nation’s threats are integral to concep-
tions of American identity is not new. Noted language theorist Kenneth
Burke reminds us that within any social interaction, “identification is com-
pensatory with division” (On Symbols and Society 182). In the context of
international relations, David Campbell argues that representations of
danger are integral to the ever-evolving boundaries of a state’s identity (3).
Political scientist Murray Edelman explains why leaders define their enemies
not according to the harm that they do, but by the identifying function they
serve within the political process. He reasons,
In constructing such enemies and the narrative plots that define
their place in history, people are manifestly defining themselves
and their place in history as well; the self-definition lends passion
to the whole transaction. To support a war against a foreign
aggressor who threatens national sovereignty and moral decencies
is to construct oneself as a member of a nation of innocent heroes.
To define the people one hurts as evil is to define oneself as virtu-
ous. The narrative establishes the identities of enemy and victim-
savior by defining the latter as emerging from an innocent past and
as destined to bring about a brighter future world cleansed of the
contamination the enemy embodies. (76)
Such insights help explain the public’s reaction to Bush’s early remarks
about the terrorists of September 11. Bush’s claims about the terrorists’
motivations helped elevate a newly elected president into the natural leader
for those who identified with the cause of supporting freedom and democ-
racy around the globe.
PRESIDENTIAL DISCOURSE AND TERRORISM
This book explores the ways in which terrorism functions as a term of iden-
tity formulation within American society. It examines the public communi-
cation strategies of the executive branch of the US government since the end
of World War II. The choice to focus on the words of the presidents and
their executive branch surrogates is deliberate. The citizenry turns to the
president during times of national crisis. The public seeks understanding
regarding who is responsible for the attacks, why the nation has been
attacked, and what will be the most effective response. In the short run, the
public looks to the president for reassurance that the nation will again be
safe. Over the longer term, presidential discourse focuses attention on spe-
cific aspects of terrorism that warrant ongoing governmental concern.
The chief executive’s role as a key spokesperson on the international
stage magnifies the influence of presidential discourse about terrorism. Both
in public forums and in private correspondence with foreign leaders, the
president and his executive branch appointees select the aspects of the terror-
ism problem and the range of appropriate response options that will receive a
heightened focus. Such choices have international ramifications. American
presidential discourse has, at times, set the international standard for
responding to terrorism. Consider the prime minister of Israel’s public justi-
fication for air attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip
in December 2001. Echoing the Bush administration’s post–9/11 rhetoric,
Ariel Sharon proclaimed, “Just as the United States is conducting its war
against international terror, using all its might against terror, so will we, too”
(“Excerpts from Talk by Sharon” A8). Sharon followed Bush’s lead both in
his choice of a military response and in his strategy for justifying the decision
to the public.
To a large degree, the executive branch’s public terrorism strategy is
influential due to the institutional powers of the presidency. The constitu-
tional powers of the commander in chief, clarified and interpreted in the
War Powers Act, give presidents the right to engage military forces to
defend the nation against external attack (Keynes 1). Accordingly, the offices
primarily responsible for responding to terrorism all fall within the purview
of the chief executive. Examples include the Central Intelligence Agency, the
Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Office of Homeland Security, the
National Security Council, the State Department’s Office of Counter-terror-
ism, the Office of Public Diplomacy, and the Office of Diplomatic Security.
Besides these and other standing agencies, presidents have historically con-
structed small, ad hoc groups of trusted advisors to develop and implement
their responses to specific terrorist events (e.g., Jimmy Carter’s Special
Coordinating Committee during the Iranian hostage crisis and George
Bush’s Persian Gulf Working Group in response to Iraq’s 1990 invasion of
Kuwait). Taken together, groups constructed within the executive branch are
the principle source of policy initiatives and implementation in the terrorism
arena (Greenstein 3–4).
Not only do the executive agencies have institutional decision-making
authority over terrorism, they routinely have informational control over intel-
ligence related to the nature of the threat and the effectiveness of the nation’s
response. While the State Department does release an annual list of abbrevi-
ated descriptions of international terrorist acts, the bulk of information about
the attacks, the alleged perpetrators, and the government’s response remains
outside the public arena for extended periods. Even information related to
terrorist events that occurred more than two decades ago remains classified.
The power of the executive branch to control the bulk of the nation’s
terrorism information is unlikely to change. Historically, presidents have
argued to the public and to the courts alike that failure to grant them
exclusive access to certain information compromises the intelligence-gath-
ering capabilities of the government. Bill Clinton publicly refused to reveal
the evidence justifying his bombing of the Sudanese pharmaceutical plant
in August 1998 in the interest of protecting US intelligence methods;
George W. Bush offered a similar rationale for not initially releasing the
evidence regarding bin Laden’s involvement in the attacks of September
11, 2001. Bush further expanded presidential prerogatives over classified
materials by signing Section 3(d)2 of Executive Order 13233 on November
1, 2001 (“Executive Order”). The order permitted a sitting president to
withhold national security information, even in cases where former presi-
dents have authorized access to their own records. Senator Orrin Hatch’s
indiscreet mention of U.S. intercepts of Osama bin Laden’s satellite phone
conversations in the early days after September 11 may serve as a prototyp-
ical cautionary tale for future presidents willing to expand public informa-
tion about terrorism, given bin Laden’s immediate and highly publicized
shift to other modes of communication.4 The executive branch will unlikely
relinquish its hold on terrorism data, given the potential costs of having it
more widely disseminated.
With access to information about terrorism strictly limited, the executive
branch becomes the primary source of information for the media’s coverage
of terrorist events. Members of the American media have tended to reiterate
administration’s statements about terrorism, rather than present a balanced
presentation of competing perspectives. In a study of follow-up terrorism
stories in the New York Times written in the early 1990s, for example, Steven
Livingston concludes that government officials encouraged a selective inter-
pretation of terrorism that replicated and reinforced the State Department’s
official reports on terrorism. Competing viewpoints received far less press
attention. Livingston notes “officials and offices of ideological and/or foreign
policy adversaries of the United States” accounted for only five percent of the
references in the stories on terrorism (75). Embedded reporters in the recent
US war with Iraq have further reinforced the media’s reiteration of the
administration’s message. Positioned within military units outside of Iraqi
strongholds and subjected to American commanders’ prerogatives for selec-
tive news blackouts, field reporters presented news accounts generally consis-
tent with the administration’s public framework during the major combat
operations in Iraq.
The events of September 11 altered the relationship between the media
and official administration sources to some degree. Brigitte Nacos reveals
that US television networks mentioned bin Laden more frequently than they
did President Bush after the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks (41).
Nevertheless, she concludes that the executive branch still remained a power-
ful influence in media coverage. She points to Condoleezza Rice’s successful
plea to the networks to limit coverage of bin Laden’s threats against the
American people to avoid the incitement of more violence (48–49). She also
cites the media’s likening of George W. Bush’s address to the joint session
Congress to that of Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War and that of
Winston Churchill during World War II (50). Assessing media coverage
related to both bin Laden and the anthrax attacks, Nacos concludes, “In the
face of an ongoing terrorism crisis at home and a counterterrorism campaign
abroad, the mainstream watchdog press refrained from barking in the direc-
tion of public officials” (51).
Jarol B. Manheim studied why the media relies so heavily on official
sources. He concludes that a lack of direct access to foreign events, limits on
the media’s inclination to devote resources to foreign news reporting, and the
new era of instantaneous communications has made “the manipulation of the
news and public images of actors and events in foreign affairs actually more
likely to have an effect than it [would] in the domestic sphere (127). With
the media contributing to the issue agenda for the public at large, journalists’
continued reliance on governmental sources magnifies the importance of the
executive branch’s public terrorism strategy.
Compounding the influence of executive branch statements is the heavy
reliance on such sources by academic researchers. Joseba Zuliaka and
William A. Douglass dramatically critique the entire field of terrorism
research when they observe, “One characteristic of the work of terrorism
experts is the very prohibition upon personal discourse with their subjects.
Authors writing about terrorism must abide by this taboo. It is telling that
one can claim expertise regarding ‘terrorists’ without ever having seen or
talked to one” (179). Academics, shunning interviews with the terrorist
themselves, routinely turn to sources within the executive branch and admin-
istration databases as the foundation for their eventual findings. Prominent
scholars engaged in terrorism research have extensive connections with the
federal government and its attendant funding apparatuses (Collins 155–74).
Taken as a whole, the presidents’ institutional authority over terrorism,
access to classified information, and agenda-setting function for much of
academe and the media ensure that the discourse of the executive branch is
the single most vital source for understanding how terrorism functions
within American culture.
TERRORISM AND IDEOLOGY
Contemporary presidents evoke terrorism as a key component in their ideo-

logical formulations of the American culture, but the precise nature of that
role remains a subject of open debate. Some argue that terrorism is an ideol-
ogy in and of itself, masquerading as objective reality while “actually express-
ing the narrow interests of a dominant group” (Collins 157). Others deny
that terrorism qualifies, because the term “does not itself explain and evaluate
conditions or provide people with an orientation” (Ball and Dagger 8).
Evaluating the merit of these competing perspectives depends on one’s defi-
nition of ideology, itself a contested concept (Cormack 9–10; Williams
55–71; and McLellan 1–9).
I myself would argue that terrorism functions as a symbolic marker of
the culture that does not represent an ideology, in and of itself, because it
fails to evoke a coherent, positive orientation for members of the collective.
However, the term does perform ideological work within the culture. By
functioning as a recognized point of contrast, terrorism encompasses behav-
iors considered unacceptable for those belonging to American society. The
term’s adaptability of meaning and usage renders it a powerful tool for those
wishing to advance various ideological perspectives.
John Lucaites and Celeste Condit, both scholars in the field of commu-
nication, theorize the evolutionary process of language development associ-
ated with ideological orientations. For them, terms serving as cultural
markers must function as three distinct types of discourse units: namely,
labels, narratives, and ideographs (7–8). Given the centrality of these three
units to the transformation of terrorism’s cultural meaning, the remainder of
this section will elaborate the role each plays within a general communication
context and within the specific application to modern presidential discourse

about terrorism.
Labeling
Labels are linguistic terms used to describe agents, agencies, acts, scenes, or
purposes within the public vocabulary (Burke, A Grammar of Motives xv).
The process of labeling is not neutral. Each use of a term is a choice
(whether conscious or unconscious) that emphasizes certain aspects of what
is being described, while de-emphasizing others. “Wars of aggression” rather
than “wars of liberation,” “collateral damage” rather than “civilian casualties,”
and “prisoners of war” rather than “battlefield detainees” (to name but a few)
simultaneously highlight and obscure aspects of the referenced material cir-
cumstances. By happenstance or by design, labeling necessarily entails per-
spective taking.
This book examines the evolving perspectives of the terrorism label
within the public discourse of the executive branch since the end of World
War II. The study encompasses all material circumstances where the execu-
tive branch made more than one hundred public references to an event or
series of events as terrorism. The decision to focus on clustered references
rather than on more unique, isolated examples of the use of the terrorism
label stems from Burke’s insight that mundane repetition of key terms invites
an audience to associate with a particular ideological orientation (On Symbols
and Society 229).
A review of executive branch rhetoric since World War II reveals dra-
matic distinctions between clustered and isolated usages of the terrorism
label. On a few occasions, the nation’s leadership has used the word “terror-
ism” to describe agents as diverse as American college students, US World
War I veterans, a US senator, and members of the antiabortion movement.
Such cases, however, have been anomalies in the totality of presidential dis-
course. The clustered references emergent from the speeches of the executive
branch have highlighted extremist groups that influence foreign states
(Carter), state sponsors of terrorism (Reagan and George W. Bush), terrorist
states (both Bush administrations), nonstate terrorist actors (Clinton and
George W. Bush), and terrorist-sponsored states (George W. Bush).
When applying the terrorism label to actions, a full range of activities
has qualified for inclusion in the term’s meaning. The presidents have made
occasional mention of antiwar protests, computer hacking, domestic vio-
lence, protests against US governmental policies, and political disagreements
between presidential candidates at election time as terrorism. In their clus-
tered references, however, the nation’s leadership has tended to focus on
more extreme forms of violence. Examples have included acts of assassina-
tion, kidnapping, torture, hostage taking, bombing, foreign military aggres-

sion, and the use (or potential use) of weapons of mass destruction.
In public discussions of terrorist scenes, the presidents have historically
narrowed the range of possible locations worldwide. They make infrequent
mention of acts perpetrated within the borders of Europe, Africa, Central
and South America, or Australia. In their clustered references, the Middle
East has emerged as the dominant backdrop for terrorism since World War
II. Spectacular terrorist assaults in North America have also received
focused presidential attention (e.g., the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the
1996 Olympic bombing, the first World Trade Center bombing, and the
events of 9/11).
When members of the executive branch have used terrorism to depict
purpose in their public statements, they have generally erased the terrorists’
stated rationales (whether secular or religious) for their own behavior. Only
rarely do the presidents discuss jihad, revolution, retaliation, or other terrorist
causes. More regularly, the presidents have insisted that such enemies act out
of goals of regional/world domination or out of an ingrained hatred for
democratic ideals.
At times, the clustered events chosen for inclusion in this book may be
frustrating for the reader. Sensible observers could easily categorize the
events that contemporary presidents have labeled terrorism to be acts of war,
instances of nonterrorist political violence, or something else altogether.
Nevertheless, the choice to allow the presidents’ words to define what consti-
tutes terrorism is essential to understanding the ideological ramifications of
the cultural marker. As this book will illustrate, knowing the terrorist threat
as defined by the nation’s leaders helps illuminate the cultural boundaries of
American society.
Narratives
Serving as a label alone is insufficient to elevate terrorism into a language
marker of American culture. The term must also function within recurrent
societal narratives that provide meaning to the lives of the community’s
members. Narratives are public stories that provide coherence and consis-
tency to the scenes, characters, and themes that guide the moral conduct of a
society (Fisher 64–65). They structure the relationships between and among
various labels (Lucaites and Condit 8). Their meanings come, in part, from
the interrelationships that a given story has within the context of other narra-
tive accounts (Katriel and Shenhar 376). Narratives can provide justifications
to perpetuate the status quo or be compelling reasons for social change.
Narratives are critical to the formulation and reformulation of the multi-
ple levels of identity. Jürgen Habermas theorizes a complex interaction
between narratives and an individual’s identity. He argues that individuals

“can develop personal identities only if they recognize that the sequence of
their own actions form narratively presentable life histories; they can develop
social identities only if they recognize that they maintain their membership
in social groups by way of participating in interactions, and thus that they are
caught up in the narratively presentable history of collectivities. Collectivities
maintain their identities only to the extent that the ideas members have of
their lifeworld overlap sufficiently and condense into unproblematic back-
ground convictions” (136). At the personal, social and cultural level, narra-
tives function to integrate discrete aspects of an individual’s existence into a
coherent sense of identity.
Narratives also function to warrant and guide the behavior of individu-
als hoping to qualify as members of the collective. Maurice Charland offers
three ways that narratives help constitute collective publics (133–50). First,
narratives render collective subjects by demonstrating how, through the
story’s characters, members of the polity are supposed to believe and
behave to demonstrate community allegiance. Narratives define the atti-
tudes and actions characteristic both of the members and of the outcasts of
the collective.
Second, narratives transform individuals into transhistorical subjects.
Narratives identify what interpretations of historical events are relevant for
understanding the current opportunities and challenges of the community.
Not only do narratives select and emphasize certain salient events of the past;
they also reframe interpretations of past events in a manner consistent with
the moral force of the story.
Finally, narratives create an illusion of freedom for individuals function-
ing within the collective. Individuals believe that they are selecting the stories
that they will accept, the beliefs that they will cherish, and the behaviors that
they will practice as members of the culture. Once identification with the
narratives ensues, however, free choice becomes an illusion. The narrative
plotline defines what concerns are important and what public beliefs and acts
are appropriate. The scene of the narrative identifies the relevant elements of
the situation that should influence thought and action of the culture. Taken
together, Charland’s three insights into the functioning of narratives reveal
how the stories embodied within societal discourse help form the boundaries
of the culture.
Narratives are not static; they change over time. The process of narrative
evolution is complex and multifaceted. The public tends to cling to accepted
narrative accounts when other stories confront them directly (M. H. Ross).
Nonetheless, accepted societal narratives do change. Sometimes narratives
combine, as in the case of two or more stories being compatible and comple-
mentary with each other (Mink 142). At other times, the acceptance of one
narrative involves the rejection of the other (Bennett and Edelman 158).
Narratives must evolve or risk losing their definitional currency for the mem-
bers of the collective.
The use of narratives has been a recurrent quality of modern presidential
discourse about terrorism. The nation’s leadership has presented terrorism to
the public as a moral drama, pitting good against evil in an ongoing battle for
the survival of civilization itself. George W. Bush’s recent announcement of
America’s new war on terrorism has enhanced the likelihood that narratives
will play a central role within future presidential discourse on terrorism.
Narratives function at the level of a generic expectation for presidential war
discourse. They emerge as an anticipated element of war discourse because
they dramatically exhort a generally reluctant American public to favor the
use of military force (Campbell and Jamieson 107–11). With the United
States now involved in a long-term war against terrorists, narratives will
likely play a central role in the future terrorism discourse of the presidency.
Presidents since the end of World War II have used the terrorism label
within a diverse set of societal narratives already familiar to American audi-
ences from other contexts. Notably, the presidents have borrowed narratives
from literature, religion, military affairs, and American history to develop
their public communication strategies about terrorism. These seemingly
diverse narratives have relied on similar themes and characterizations that
have contributed a consistency and cogency to US discourse about terrorism
throughout the contemporary period.
Modern US terrorist narratives have displayed one key difference trace-
able to the unique approaches of the two political parties. The point of clash
mirrors a long-standing debate in scholarly terrorism circles: whether crime
or war constitutes the most appropriate metaphor to apply to the unconven-
tional violence of terrorism. Democratic administrations have focused on
narratives that feature crime as the predominant theme since the end of the
Vietnam War; Republican administrations have relied on stories that
borrow heavily from US war narratives. Despite the dominance of one
metaphor within each of the two parties’ narratives, both groups have
resisted an exclusive focus on either crime or war. Neither party has been
willing to cede to their opponents complete linguistic control over the two
dominant terrorism metaphors. Nonetheless, the decision to focus on crime
or war as the featured element of the narrative does have ideological implica-
tions for American society, as the next section will preview.
Ideographs
Terrorism, like all labels recurrent in society’s dominant narratives, must
function as an ideograph to constitute a defining cultural term. Ideographs
are collective terms of political allegiance that embody a society’s ideals.

Michael McGee, the originator of the concept, defines an ideograph as a
“one-term sum of an orientation, the species of ‘God’ or ‘Ultimate’ term that
will be used to symbolize the line of argument the meanest sort of individual
would pursue if that individual had the dialectical skills of philosophers, as a
defense of a personal stake in and commitment to the society” (7).
Ideographs “typically serve as the primary purpose term” (Lucaites and
Condit 8) for the central narratives of a culture. They define the foundational
values that serve as the basis of a culture’s identity. Equality, justice, and lib-
erty are examples operating within the American culture.5
Ideographs are not limited to ideal cultural values; they also include
terms that define the society through negation. To know what a culture is
requires an understanding of what it is not. Negative ideographs contribute
to our collective identity by branding behavior that is unacceptable (McGee
15). American society defines itself as much by its opposition to tyranny and
slavery as it does by a commitment to liberty and equality. Nevertheless, the
few studies that do mention negative ideographs limit their discussion to the
antithetical relationship such terms have with a culture’s foundational values.
Most prevalent is the observation that terrorism frequently functions in
opposition to freedom and democracy (Parry-Giles 191; and Railsback 412).
A brief synopsis of the four defining characteristics of ideographs reveals
that terrorism currently functions to define American culture through nega-
tion. The first definitional element of an ideograph is that it must be “an
ordinary language term found in political discourse” (McGee 15). If a partic-
ular term gains usage only in conversations of the political elite, it lacks the
persuasive impact needed for the broader audience that identifies itself with
the culture. To perform ideological work for the culture, the term must
“come to be part of the real lives of the people whose motives they articulate”
(7). It must be readily available for use by members of the collective.
Certainly, terrorism has qualified as a common term of political dis-
course. It has been the subject of thousands of presidential addresses and
scholarly books. It has been the topic of blockbuster movies (e.g., Die Hard,
Air Force One, and The Negotiator) and, since September 11, the repeated
subject of both print and television advertisements. Political cartoonists have
capitalized on the term’s currency with the public, as have those who are in
the business of selling patriotic memorabilia. Terrorism’s recent impact on
the stock market, unemployment, and airport security increase the likelihood
that rank-and-file citizens will be using the term in their political discourse
into the foreseeable future.
The second characteristic of the ideograph is that the term must be “a
high order abstraction representing collective commitment to a particular but
equivocal and ill-defined normative goal” (McGee 15). To function as a
marker for the culture, a label must be capable of an expansive range of pos-
sible applications. If a term’s meaning is constrained to a particular set of cir-
cumstances, it lacks the transcendent character necessary to encompass and
appeal to a broad cultural audience that includes diverse subgroups. Cultural
markers must be flexible, permitting shifts over time in the perspectives of
those who define themselves to be members of the in-group. Elasticity of the
term’s meaning allows for renewed and reaffirmed interpretations for a
group’s identity.
By virtually all accounts, terrorism has been such a flexible term. It has
defied concrete definition. Rarely has a book on the subject failed to bemoan
the plethora of definitions used by government officials, scholars, and the
media. A sampling of scholarly opinion about terrorism exposes the futility
of striving for a consensus definition of the term:
• “Encapsulating terrorism in all its varieties could require upwards of
fifty distinct attributes, potentially yielding an unworkable million
different combinations.” (Weimann and Winn 25)
• “Terrorism can mean just what those who use the term (not the ter-
rorists) want it to mean.” (Jenkins 1–2)
• Terrorism “resembles pornography, difficult to describe and define,
but easy to recognize when one sees it.” (Laqueur, “Reflections on
Terrorism” 381)
• Terrorism is “a catch-all pejorative, applied mainly to matters
involving force or political authority in some way but sometimes
applied even more broadly to just about any disliked action associ-
ated with someone else’s policy agenda.” (Pillar 12)
• In the context of terrorism, there are “especially strong reasons for
avoiding the excessive preoccupations with definitions.” (Roberts 9)
The flexible application of the terrorism label has been precisely what has
allowed it to remain a resonant indicator of identity for an ever-evolving
American society. Its elasticity of meaning has permitted the term to adapt
to changes in the international context. Early on, terrorism referred to violence
committed by the state (i.e., during the Reign of Terror in the French
Revolution). Modern-day interpretations of the term have not abandoned its
historical meaning, as presidential references to state-sponsored terrorism
attest. At the same time, however, the nation’s leadership has applied the term
to the very antithesis of its earlier meaning. Now terrorism involves not only
politically motivated violence by the state, but also that carried out by individu-
als or groups against the state. Any act of violence carried out for any reason by
any group or individual can conceivably qualify as an act of terrorism.
As with other ideographs, the lack of clear goals related to terrorism has
not prevented the term from prompting the collective commitment of the
American public. The US citizenry has proven time and again its willingness
to unite behind military actions targeting terrorist activity. US retaliatory
bombings in Libya, Afghanistan, the Sudan, and Iraq have garnered the
overwhelming support of the public.6 Even the failed rescue mission in
Tehran in 1980 attracted public support, because it demonstrated the Carter
administration’s willingness to do something to end the hostages’ confine-
ment.7 The widespread presence of yellow (or now red, white, and blue) rib-
bons, candles, American flags, and chants of “USA” at sporting events have
been signs of the unity of the US commitment in the fight against terrorism.
The third characteristic of the ideograph is that it “warrants the use of
power, excuses behavior and belief which might otherwise be perceived as
eccentric or antisocial, and guides behavior and belief into channels easily
recognized by a community as acceptable and laudable” (McGee 15). The
public accepts extreme measures due to a belief that a threat exists to the
continued existence of the culture. Ideographs evoke an “end justifies the
means” approach, initially compromising the very foundational values that
America is ultimately fighting to protect.
Even a cursory review of presidential actions in response to terrorism
reveals that the term has justified response measures that the American
public would not ordinarily accept from its leadership. The opening of this
book details several of the actions that presidents have employed in order to
defend the nation against terrorism. Others include asset forfeiture, govern-
mental monitoring of library records and computer usage, temporary suspen-
sion of the freedom to associate, revocation of a suspect’s ability to speak to
an attorney in private, and the calculated risk of losing critical foreign
alliances. Increasingly, civil liberties have lost their sacred status within
American society as the public has felt increasingly at risk from terrorism.
The final characteristic of the ideograph is that the term’s meaning is
culture-bound. Members within the society are socialized or conditioned to
the vocabulary of ideographs “as a prerequisite for ‘belonging’ to the society”
(McGee 15). A willingness to accept a given interpretation of the term
becomes a virtual litmus test for membership within the collective.
Perhaps no phrase better illustrates the cultural nature of the terrorism
definition more than the oft-repeated statement that “one man’s terrorist is
another man’s freedom fighter.” In the 1970s the Ayatollah Khomeini was a
powerful religious leader to one culture, while qualifying to another as a
despicable zealot who enabled kidnappers of diplomatic personnel. In the
1980s the Contras were alternatively depicted as a critical insurgency group
bent on bringing freedom to an oppressed nation or as a lawless group of ter-
rorists who raped, kidnapped, and tortured the civilian population of
Nicaragua. By the 1990s Osama bin Laden was either the mastermind of a
brutal international terrorist network or a leader of a righteous jihad,
depending on one’s cultural perspective.
In the aftermath of the attacks of September 11, public rejection of the
maxim that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” has
become increasingly commonplace. A number of government officials have
denounced the view that the definition of terrorism depends on one’s cultural
orientation. Given the rise in patriotism associated with the tragedies at the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon, such opinions should not be surpris-
ing. The inclination to see one’s own cultural perspective as the only inter-
pretation reflects how embedded the term has become within America’s
definition of itself. Attacked and vulnerable, the nation has less tolerance for
dissension and competing views. Just as antiwar sentiments prompted accu-
sations of anti-Americanism during the Vietnam War, acknowledgment of
cultural differences about terrorism in the aftermath of 9/11 has constituted
an act of collective betrayal for some.
Having met the four definitional requirements, terrorism constitutes an
ideograph for American culture. It is a cultural-bound, abstract term of ordi-
nary political discourse that warrants the use of power in ways the public has
normally considered unacceptable. Like all conceptions of collective identity,
ideographs do change. Over time, the meaning of any specific ideograph
both expands and contracts in response to changing circumstances. To
understand the progressions of terrorism as a contemporary ideograph, this
book will explore the shifts of the term’s meaning since the end of World
War II. The meaning of ideographs also changes due to interactions with
other slogans characteristic of collective life (McGee 10-14). As this book
will demonstrate, terrorism’s recurrent pairing with terms such as “piracy,”
“barbarism,” “tyranny,” “slavery,” “Nazism,” and “Communism” has all con-
tributed to the term’s meaning.
Administrative choices related to terrorism have ideological implications
for American culture. The flexible application of the terrorist label gives the
nation’s leadership substantial freedom in defining the acts, agents, agencies,
purposes, and scenes that will fall outside the boundaries of the culture. The
terrorist label encompasses a plethora of potential outcasts, making it a pow-
erful linguistic option for those who would employ it.
For administrations that focus on crime as the featured element of their
terrorism narratives, the ideological force of the term is comparatively small.
The primary reason is that conventional responses to crime concentrate on
the individual. Is the person guilty or innocent? Has the individual received
proper due process? If punishment is warranted, is it consistent with the mit-
igating circumstances of the individual’s life history? The crime metaphor’s
focus on the individual undercuts the totalizing impulse of ideology. Were an
administration to assign guilt to an entire group or class of individuals, they

would expose themselves to charges of racial profiling or judicial unfairness.
The war narrative, by contrast, invites the public to embrace an ideolog-
ical perspective related to the conflict. The culture is under attack, not from
an individual as the crime narrative would portend, but from a menacing
group that threatens the continued existence of America’s cherished values.
The evocation of ideological discourse, which in turn prompts the nation’s
rank-and-file to accept new powers and prerogatives for their leadership,
leads to a spiral of events that gives impulse to cultural warfare.
2
The Vietnam War and the

Communist Terrorists
T errorism was commonplace in South Vietnam beginning as early as the

1950s. Targets included local political figures, province chiefs, teachers,
nurses, doctors, military personnel, and others who supported the nation’s
infrastructure. From 1965 through 1972, terrorists killed more than thirty-
three thousand South Vietnamese and abducted another fifty-seven thousand
of them. By 1971, one of every one thousand South Vietnamese had become
a reported victim of terrorism (Thayer 50–51). The assassination rate in
South Vietnam (a figure included in official US terrorism counts) was
approximately “50 percent higher than the murder rates of the three worst
U.S. cities” (“Terrorism in South Vietnam” 15).
The Vietnam War was the first incident in the post–World War II era to
prompt more than one hundred presidential speeches addressing the topic of
terrorism. While the labeling strategy of the United States evolved over time,
each of the related administrations linked terrorism and Communism as paired
threats to American interests in the region. To reinforce the association, each
relied on the conventional Cold War narrative to publicly frame acts of terror-
ism during the war. The approach recalled the nation’s war history by mapping
the terrorist tactics of the Nazis during World War II onto the Communists in
Vietnam. As this chapter will discuss, the strategy functioned differently for
the US audience than it did for the South Vietnamese populace. Despite the
distinctive reactions, the leadership of the United States came to understand
that, within certain contexts, terrorism could function as a powerful cultural
term capable of uniting the rank-and-file citizenry of a nation.
LABELING THE THREAT
The Kennedy administration was the first to employ terrorism as a

public justification for American involvement in the Vietnam War.
17
Spokespersons depicted the Viet Cong as “Communists” and “terrorists”

interchangeably. Early in 1961, Secretary of State Dean Rusk demonstrated
the approach by grouping the two as members of a homogeneous collective:
“During 1960 alone, Communist armed units and terrorists assassinated or
kidnapped over 3,000 local officials, military personnel, and civilians” (757).
Kennedy comingled the two labels further by creating a linguistic merger
reminiscent of the “Nazi terrorists” of World War II. In an open letter to
President Diem of South Vietnam, Kennedy applauded the people of South
Vietnam for their refusal to submit to “Communist terror” (Kennedy 680). By
coupling terrorism and Communism into a companion phrase, the Kennedy
administration merged the tactics of terrorism with the ideological objectives
of Communist powers. Kennedy’s call for an international “truce to terror”
(619) before the 1961 General Assembly of the United Nations thereby
became a warrant for nourishing democratic nations around the globe.
Despite having originated the phrase, the Kennedy administration’s
actual use of “Communist terror” to describe events in Vietnam was infre-
quent. Kennedy referenced the merger only three times, and US State
Department officials limited their public usage of the terms to about a dozen
instances. The Kennedy administration, having committed military advisors
to a conflict considered by many Americans to be a foreign matter, was cir-
cumspect in its public discussions of Viet Cong terrorism.
When Lyndon Johnson assumed the presidency, he abandoned his pre-
decessor’s reticence about discussing terrorism in official public statements
about the war. He did so on the advice of his foreign policy advisors.
Johnson’s aides were concerned about terrorism’s potential to have a disas-
trous impact on the outcome of the Vietnam conflict. The American ambas-
sador to Vietnam, Henry Cabot Lodge, told Johnson in June 1966 that the
North Vietnamese believed they could win in South Vietnam “as long as they
[could] do so well with local terrorism” (Memo to President 160), and a
month later noted that they considered proficiency at terrorism to be “their
ace in the hole” (Telegram [27 July] 193). By August 1966, Lodge called ter-
rorism a “time tested traditional Viet Cong weapon” (Telegram [10 August]
208), and followed up in November the same year by noting that terrorism
was “the heart of the matter in the war in Viet-Nam” (Letter 294). For key
members of the administration, terrorism was not a peripheral issue; it func-
tioned as a primary matter that could determine the war’s outcome.
Johnson’s aides gave many reasons for their concern about terrorism in
South Vietnam. A primary one was that their belief that terrorism correlated
with the expanding size of the enemy. US Embassy officials in South
Vietnam argued that the Viet Cong’s ability to recruit was a direct result of
coercion and terrorism (Nolting 152). They also worried that terrorism was
sapping the strength of the South Vietnamese and their willingness to fight.
The Vietnam War and the Communist Terrorists 19
Director of Central Intelligence John McCone maintained the campaign of

Viet Cong terrorism was having a demoralizing impact on the South
Vietnamese government (368). Internal concerns mounted to such a point
that aides even resisted the option of an early bombing campaign in North
Vietnam, fearing it would spawn increased terrorist assaults by the Viet Cong
against the South Vietnamese (M. Taylor 425). In a variety of ways, the
enemy’s successful campaign of terrorism appeared to be undermining the
US military effort in Vietnam.
The Johnson administration translated its private concerns about terror-
ism into a public campaign of linking the terrorist label to the Communist
threat. By early 1964, the Johnson team had adopted the Kennedy strategy.
A White House statement announced, “It will remain the policy of the
United States to furnish assistance and support to South Viet-Nam for as
long as it is required to bring Communist aggression and terrorism under
control” (L. B. Johnson, Public Papers, 1963–1964 388). The repeated use of
the association throughout Johnson’s tenure underscored the central theme:
terrorism and Communism were to be indistinguishable concepts in the
American popular psyche.
For the Johnson administration, the terrorism label functioned more to
delineate the agents who conducted violent acts than it did to parse the spe-
cific nature of their activities. The resulting double standard allowed
American soldiers to commit essentially the same acts that qualified as Viet
Cong terrorism in official US counts. When the Viet Cong attacked popula-
tion centers in South Vietnam, for example, administration officials referred
to the actions as an intentional, systematic campaign of terrorism; when the
United States targeted Haiphong power plants in North Vietnam and killed
large numbers of civilians, administration officials portrayed the action as an
unfortunate case of unintended collateral damage.
Another example of the selective application of the terrorism label
involved US Op 39, also named Sacred Sword of the Patriots League
(SSPL). The Studies and Operations Group (SOG) of the Military
Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) conducted the covert psychologi-
cal operation beginning in the mid-1960s. The operation’s purpose was to
create “in the minds of the North Vietnamese a fabricated resistance organi-
zation” (Schultz 139). The administration wanted the North Vietnamese to
believe that the Vietnamese citizenry had established an effective resistance
organization, but did not want to assume the risks of an actual oppositional
movement. It achieved both purposes by approving an act of covert decep-
tion, while prohibiting SOG from actually liberating any North Vietnamese
territory (138).
Operating within the leadership’s constraints, SOG created a mock
North Vietnamese fishing village on the island of Cu Lao Cham (also known
as Paradise Island), located south of the 17th parallel. Beginning in May

1964, SOG used unmarked gunboats manned with Vietnamese speakers to
abduct more than one thousand North Vietnamese fishermen and bring
them to the island. En route, SOG operatives bound, blindfolded, and
placed the fisherman below deck in an effort to confuse them into believing
they were still in North Vietnam. Many detainees faced trial, conviction, and
death sentences from SSPL “courts” after arriving on Cu Lao Cham. The
detainees, subsequently offered clemency for their allegiance to SSPL,
“chose” to participate in a three-week indoctrination program about the goals
of the resistance organization. They received high-calorie food and needed
medical care so that upon their return, other North Vietnamese would wit-
ness the benefits of “joining” the resistance movement (Schultz 146–47).
Had the kidnappings of Op 39 been carried out by the Viet Cong, they
would have fallen within the official count of terrorist atrocities; when con-
ducted by US forces, they qualified as covert military tactics necessary to
achieve success in the overall war effort.
Perhaps the most infamous example of the Johnson administration’s
selective use of the terrorism label involved the Phoenix Project. The CIA
officially began the program in July 1968 and continued it in various config-
urations until 1972. The main objective of the project was to undermine and
destroy the political infrastructure of the Viet Cong through acts of intimi-
dation, torture, kidnapping, and killing (Dunnigan and Nofi 195). In form,
it was not unlike the North Vietnamese strategy of sending guerilla forces
into South Vietnam to assassinate critical personnel, an approach US officials
insisted was terrorism (Bernstein 335). Phoenix operatives dramatically
affected 65,000 Viet Cong throughout the war, including 20,000 killed,
28,000 captured, and 17,000 turned (Dunnigan and Nofi 196). As one
Johnson biographer surmised, “Sometimes the Viet Cong would have to kill
a few villagers to make their point, and after a time, profiting from their
lesson, the generous Americans had to do that, too” (M. Miller 466).
The Nixon administration was more circumspect than the Johnson
administration in its usage of the Communist terrorist label. It adopted a
dual approach for public discussions of terrorism during the war: one for
Nixon himself and another for his aides. In his own public statements, Nixon
generally refrained from labeling the actions of the Viet Cong or the North
Vietnamese as terrorism. He depicted Communist acts as aggression, rather
than as terrorism. At home, Nixon announced his 1972 decision to adopt a
less inflammatory, more conciliatory approach, claiming he was exercising “a
degree of restraint unprecedented in the annals of war” (Public Papers, 1972
585). By adopting such a posture, he portrayed himself as the best hope for
peace in Southeast Asia.
Somewhat ironic within such a rhetorical context was Nixon’s use of the
most inflammatory terrorism analogy of all US leaders during the Vietnam
War era. Speaking to the nation in 1969, he compared the actions of the
Communists in South Vietnam to those of the French revolutionaries during
the 1793–94 Reign of Terror (Public Papers, 1969 902). By recalling one of
the most heinous periods of state terror in history, one in which 40,000
French citizens received death sentences for alleged disloyalty to the state
(Fromkin 684), Nixon suggested the North Vietnamese had placed the
Vietnamese people themselves at risk for attempting to exercise their own
rights of self-determination.
Nixon’s executive branch surrogates publicly countered his own posture
of conciliation. The State Department’s diplomats, seeking concessions that
would leave the United States a dignified exit from the conflict, adopted a
more assertive, confrontational approach. The officials made explicit and
repeated reference to Viet Cong terrorism at the Paris peace talks. In an
opening statement at the 15th Plenary Session on Viet-Nam, for example,
Ambassador Lodge reminded the world community, the Viet Cong “assassi-
nate village and hamlet officials who are duly elected by the people. Each day
innocent civilians die because of [the Viet Cong’s] tactics of terror and vio-
lence” (419). The pointed reference to Viet Cong involvement with terrorism
became a mainstay of each Paris session held to resolve the conflict.
Besides adopting a bifurcated public strategy within his administration,
Nixon strayed from the public communication strategies of his predecessors
by expanding the definition of who qualified as a terrorist. Unwilling to
restrict the label’s application to the nation’s enemies abroad, Nixon used the
term “terrorism” to depict the actions of American students protesting his
administration’s war policies. He was particularly inclined to do so when
speaking on the record, but without the benefit of a prepared statement. In
one 1970 incident, a reporter asked him whether he wished to rethink his
earlier reference to Americans opposing the Vietnam War as “bums.” Nixon
declined, offering the explanation, “[. . .] when students on university cam-
puses burn buildings, when they engage in violence, when they break up fur-
niture, when they terrorize their fellow students and terrorize the faculty,
then I think ‘bums’ is perhaps too kind a word to apply to that kind of
person” (Public Papers, 1970 417). Nixon became more strident after protest-
ers struck his presidential motorcade with rocks following his speech in San
Jose, California, during the 1970 congressional campaigns. Noticeably irri-
tated, he urged the nation to seek solutions to the “violence and terrorism by
the radical antidemocratic elements in our society” (1027). For Nixon, ter-
rorists encompassed a broad range of individuals who opposed his adminis-
tration’s policies, both at home and abroad.
The three administrations involved in the US labeling strategy during

the Vietnam War forecast much of what was to come. They demonstrated
that who qualified as terrorists was a matter of interpretation—indeed, one
that could benefit both the United States as a whole and the political party
in power. Further, the term’s flexible meaning allowed for an easy merger
with other terms of enmity already carrying persuasive force with the
American public. The merger with Communism heightened the ideological
function of the terrorist label. In an effort that reinforced the connection,
the US leadership relied on the Cold War narrative to frame the events of
the Vietnam War.
THE TERRORIST NARRATIVE IN THE VIETNAM WAR
For more than four decades, the Cold War dominated American foreign
policy. The Cold War was unique within the history of US warfare, given its
primary reliance on rhetorically constituted, imagined threats all falling
within the framework of what the Soviet Union might do next (Medhurst,
“Rhetoric and Cold War” 19-21). Not tied to a single, provocative act of vio-
lence, the Cold War provided a framework whereby successive administra-
tions renegotiated the global power relationships in the post–World War II
era. Communication scholars analyzing the Cold War campaign argue that
such rhetoric had two primary purposes: to foster the strategic interests of
the two military superpowers and to avoid nuclear war in the process
(Medhurst, “Rhetoric and Cold War” 19–27; Scott 1–16; Hinds and Windt;
Newman 55–94; Cragan 47–66).
The Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations borrowed heavily
from Cold War discourse to depict the scene, characters, and themes of the
Vietnam War. Coming off the Korean conflict, the presidents could apply
the Cold War narrative as a well-rehearsed public framework for under-
standing the events in Vietnam. The approach transformed a conflict of
remote interest to most Americans into a resonant battleground in the ongo-
ing, worldwide struggle between democracy and Communism.
Rhetorical theorists maintain that the essence of the Cold War narra-
tive, including its scene, characters, and themes, recurs predictably in the
public discourse of the presidency (Medhurst, “Rhetoric and Cold War” 26;
Scott 11–13). Conventional cold warriors locate the scene of their narrative
in the newly free nations around the globe. They argue that the defeat of fas-
cism coming at the end of World War II left many nations on the precipice
of enhanced freedom and liberty. More uncertain was whether those same
nations could nurture their newly acquired freedoms into full-fledge democ-
ratic regimes, with the attendant rights and privileges of self-determination.
Robert Ivie’s analysis of Vietnam War metaphors illuminates the conven-

tional setting found in the Cold War narrative: “Cold War rhetors talk vari-
ously of the beacon of liberty as a flickering flame, freedom as a frail body
threatened by the cancer of Communism, as a defenseless quarry set upon by
relentless predators, and so on” (75). In the Cold War narrative, the depicted
scene is precarious, requiring a strong commitment by both the United
States and the emerging democratic nation to bring the promise of self-
determination to fruition.
In presidential discourse focusing on terrorism in Vietnam, South
Vietnam functioned as the emerging democracy that required assistance to
ensure its own freedom. The administration depicted South Vietnam,
attacked by forces outside its own border, as having no realistic hope of
defending itself without US military assistance. As Johnson reasoned in
1965, “Most of the non-Communist nations of Asia cannot, by themselves
and alone, resist the growing might and the grasping ambition of Asian
communism” (Public Papers, 1965 794). Even when Nixon touted Vietna-
mization (his policy requiring South Vietnam to become increasingly respon-
sible for its own defense), he portrayed South Vietnam as incapable of
mounting an effective indigenous defense. In 1969, he placed the blame for
that situation on the Johnson administration: “The policy of the previous
administration [. . .] did not adequately stress the goal of strengthening the
South Vietnamese so that they could defend themselves when we left”
(Public Papers, 1969 906). Throughout the years of American involvement in
the conflict, administration rhetoric portrayed South Vietnam as a fragile
democracy requiring external assistance to protect its commitment to emerg-
ing freedom and liberty.
As the Vietnam War entered its second decade, the Nixon administra-
tion’s narrative expanded the scope of fragile freedom beyond South
Vietnam. Advocating what became to be known as the domino theory,
Nixon maintained that other fledgling democracies also would be at risk
should South Vietnam fall to the Communists. He reasoned an immediate
American pullout of forces would be a mistake, for it would set the stage for
increased aggression worldwide. In 1972, he warned, “[A]bandoning our
commitment in Vietnam here and now would mean turning 17 million
South Vietnamese over to Communist tyranny and terror. [. . .] An Ameri-
can defeat in Vietnam would encourage this kind of aggression all over the
world, aggression in which smaller nations armed by their major allies could
be tempted to attack neighboring nations at will in the Mideast, in Europe,
and other areas. World peace would be in grave jeopardy” (Public Papers,
1972 584). Expanding the scope of vulnerable democracies beyond Southeast
Asia, the administration’s narrative heightened the need to attend urgently to
the scene.
Conventional cold warriors depict Communists as the characters who

threaten the fragile scene of emerging peace and freedom around the globe.
Within such portrayals Communist motivations are always destructive.
Likened to Hitler’s fascists, Communists seek to impose totalitarian rule on
the objects of their triumphs as a necessary first step toward the ultimate
goal of worldwide conquest (Cragan 52). Within this perspective
Communists are willing to rely on ruthless and barbaric means to achieve
their expansive, destructive objectives (D. Campbell 15–33). The acts of
savagery of Communists lie in sharp contrast with the behavior of the rest
of the civilized world.
In the Vietnam narrative, it was the Viet Cong, supported by the North
Vietnamese and the Communist Chinese, who sought to destroy the non-
Communist government of South Vietnam. The Kennedy administration
insisted that North Vietnam, fearful of unfavorable comparisons between the
growing economy of South Vietnam and its own languishing economy under
a Communist dictatorship, used terror to reverse the economic and educa-
tional advances of South Vietnam. In his open letter to the president of
South Vietnam, Kennedy applauded South Vietnam’s rice exports, new hos-
pitals, improved roads, and new schools, while chiding the perversity of the
North Vietnamese government for wanting to undermine those very achieve-
ments. He told the people of South Vietnam, “The Communist response to
the growing strength and prosperity of your people was to send terror into
your villages, to burn your new schools and to make ambushes of your new
roads” (680). From Kennedy’s public perspective, the Communists hoped to
dupe fragile democracies into changing their political allegiance by under-
mining the advances of democratic societies.
The presidents in the Vietnam era insisted the Communist alliance
sought to enslave the South Vietnamese citizenry. Administration accounts
emphasized the Communist’s intention to deny the South Vietnamese their
rights of self-determination. Their public statements paired “Communism”
with terms of domination such as “aggression,” “Communist slavery,”
“Communist masters,” “dictatorial control,” “tyranny,” “totalitarianism,” and
“dictatorship.” Within the administrations’ frame, the citizenry of South
Vietnam had no hope of determining their destiny under Communist rule.
The Communists’ thirst for domination was not limited to South
Vietnam. Roger Hilsman, the assistant secretary for Far Eastern affairs,
introduced the theme of world conquest to the 1963 Conference on Cold
War Education, when he stated, “ [T]he aim of the Chinese Communist is
to gain predominant control in Asia and eventually to secure the establish-
ment of Communist regimes throughout the world” (44). The Johnson
administration warned that South Vietnam was critical to the Communist
belief they could actually achieve world domination. Public officials argued
that the Chinese would use a Communist success in Vietnam to demonstrate

to the Soviet Union that wars of liberation could be fought and won around
the globe (see McNamara, “United States Policy in Viet-Nam” 562–70). The
potential threat posed by a joint Sino-Soviet enemy elevated the importance
of defeating the Viet Cong in South Vietnam.
Having rendered all Communists both in and outside North Vietnam as
united in wanting to achieve world conquest, the Vietnam narrative depicted
the enemy’s means in a similarly homogenous fashion. The nation’s leader-
ship maintained that North Vietnam and all of its surrogate forces planned
to engage in a “war of unparalleled brutality” (L. B. Johnson, Public Papers,
1966 394), because they could not defeat the combined forces fighting for
South Vietnam in a traditional military confrontation. The presidents and
their State Department officials cataloged assassinations, kidnappings, stran-
gulations, harassment, and destruction of civilian property as the common-
place and unconventional tactics of the Viet Cong. The enemy’s barbarity
served not only to vilify the Communist Party, but became the public ratio-
nale for why US troops had to resort to unconventional methods themselves.
The targets of Viet Cong terrorism contributed to the image of
Communist barbarity. Victims included schoolteachers, local chiefs, and
medical personnel. The Viet Cong also attacked roads and communication
systems. Such targets were critical components of the societal infrastructure
that, when disrupted, raised doubts about the effectiveness of the South
Vietnamese government. In 1967, Lyndon Johnson warned of the conse-
quences if the terrorist’s strategy succeeded: “The terrorist knows that if he
can break down this fabric of community life, then he is well on his way to
conquest” (Public Papers, 1967 1235). The narrative portrayed terrorists as
threatening civilization both through their targets and their violent methods.
Finally, the discourse of the US government maintained the
Communist alliance of the Viet Cong, the Communist Chinese, and the
North Vietnamese was not to be trusted. Administration spokespersons cat-
aloged historical instances of the Communists’ false promises to reinforce
the dishonesty theme: the Communists conducted campaigns of terrorism
against the citizenry in secret; they attempted to hide those who were
directing, supplying, and supporting their efforts; they violated their com-
mitments codified into the Geneva Accords of 1954 and 1962; they repeat-
edly changed their requirements for negotiating a peaceful settlement to the
conflict; and they set up phony organizations, such as the National
Liberation Front (NLF), to make the conflict in Vietnam appear to be civil
war. The US State Department’s own white paper, “Aggression from the
North,” emphasized the sharp divisions between appearance and reality
associated with the Communist threat. The report was unequivocal in its
conclusions regarding Communist duplicity: “The National Front for the
Liberation of South Viet-Nam is the screen behind which the Communists

carry out their program of conquest” (422). If the Communists could be suc-
cessfully cast as untrustworthy, any claims the opposition might make
regarding their limited objectives, justified means, or constructive outcomes
for South Vietnam became presumptively false.
For conventional cold warriors, a strong national character is essential
for an effective response to the Communist threat. Rhetorical analysts main-
tain that America, as the narrative’s hero, adopts the persona of a missionary
for freedom within the narrative (Wander 153–83). Cold War discourse is
steeped in religious references, presenting America as righteous and commit-
ted to the sacred cause of freedom (Cragan 58). Communication scholar
Phillip Wander dubs the approach “prophetic dualism,” (157) and explains it
this way: “One side acts in accord with all that is good, decent, and at one
with God’s will. The other acts in direct opposition. Conflict between them
is resolved only through the total victory of one side over the other” (ibid.).
As missionary for the divine, the United States acts not only to assist those
countries too weak to defend themselves, but also to liberate itself. America
becomes the hero who can “barely tolerate and no long endure a world that
was half free and half slave” (Cragan 62). For good to triumph over evil in
accordance with God’s will, the US government cannot act alone; the public
must also have faith in the American cause (58).
Consistent with Cold War expectations, then, the United States
assumed the role of missionary for freedom in the Vietnam War narrative.
Politically, the United States sought elections free from terror that would
permit the South Vietnamese people to exercise their rights of self-determi-
nation. Terms such as “freedom,” “justice,” “fairness,” “independence,” and
“self-determination” pervaded the discourse. In 1965, Johnson made the
political goals of the United States explicit when he announced, “[W]e insist
and we will always insist that the people of South Viet-Nam shall have the
right of choice, the right to shape their own destiny in free elections in the
South and throughout all Viet-Nam under international supervision, and
they shall not have any government imposed upon them by force and terror
as long as we can prevent it” (Public Papers, 1965 796–97). Committed to
freedom and the right of self-determination, the United States stood rhetor-
ically as a strong counterbalance to the communist menace.
In the economic arena, the narrative presented the United States as
committed to increasing the prosperity of the people of Vietnam. Goals of
progress, human welfare, economic growth, rural development, and educa-
tion were recurrent themes throughout administration discourse. The United
States was both willing and able to expend significant resources to ensure the
economic growth necessary to stabilize Vietnam. Following a 1966 meeting
of the highest-level officials of both South Vietnam and the United States in
Honolulu, Johnson called for a revolutionary transformation in the Vietnam

economy that could not “wait until the guns grow silent and until the terror-
ism stops” (Public Papers, 1966 156). Within the rhetorical vision, the United
States was committed to rebuilding the South Vietnamese economy, even as
opposing forces tried to dismantle it.
The narrative depicted the final goal of the United States to be the
restoration of peace in South Vietnam. By coming to the aid of small coun-
tries unable to defend their own freedom, the United States ensured the
security of all (including itself). Evoking the words of his predecessor, Harry
Truman, Johnson declared in 1967, “We shall not realize our objectives
unless we are willing to help free peoples to maintain their free institutions
and their national integrity against aggressive movements that seek to impose
upon them totalitarian regimes. This is no more than a frank recognition
that totalitarian regimes imposed upon free peoples, by direct or indirect
aggression, undermine the foundations of international peace and hence the
security of the United States” (Public Papers, 1967 317–18). By emphasizing
the mutual interests of protecting South Vietnamese security, the United
States underscored the depth of its commitment to its ally’s defense.
Administration officials posited that the United States, with its commit-
ment to constructive rather than destructive methods, offered the best hope
for the future of Vietnam. The narrative held that the United States relied on
means consistent with its divine mission and distinguishable from its evil
counterpart. In the diplomatic arena, officials maintained South Vietnam
could trust the United States to uphold its commitments. Administration
speakers stressed that America had previously upheld its responsibilities in
relation to the Geneva Accords of 1954 and 1962. In the economic arena,
South Vietnam could trust the United States to rebuild Vietnam. In April
1965 Johnson demonstrated his commitment to Vietnam’s economic future
by announcing a one billion dollar development effort of the Mekong River
Delta, a project designed to provide food, water, and power “on a scale to
dwarf even our own TVA” (Public Papers, 1965 397). In the military arena,
the narrative portrayed US tactics as honorable. Governmental spokespersons
insisted the United States exercised careful restraint in selecting bombing
sites to minimize civilian casualties, rather than intentionally targeting civil-
ians to wreck havoc among the citizenry. As Johnson surmised in a news
conference in 1966, “We were very careful not to get out of the target area, in
order not to affect civilian populations” (Public Papers, 1966 751). Drawing
sharp contrasts between democracy and Communism, the approach posi-
tioned the United States to be a trustworthy ally whether in the political,
economic, or security arenas.
In sum, the Vietnam War narrative was consistent with the conventional
expectations of Cold War discourse. With barbaric Communists poised to
dismantle fragile democracies in their drive to achieve global conquest, the

United States had a missionary obligation to further the political, economic,
and security interests of foreign nations at risk. The Cold War narrative
framed the Vietnam War as an ideological conflict with important cultural
values at stake. As the remainder of the chapter will argue, the receptivity to
that message depended on who was listening.
The frequent use of the “Communist terrorist” phrase within the Cold War
narrative implies that terrorism served an ideological purpose for the
Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations. Closer examination, how-
ever, reveals that the actual function of the phrase was not so straightforward.
Merger of the two terms within a single overarching label allowed different
audiences to interpret the meaning of the phrase in different ways. More
specifically, American and South Vietnamese audiences harbored distinctive
visions of the enemy subsumed under the rubric of the “Communist terror-
ist.” The encompassing nature of the phrase permitted the two audiences to
coalesce around mutual, yet distinctive, interpretations of the opposing forces
in the war.
The American public focused on fighting Communism as its impetus
for supporting the war effort. In a briefing of twenty columnists and political
pollsters in early January 1968, Lou Harris reported that forty-five percent of
the public identified the one main objective in Vietnam to be “to stop
Communist aggression once and for all in Southeast Asia” (as qtd. in
Panzer). Johnson’s press secretary, Bill Moyers, echoed Harris’s finding in
written correspondence to the president: “The American people believe that
we are in South Vietnam to draw the line. If we don’t stop the Communists
here, they will take over all of Asia.” Johnson’s internal pollster, Fred Panzer,
pressed the point, concluding that the American public was “definitely sup-
porting the Adm. position that the war [was] preventing further Communist
aggression in Southeast Asia.” Those with primary responsibility for crafting
Johnson’s public message all agreed: the public’s chief concern in the war
effort was Communism.
Even for US citizens who supported an American withdrawal from
Vietnam, interjection of the term “Communism” into the polling questions
enhanced support for Johnson’s handling of the war effort. Forty-nine per-
cent of those who reported they believed the United States should get out of
Vietnam changed their minds when asked the follow-up question: “Would
you still want to get out of Vietnam if that meant losing it to the
Communists?” Fifty-three percent of the same antiwar group changed their
minds when asked the follow-up: “Would you still want to get out of
Vietnam if that meant that Americans would be fighting future wars against
the Communists?” (Watson). The potency of the Communist label with
domestic audiences resided in the term’s apparent ability to unite both pro-
and antiwar elements.
By contrast, the role served by terrorism in the popular psyche of the
American public was more illusory. No internal polls within the Johnson
administration asked open-ended questions regarding why America was in
Vietnam. Of those tailoring a list of possible answers for the nation’s involve-
ment, terrorism was not a response option (Memo to Bundy et al.; [US]
Dept. of State, “American Opinion Summary”). The internal poll that came
closest to asking if Americans considered terrorism a sufficient reason for US
involvement in Vietnam was a Harris Poll conducted in January 1975. In a
confidential poll conducted for the leadership’s eyes only, respondents were
offered five possible explanations for US involvement and asked their degree
of agreement with each option. The five options included: to win victory
over aggression, to defend the security of the United States, to help a non-
Communist nation resist Communism, to stop Communist infiltration, and
to try to keep the Communists from taking over all of Southeast Asia. After
discovering that seventy-one percent of the population indicated that stop-
ping Communist infiltration was very important and another sixteen percent
found it somewhat important, Bill Moyers wrote in the margins of the
report’s findings for Johnson’s review, “This indicates a fair understanding on
the part of the American people of the guerilla warfare.” Whether the result,
“Communist infiltration,” actually constituted guerrilla warfare or could be
stretched to mean terrorism remains uncertain. Like other internal tracking
polls, no specific question about terrorism appeared on the survey.
If Communism, rather than terrorism, guided American thinking about
the war, the reverse was true for the people of South Vietnam. Early after
assuming office, members of the Johnson administration considered terror-
ism the dominant concern of the South Vietnamese populace. Fearful that a
worried South Vietnam might vote for a Communist leader if given the
opportunity in free elections, Johnson hired the independent polling firm of
Oliver Quayle and Company to determine how the United States might pre-
vent such an outcome.
The firm undertook two tasks to assess the mind-set of the South
Vietnamese people. Initially, they reviewed all previous administration
polling of South Vietnam conducted from fall 1964 through fall 1966.
Then, they carried out an internal poll using Vietnamese interviewers
trained by Dr. Robert Sullivan of the United States Information Agency
(USIA). Sullivan’s group conduced 974 personal interviews with the citizens
of South Vietnam from October 17, 1965 through December 23, 1965.
Sampled from ninety-seven percent of the South Vietnamese population, the

Quayle poll only excluded areas heavily controlled by the Viet Cong or those so
contested that they would risk the safety of the interviewers (“Quayle Study”).
It could be argued that any Johnson-backed assessment of South
Vietnamese attitudes was biased, but the Quayle study did constitute the
most extensive public opinion analysis conducted during the war. Besides
being stronger methodologically than prior polling, the study’s findings
were also consistent with field reports from South Vietnamese comman-
ders. Provincial representatives in South Vietnam for some time had
warned the American Embassy that “support exists for the GVN in direct
proportion to the degree of security established by government forces”
([American] Embassy in Vietnam 306). Finally, as the following will
demonstrate, the Johnson administration quickly acted upon the recom-
mendations in the Quayle report.
Quayle & Co. showed that stopping terrorism, not Communism, was
the overriding concern of the South Vietnamese. The Quayle report of previ-
ous internal administration polling revealed the Vietnamese “just didn’t care
about the war, the ideological struggle between the forces of Communism
and freedom and the need for a better government for the nation” (“Survey”).
The results of the new Quayle poll echoed the point. The interviewers found
that the most apt adjective to describe the people of South Vietnam in 1965
was apathetic. They attributed the sources of apathy to be the fear of terrorist
attacks by the Viet Cong, the repeated unwillingness of the South
Vietnamese government to stand up to these attacks, and the looting and
cruelty carried out by the ARVN forces themselves. While the poll’s results
showed that sixty-four percent of the South Vietnamese expressing support
for the present government with only twenty-nine percent supporting the
Liberation Front, the Quayle report warned that a “campaign of terror could
change that” (“Quayle Study”). The report concluded that above all else,
eradicating terrorism was the chief concern of the people of South Vietnam.
For them, it was the equivalent of personal and cultural survival.
The Quayle report recommended that the Johnson administration insti-
tute a public campaign of reinforcing the linkage between the Viet Cong and
terrorism. In the words of the report, “[T]he political struggle must be
planned to tag the VC and the NLF as terrorists who have caused violence
and strife here. If we can be forgiven, it should be made clear that the choice
is between ‘the good guys’ and ‘the bad guys’” (“Quayle Study”). The report
maintained that such a strategy would be effective because of the perceptual
leanings of the South Vietnamese. At the time of the survey in late 1965, the
interviewers found, “People definitely think of VC as enemy,” and “the
essence of the VC image is terrorism.” Reinforcing those perceptions and
mapping the chief concern of the South Vietnamese onto the enemy offered
the most hopeful prospect that the South Vietnamese elections would result
in a democratic administration.
Within three months of having received the Quayle report, the Johnson
administration began implementing its recommendations. On April 5, 1965,
the administration established the Joint United States Public Affairs Offices
(JUSPAO) under the auspices of USIA. JUSPAO became the organization
charged with carrying out all psychological operations in Vietnam. The orga-
nization adopted multiple strategies for reinforcing the linkage between
Communism and terrorism. Among them, it distributed select Johnson quo-
tations about Viet Cong terror, repression, and murder to the people of
South Vietnam (“Trial Leaflets”).
JUSPAO spread Johnson’s message by dropping leaflets that recalled
specific instances of terrorism committed against the South Vietnamese
people. The messages, written in Vietnamese, reminded the citizenry that
the Viet Cong and its backers were the primary source of terrorism. One
leaflet described the National Liberation Front’s execution of US Sgt.
Harold Bennett, as well as the terrorist bombing of the My Canh restaurant
in Saigon, an incident that killed forty-four people from Vietnam, America,
France, Switzerland, and the Philippines. A translation of the leaflet read,
“Among the victims were women and little children. The so-called
Liberation Front knew that more civilians stroll along the riverfront near this
restaurant after the day’s heat and that large numbers of workers and children
gather there” (“Trial Leaflets”). By emphasizing that Communists used ter-
rorism intentionally to target civilian populations, the leaflets worked to vilify
the enemy and keep terrorism a central public concern.
In a February 1966 memo written to USIA headquarters in Washing-
ton, JUSPAO touted the effectiveness of its efforts to reinforce the image of
the Viet Cong as terrorists. After describing to senior USIA officials three
examples of successful leaflet missions, the memo explained why JUSPAO
believed its communication campaign had been effective:
Rather than accenting the horror of the bombings that would have
aided the VC in accomplishing their goal of striking fear in the
hearts of the local populace, emphasis was placed on the fact that
the VC was cutting off individuals in the area from their source of
income as well as from their friends. A special point was made in
each of the leaflets circulated that it was ordinary people who were
being killed, not GNV officials or soldiers. The question was
repeatedly brought up on all propaganda materials produced: “[I]s
this the action of a group desiring national liberation?” Photographs
of victims were utilized only in cases where resentment to the atroc-
ity would be aroused rather than fear; for example, photographs
showing mothers and small children killed by the bombings.

(Memo to USIA)
The memo revealed the administration’s public strategy on a number of

levels. First, it demonstrated that the United States was striving to disassoci-
ate itself from terrorism, even to the point that the nation’s propaganda
avoided the use of vivid examples that might further frighten the South
Vietnamese. Second, it showed JUSPAO’s intention to reinforce, if not ele-
vate, the nation’s fear about terrorism by heightening public identification
with the victims of Communist terrorism. The primary theme reiterated
across JUSPAO operations was that the National Liberation Front did not
engage military forces for the cause of liberation; instead, it sought only to
terrorize innocent civilian populations into succumbing to its will.
The JUSPAO campaign to tag the Viet Cong terrorists was an enor-
mous effort. In its article “US Drops Passes to Spur Red Defections,” the
Milwaukee Journal reported that by the end of March 1966, the United
States had dropped more than 133 million leaflets on South Vietnam and
broadcasted similar themes six and a half hours per day on Voice of America.
The magnitude of the campaign was so large that it severely impacted bud-
getary allocations within the USIA. In FY 1967, Deputy Director Hewson
Ryan complained to his superiors at USIA that the effort required $12 mil-
lion and approximately one-eighth of its manpower worldwide for the infor-
mation campaign in Vietnam, Thailand, and Laos. The size and expense of
the campaign underscored the importance the Johnson administration placed
on strengthening the association between terrorism and the Viet Cong in the
minds of the South Vietnamese.
Having moved on one front to associate the Viet Cong with terrorism,
the Johnson administration simultaneously sought to disassociate the violent
actions of the United States and its allies from similar interpretations. The
approach had ideological implications with ramifications for enhanced power
by the US and allied forces. The government wanted a highly visible pro-
gram of counterterrorism that would convince the South Vietnamese that a
democratic regime offered their best hope for security. The administration
settled on a program, initially named the “strategic hamlet program” and
later called the “pacification program.” The approach called for the relocation
of many South Vietnamese into strategic enclaves, the establishment of a
local security force, the identification and elimination of hidden VC cells, the
establishment of institutions of local government, and the commencement of
programs for economic and social development (Bell).
The Johnson administration’s commitment to this high-profile coun-
terterrorism program continued even in the face of mounting evidence the
program was a resounding failure. Strategic enclaves became controversial
within the Johnson administration because of their lack of fortification, their

lack of effective leadership, their Viet Cong infiltration of up to eighty per-
cent, and their negative impact on the effort to improve the self-sufficiency
of the South Vietnamese (Helms). By early 1965, the administration’s intel-
ligence advised, “Enclaves can probably prevent the VC from completely
overrunning the nation, but they will also prevent the rehabilitation of the
nation—and they will deny the people what this survey tells us they clearly
want [. . .] security from the VC, better government and above all else, a
greater measure of economic dignity” (Quayle, “Survey”). Needing a visible
program of counterterrorism in South Vietnam, the US government never-
theless continued its support for a program it knew had questionable value.
More shocking, however, was the fact that the leadership remained dedicated
to the approach even when the South Vietnamese government pronounced it
would need to burn some local villages to accomplish the relocation effort
(Memo for the Record).
The rubric of counterterrorism also became the public strategy for those
in the administration who favored expanding the bombing campaign into
North Vietnam. The role combating terrorism played in justifying military
attacks against North Vietnam became obvious in the planning documents of
Johnson’s National Security Council. In preparation for a meeting of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff in early April 1964, NSC staff member Michael
Forrestal submitted a draft plan for justifying South Vietnamese and US mil-
itary action in North Vietnam. After outlining a series of proposed domestic
and foreign diplomatic initiatives that should precede military action,
Forrestal recommended the next step: “On the assumption that no change
occurs in NVN attitude and behavior, Khanh makes speech immediately
after appropriate VC incident, i.e., cutting of rail line, killing of U.S. person-
nel or destruction of POL dump; announces need to inflict appropriate type
of damage on NVN. Khanh deplores necessity of taking such action and sit-
uation that makes it necessary for SVN to send military force to North,
instead of food and medicine. First targeted attack occurs as promptly as
possible.” In Forrestal’s plan, the particulars of a given terrorist act were not
relevant to the decision to use force; any act of Viet Cong terrorism served as
a sufficient public rationale for military action in the region.
By early in 1965, the administration implemented the plan for using ter-
rorism to justify bombing North Vietnam. Secretary of Defense Robert
McNamara wrote a memo to Johnson to remind him of the decision to pub-
licly blame terrorism for US military escalation in the public arena. He noted
that official spokespersons would describe the bombing program as having
begun “in an atmosphere of reprisal” (100) for the attacks on Bien Hoa
Airfield and the bombing of the Brinks Hotel in Saigon. Later in the corre-
spondence, however, McNamara cited the administration’s actual rationales
for instigating the bombing program. He listed five benefits the administra-
tion hoped to achieve by escalating the campaign: promoting a settlement,
interdicting infiltration, demonstrating US long-term commitment to
Vietnam, raising morale in South Vietnam, and reducing criticism of the
administration from advocates of a bombing program (ibid.). Terrorism, in
short, became the public excuse for expanded military action.
The Johnson administration also used counterterrorism to justify its sys-
tematic defoliation program. Administration officials defended the program,
Operation RANCH HAND, as a necessary step to remove the vegetation
grown to feed the Viet Cong forces and provide cover for the enemy terroriz-
ing the people of South Vietnam. During the 1967 campaign alone, the
Twelfth Air Commando Squadron used 4,879,000 gallons of herbicides,
defoliating 1,226,823 acres in South Vietnam and destroying 148,418 acres
of crops (Cecil 109). The military historian and former RANCH HAND
pilot Paul Cecil notes that Washington authorized approximately half the
area of South Vietnam to undergo defoliation (ibid.). Before the end of the
Vietnam War, the United States defoliated almost 4 million acres of South
Vietnam at least once, a factor that contributed to the forty-five percent
casualty rate among civilians during the war (Bornet 276).
The negative consequences of the defoliation program became evident
early in the war. By 1967, scholars denounced the crop destruction program
for its disproportionate impact on the elderly, small children, and childbearing
women. By 1969, concerns mounted regarding the impact of herbicides, such
as Agent Orange, on the health and welfare of US troops participating in
Vietnam. Even State Department officials voiced opposition to the program,
arguing the program’s adverse impacts on the civilians provided the Viet
Cong with strong propaganda to use against the United States (Cecil 52).
A final example of how the administration used counterterrorism as a
justification for increased powers during the Vietnam War involved assassi-
nation and murder. In the aftermath of the Tet offensive, shocked American
audiences saw an AP photograph showing General Nguyen Ngoc Loan,
head of South Vietnam’s national police, aiming a pistol point-blank into the
head of a bound Viet Cong prisoner in the streets of Saigon. Loan summar-
ily executed the man without the benefit of a trial. The South Vietnamese
government later claimed the man was a Viet Cong captain involved in the
terrorist killing of a policemen and his family. In preparation for an upcom-
ing NBC-TV program taking up the incident, Special Assistant for National
Security Affairs Bill Bundy provided a series of general talking points for
Illinois senator Paul Douglas and Wyoming senator Gale McGee to use.
Bundy wrote that one of several general points the senators could use for
rebuttal argument should be: “Nobody will excuse this act, but it must be
looked at in the light of a situation where Loan undoubtedly knew, as every-
body did, that the VC had just been murdering civilians, including the wives
and families of officials all over Saigon. He acted in hot blood, and this is not
the first time that there have been such summary executions in wars in Asia
or elsewhere.” As the Loan example dramatically illustrated, the Johnson
administration justified a wide variety of US and allied actions by considering
them in the context of terrorism and counterterrorism.
Taken together, the available evidence supports the contention that the
Johnson administration took the advice of the Quayle report to present the
Vietnam contest as a conflict between good and evil. All violent acts of the
Viet Cong, the NLF, or the North Vietnamese were terrorism. All actions
by the United States and its allies were counterterrorism. Administration
officials used counterterrorism to justify the displacement of its ally’s citizens,
the bombing of a nation that had not declared war on the United States, the
destruction of a nation’s food supply, and the execution of alleged suspects
without the benefit of a trial. Because these actions were cast as responses to
terrorist acts of the enemy, they functioned within the public campaign as
necessary steps for ensuring the security of the Vietnamese populace.
The Johnson administration capitalized on the power of the terrorism
label to prevail in the Vietnamese elections of September 11, 1966. On the
day of and the day before the elections, the Viet Cong did their part to but-
tress the US strategy. They increased the number of terrorist attacks to 166,
a fivefold increase from the daily average of the previous month (Joint US
Public Affairs Office, General Briefing Book). For perhaps the first time in
the post–World War II era, America’s leadership both understood and
exploited the potential cultural significance of the terrorism label. The South
Vietnamese, fearful for their own personal safety, were susceptible to appeals
to unite behind anyone who could counter the terrorist threat. The specifics
of how the leaders would proceed became secondary concerns to the princi-
pal outcome of national security.
Despite the short-term political gains associated with use of the ter-
rorism label, the rhetorical approach was not without consequence. When
the United States pulled its troops out of the region and left the South
Vietnamese people to defend themselves (unsuccessfully), the “Commu-
nist terrorist” became the victor. The end of the Cold War two decades
later allowed the United States to publicly reclaim its victor status in
democracy’s ideological contest with Communism. However, the power of
terrorism to succeed in conflicts with the United States remained an
ongoing legacy of the Vietnam conflict. America’s vulnerability to terror-
ism would become evident only too soon. This time, the nation’s leader
would be unwilling to unleash the full ideological potential of the terror-
ism label, with the result that both the nation and the president himself
would suffer consequences.
3
The Iranian Hostage Crisis:

An American Tragedy
O n November 4, 1979, several thousand demonstrators gathered outside

the United States Embassy in Tehran and began shouting anti-
American slogans. At approximately 10:30 a.m., some of the demonstrators
scaled the compound walls and forced their way into the basement and first
floor of the chancery building. Within a few hours, the demonstrators took
control of the embassy and held sixty-three Americans hostage. Three other
Americans—Chargé d’Affaires Bruce Laingen, Political Counselor Victor
Tomseth, and Security Officer Mike Howland—took refuge in the Foreign
Ministry, unable to leave without risking their own safety. Iranian officials
assured the US government the takeover was nothing more than a university
sit-in and predicted it would end shortly. Meanwhile, the Ayatollah’s son,
Ahmed Khomeini, came to the embassy, scaled the wall, and congratulated
the students on their victory. Emboldened by Khomeini’s support, the group
refused to release their hostages on the grounds that the embassy personnel
were spies. At the urging of a delegation from the Palestinian Liberation
Organization, the Iranians released thirteen female and black hostages not
suspected of espionage on November 18–19, 1979.
For months, the Carter administration attempted diplomatic overtures
and gradually escalated economic sanctions to obtain the release of the
remainder of the hostages. The United States severed diplomatic ties with
Iran on April 7, 1980, when the administration concluded that chances for
concrete progress were unlikely. On April 11, Carter told his National
Security Council that he planned to proceed with a military rescue mission
to extract the hostages from Tehran. On April 24, 1980, eight helicopters
and six C-130 transport planes traveled to a location called Desert One,
265 miles southeast of Tehran. Due to mechanical problems, only five of
the eight helicopters arrived at the target location. Carter ordered the mis-
sion aborted, having previously determined that six helicopters would be
37
minimally necessary for a successful rescue. As the planes were leaving the
Desert One site, one of the helicopters and one of the C-130 transport
planes collided, burst into flames, and killed eight American servicemen. The
military evacuated the rest of the officers on the remaining transport planes
and left behind helicopters, weapons, equipment, and classified documents
(P. B. Ryan 91). Eventually, the captors permitted the remaining fifty-two
American hostages to leave Iran 444 days after the embassy takeover. The
release coincided with the transfer of power between the Carter and Reagan
administrations.
Carter and his aides were initially inconsistent in how they labeled the
perpetrators of the crisis. Ultimately, the administration denounced those
responsible as terrorists and portrayed the events in Tehran as an American
tragedy. The approach had the advantage of minimizing the potential ideo-
logical conflict between the United States and Iran. Unfortunately for Carter,
the strategy also produced political costs for the president himself.
LABELING THE CAPTORS
Memories of the Vietnam War were highly influential in the development of

the Carter administration’s labeling strategy during the Iranian hostage crisis.
From the early days of the crisis, those who held the embassy compared their
quest to the student antiwar protests of the 1960s. They identified them-
selves with Vietnam-era protesters by stressing their standing as university
students. They referred to themselves as “the Muslim Students Following
the Imam’s Line” and issued more than fifty communiqués to the world
media highlighting their student status. The captors made explicit reference
to America’s recent history with Vietnam when, in a statement distributed
worldwide, they proclaimed, “[T]he American people have the power to
force Carter to return the Shah and the wealth he has ‘plundered,’ in the
same way you forced your previous President to end the Vietnam War”
(“Iran-Cravath, Swaine and Moore I”). By recalling the American public’s
opposition to the Vietnam War, the captors implied that they were law-
abiding student protesters on a righteous mission to expose the immoral
actions of the American government.
Within two days of the embassy takeover, Carter was emphatic that the
captors not control the public labeling of the crisis. On his way to breakfast
with members of his senior aides, he said, “I’m tired of seeing those bastards
holding our people referred to as ‘students.’ Jody [Jody Powell, Press
Secretary], you and Hodding [Hodding Carter, the State Department
spokesman] get together and figure out what to call them. But they should
be referred to as ‘terrorists’ or ‘captors’ or something that accurately describes
The Iranian Hostage Crisis: An American Tragedy 39
what they are” (as qtd. in Jordan 34). Reminiscent of Nixon’s labeling of
antiwar student protestors, Carter’s approach invited attention to the unac-
ceptable means of those holding Americans hostage, while downplaying the
captors’ student status.
Carter’s directive to his aides notwithstanding, his spokespersons continued
to call the captors “students” throughout the first week of the crisis. Hodding
Carter repeatedly employed the phrase, “so-called students,” or used quotation
marks around “students” or “student groups” (Press Briefing 11/11/79) when
briefing members of the press. On two separate occasions, members of the press
corps asked him why he was using quotation marks when referring to the stu-
dents. He responded, “I am saying clearly that our reports are no better than
what you read as to who they may be and that I am in no position to evaluate or
to describe in any way except in quotation marks. I simply don’t know” (Press
Briefing 11/7/79). Without an alternative labeling strategy from the administra-
tion, members of the Washington press corps adopted the captors’ labeling
strategy, calling those who held the embassy “students.”
Officials did speculate on the identity of the captors when speaking to
the media on background. Carter aides acknowledged their ambivalence
about the accuracy of their intelligence, but still presented educated guesses
about the identity of those holding the hostages. Assistant Secretary for Near
East and South Asia Harold Saunders expressed the administration’s lack of
certainty when he stated, “[A]s nearly as we can tell, the group that occupies
the compound may be a composite of several groups, or people related to
several groups, with a coordinating committee on top” (Press Backgrounder).
Saunders speculated that the captors might range from conservative religious
elements, such as the Mujahedeen group, to leftist-oriented groups, like the
Cheroks. Not knowing the true identity of the captors and unwilling to
invite comparisons to the Vietnam War by erroneously misleading the press,
the administration remained equivocal about the public label for the captors
(Kifner 175; Taheri 123).
Carter’s own public statements did not clarify the situation. During
the first two months of the crisis, his speeches were inconsistent in the way
they referred to those who held the hostages in Iran. Most of Carter’s
public statements avoided depictions of the captors as terrorists; instead,
they described events in Iran using the passive voice (i.e., American citi-
zens are being held hostage). Linguistically, passive voice functions to
remove active agency, leaving the subject of responsibility unclear. When
Carter did mention the topic of terrorism, he mostly spoke of the general
fight against terrorism, stopping short of labeling the US Embassy takeover
in Iran a terrorist act. In only three of the dozens of statements Carter
offered during the first two months of the crisis did he label the embassy
takeover an act of terrorism.
The lack of a consistent public strategy that labeled the seizure “terror-
ism” was also evident from the internal drafts of the president’s public state-
ments. A good illustration is the speech Carter delivered before the
American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations
(AFL-CIO) less than two weeks after the capture of the hostages. In draft
C2, an early version of the speech, no mention was made of terrorism; the
draft portrayed those holding Americans hostage as “extremists” and
depicted US policy as “we refuse to bow to blackmail.” By the final manu-
script, the wording shifted to a public frame of the crisis in Iran as a terrorist
event: “This is the 12th day that more than a hundred innocent human
beings, some 60 of whom are members of the United States diplomatic mis-
sion, have been held hostage in our Embassy in Iran. [. . .] This is an act of
terrorism—totally outside the bound of international law and diplomatic tra-
dition” (Carter, Public Papers, 1979 2:2123). Both internally circulated
speech drafts and final manuscripts demonstrate that the administration’s
labeling strategy was uncertain during the early months of the crisis.
Once the administration had taken the public step of labeling the
embassy takeover a terrorist act, it provoked an irate and lengthy response
from the Ayatollah Khomeini. In an interview with a CBS-TV correspon-
dent in Qom just three days after the AFL-CIO speech, Khomeini charged
that Carter’s word choice had not been judicious. He argued that the stu-
dents could not possibly be terrorists, because the entire Iranian nation of
thirty-five million people supported them. He insisted the Iranians were not
terrorists, because they had treated the hostages well. Finally, Khomeini
stressed that the United States was hypocritical to even use the term, given
its own decisions to refuse demonstration permits and to freeze the financial
assets of Iranian students in America to force them to return to Iran. As he
explained, “[Y]ou must be assured that our nation is Muslim, and Muslim is
not terrorist, and [the Iranian students] treat them with complete clemency,
better than your treatment of our students abroad. [. . .] The acts which you
commit are the ones that resemble terrorist acts” (as qtd. in “Iran-Cravath,
Swaine and Moore I”). Khomeini’s statement drew an historical parallel
between the Carter and Nixon administrations. Both administrations had
opposed student demonstrations questioning the government’s actions.
Khomeini recalled America’s past in Vietnam by maintaining any divisive-
ness was between the US government and its people, not between the world
community and Iran.
Publicly ignoring Khomeini’s protests about the labeling strategy, the
Carter administration relied on a consistent public affairs strategy of referring
to the captors as “terrorists” by January 1980. The strategy arguably mini-
mized the Iranian government’s responsibility for controlling the captors’
conduct, essentially erasing what might have been an embarrassing challenge
to that government’s ability to rule its own people. Instead, the administra-
tion’s approach depicted the seizure of the US Embassy in Tehran as a crimi-
nal act of terrorism requiring the intervention of the international community.
In a familiar refrain offered throughout the remainder of the crisis, Carter
told John Chancellor of NBC News, “Iran is at this moment involved in a
criminal act, a terrorist act. And it’s not a matter of negotiating on a diplo-
matic basis between two nations. This is a matter of condemning Iran for
international terrorism and kidnapping” (Public Papers 1980-1981 1:36).
Moving past the initial period of confusion, the administration consistently
adopted the crime metaphor to frame its public rhetoric about the crisis.
Not everyone in the administration agreed that crime should be the over-
riding theme of Carter’s rhetoric. Some of Carter’s aides argued that the war
metaphor was more appropriate, reasoning that the Iranian hostage crisis and
the Vietnam War were inextricably linked in the public’s mind. These aides
maintained that the administration could not ignore the connections between
the two historical events and that Carter should address broader public confi-
dence concerns stemming from the Vietnam War as he handled the hostage
crisis. Carter received advice from his congressional liaisons, Anne Wexler
and Al From, to adopt a security theme in his State of the Union address that
responded to both the public’s concern about Iranian terrorism and its anxiety
about the Vietnam War. Wexter and From reminded Carter,
Americans have traditionally felt secure, part of the greatest and
strongest nation on earth. But the past two decades have shaken
that feeling. The Vietnam War and recent incidents like the
Iranian and Afghan crises have pierced the aura of our military
invincibility. The energy shortages and persistent inflation have
made Americans aware that their energy and economic security is
no longer in their hands. [. . .] Security is a word that people can
both easily understand and identify with. [. . . Security] is some-
thing that Americans want in their gut, particularly in unsettling
times like we have today. For that reason, your political adversaries
will find it very difficult to attack the security framework.
The aides envisioned the use of the security theme both as a means of unit-
ing the country behind the administration’s effort to resolve the crisis and as
an avenue for putting the nation’s recent foreign policy failure behind them.
Wexler’s and From’s advice prevailed in the final drafting of the State of the
Union address.
Seven months after the seizure of the embassy, National Security
Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski advised Carter once again to rely on more
labels reminiscent of the Vietnam War. Brzezinski praised Carter for his
earlier choices and told him, “You have rightly been very sensitive to the
symbolic choice of words—e.g., calling the kidnappers in Tehran not ‘stu-

dents’ but ‘terrorists.’ Let me suggest that in case of Afghanistan you make it
a point to refer always to ‘freedom fighter’ and more generally to the ‘national
liberation struggle’ of the Afghan people. The latter phrase will have special
resonance in the Third World and it will be particularly awkward for the
Soviets” (Memo to the President 6/13/80). Brzezinski’s suggestion was risky,
and not simply because these same “freedom fighters” would eventually
orchestrate the World Trade Center and Pentagon bombings. By recalling
the Vietnam War, the linkage associated the Iranian hostage crisis with the
worst foreign policy debacle in American history.
Had the administration been successful in obtaining the hostages’
release, the strategy of linking the crisis in Iran to the Vietnam War may
have fostered a profound healing of the American psyche. In failure, how-
ever, the choice risked a deeper public malaise. Ultimately, the administra-
tion further compounded public disenchantment by depicting its hostage
crisis in tragic terms.
THE NARRATIVE OF THE IRANIAN HOSTAGE CRISIS
Tragic drama is a dramatic form that emphasizes the metaphor of crime.

Burke explains that criminality always applies to the device of tragedy, given
that its subject matter focuses on conflicts with established values (On
Symbols and Society 300). Vogel argues that American tragedies involve a
focus on crime and punishment due to a Christian heritage that rejects
Greek notions of fatalism (115). By choosing a dramatic vehicle that featured
crime as a central theme, the Carter administration provided a public alter-
native to a declaration of war on terrorism.
Scholars in literary circles do not agree on the generic requirements of
tragic drama. Nevertheless, a look at the characteristics of tragedy that recur
throughout the work of multiple literary theorists reveals that the Carter nar-
rative echoed the great historical works of tragic literature. While members
of the Carter administration may not have knowingly adopted the tragic
frame in response to the hostage crisis, the key elements of the literary genre
were present in their public response strategy to the hostage crisis.
For most genre theorists, tragedies depend on the presence of a tragic
hero. Reviewing the breadth of literature related to tragedy, Richard Palmer
explains why the tragic hero is central to the dramatic form: “Those who see
the essence of tragedy as a humanistic affirmation believe that the hero
embodies those values; theorists who approach tragedy in terms of response
usually assume that the hero stimulates that response, and metaphysically ori-
ented theorists see the tragic hero as the prime vehicle of metaphysical aware-
ness” (138). To qualify as an appropriate subject for the role of tragic hero, an
individual must be able both to identify with the audience and to represent an
ideal sense of humanity for the group (Heilman 7; Steiner 15; Raphael 31;
and Leech 33, 46). Both roles have importance for the drama itself. As repre-
sentative of the people, the tragic hero’s suffering elicits a sympathetic, emo-
tional response from the audience. As an emblem of humanity’s potential, the
hero amplifies the consequences resulting from the tragic flaw.
Carter’s public persona established him as an ideal candidate for the
tragic hero of the Iranian hostage crisis narrative. In his initial bid for the
presidency, Carter campaigned as both a common man and an individual
destined for greatness. In his announcement speech, Carter identified him-
self as “a farmer, an engineer, a businessman, a planner, a scientist, a
Governor, and a Christian” (as qtd. in Glad 309). The approach permitted
ample opportunity for Carter to identify with the multiple and varied audi-
ences on the campaign trail. His presidential campaign stressed themes of
hard work and honesty, qualities his ads claimed Carter shared with the
American people. Carter’s ads and speeches promised a “president who is not
isolated from our people, but who feels your pain and shares your dreams,
and takes his strength and wisdom and courage from you” (as qtd. in
Jamieson 343). Carter’s introduction to a national audience in his 1976 pres-
idential campaign presented an image of him as a man among the people.
At the same time, his campaign projected Carter as having the potential
for extraordinary leadership. One campaign ad featured Rosalynn Carter
explaining, “Jimmy is honest, unselfish, and truly concerned about the coun-
try. I think he’ll be a great president” (as qtd. in Jamieson 350). Another used
an actor to represent a potential voter in the 1976 presidential election. The
ad stated:
I’ve always felt that when Franklin Roosevelt died that was the end
of the good and great presidents. And then after Harry Truman I
thought, well that’s the last of them. And then we had Jack
Kennedy. For such a short time, too. I learned something from
them. I learned that in the proper time the man and the moment
can meet, so to speak, with a vision. Take up a country and lead it
to a more secure future. Where the goal truly is justice for all. I
look forward to voting for Jimmy Carter. That’s the truth of it. I
feel it’s in the air and we are going to have a new Democratic
President. In the tradition of the best Democratic presidents. (Qtd.
in Glad 353)
The ads maintained that Carter had the potential to move beyond the
constraints of the common man, both due to his party affiliation and his
personal character.
After assessing the totality of Carter 1976 presidential campaign materi-

als, presidential scholar Betty Glad agrees that Carter’s projected image
blended the tragic hero qualities of the real and the ideal. She concluded,
“Jimmy Carter’s campaign persona was that of a ‘great man’ destined to be a
great president. This man in jeans with red Georgia dust on his work boots
offered a set of virtues that were complementary and reassuring. He was self-
confident but humble, tough but compassionate, intelligent but still one of
the boys, religious but accepting of differences, always working toward what
he wanted by not wanting anything for himself. He was, in essence, extraor-
dinary but ordinary” (355). The complicated mix allowed for the public to
both identify with Carter’s fate during the Iranian hostage crisis and distance
itself from eventual responsibility for the ensuing tragedy.
The existence of a tragic hero is, by itself, an insufficient condition for
achieving the conventions of dramatic tragedy. A second element of tragedy
is that such plots must engage narrative themes that transcend transitory
political and social conditions. Literary theorists posit that a key factor dis-
tinguishing tragedy from melodramas, epics, or tragic irony is subject matter.
Tragedies address topics that are timeless and universal. They take up ques-
tions such as the relationship of humanity to its environment, humanity’s
position within the universe, and the ultimate meaning of life (Muller 14).
Problems that are time-bound are not appropriate for tragedy, because their
resolution is imminent; those inextricably linked to particular social struc-
tures are equally ill suited, given their potential to undergo refinement by the
individuals who created them (Vogel 105).
At first glance the Iranian hostage crisis might not appear to be appro-
priate subject matter for a tragic drama. The seizure of fifty-three Americans
for a little more than a year was arguably a time-bound conflict that yielded
little insight into humanity’s position in the universe or the ultimate meaning
of life. The capture of the US Embassy in Tehran might seem more suited to
melodrama, a dramatic form that stresses a victor-victim polarity where “vic-
tory is not tempered with the rigors of cost accounting, nor defeat with the
reckoning of spiritual growth” (Heilman 87).
Despite the apparent difficulties, Carter’s public statements invited the
conclusion that the act of holding the embassy personnel was a subject
matter befitting tragic drama. From the first days of the crisis, Carter por-
trayed the actions of the militants and the Iranian government as transcend-
ing the moment. He insisted the situation was “unprecedented in human
history” (Public Papers 1979 2:2167), “a departure from accepted custom and
tradition down through the centuries” (2162) and “the first time that such an
activity has been encouraged by and supported by the government itself
(2170). Within the administration’s narrative, the uniqueness of Iran’s
breach of diplomatic security did not render the incident an isolated, transi-
tory moment in the history of international relations. Instead, the public dis-
course presented the unprecedented nature of the event as a warrant for
immediate international condemnation and a historical precedent against
such behavior in the future.
The seizure of the US Embassy was not only a timeless concern in the
Carter narrative; it was also a universal problem. Carter posited that the
embassy seizure transcended provincial interpretations relegating the matter
to the status of a bilateral conflict. He insisted, “It’s vital to the United States
and to every other nation that the lives of diplomatic personnel and other cit-
izens abroad be protected and that we refuse to permit the use of terrorism
and the seizure and the holding of hostages to impose political demands”
(Public Papers, 1979 2:2109). Carter argued from principle that other nations
should stand with the United States and oppose Iran. He emphasized that
Iran’s violation transcended any one social structure, because the embassy
seizure opposed essential principles of international law, diplomatic tradi-
tions, human rights, the Islamic faith, common ethical and religious founda-
tions, and human decency. Carter elevated the matter to an issue of
international survival, pronouncing, “Iran today stands in arrogant defiance
of the world community. It has shown contempt not only for international
law but for the entire international structure for securing the peaceful resolu-
tion of difference among nations” (2277). For Carter, the seizure of the
American hostages was not a parochial concern. The event in his depiction
was steeped in timeless relevance for the entire international community; in
short, it was appropriate content for tragic drama.
The presence of universal subject matter, while important, is also insuf-
ficient to create a dramatic tragedy. A certain progression of the plot must
also be present to designate something suitable for dramatic tragedy. The lit-
erary theorist Dorothea Krook identifies four fundamental elements that
must be present for a tragedy to exist. These include the act of shame or
horror, the resulting suffering from that act, the knowledge of the funda-
mental human condition generated from that suffering, and the affirmation
or reaffirmation of the dignity of the human spirit resulting from the knowl-
edge gained (8–9). She maintains that the four elements are interrelated,
“separable in analysis but not in experience” (9). Hence, the following analy-
sis examines each of the four elements discretely, first expanding on their
generic qualities and then applying them to the Carter’s administration’s nar-
rative of the Iranian hostage crisis.
Early in a tragic drama, the hero undertakes an act of shame or horror
involving a betrayal or rejection of the fundamental nature of humanity
(Krook 10–11). The act is possible because of the tragic hero has free will
even within the universe of constrained options. The hero discovers quickly
that his available choices are limited and that his own powers are finite. The
resulting act, as Aristotle reminds us, is brought on “not by vice and deprav-
ity but by some great error of judgment” (238). Once put into motion, the
act becomes the catalyst for all future actions of the tragic drama, a set of
events that lead to disaster and a downward spiral beyond the capacity of the
tragic hero to control.
The act of shame in the Iranian hostage crisis was Carter’s decision of
October 22, 1979 to allow the shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, to
enter the United States to receive medical treatment for cancer. Carter’s
senior aides have confirmed that while the president made the choice to
permit the shah to come to the United States, he did so reluctantly, given
few feasible alternatives available. Hamilton Jordan reported that Carter
strongly preferred that the shah live abroad to improve the chances America
could rebuild its relationship with Iran. He only changed his mind once
administration officials had verified the shah’s dangerous medical condition
and the group had received Iranian assurances that they would protect the
US Embassy in Tehran (Jordan 31-32).
The decision to allow the shah to enter the United States functioned as
the act of betrayal, given Carter’s commitment to international human rights.
The shah’s historical record of human rights abuses in Iran, coupled with his
refusal to transfer his powers to the Iranian government, made him a difficult
ally for a US president publicly proclaiming to be a defender of international
human rights. Since 1953, when the Eisenhower administration ordered the
CIA overthrow of Iranian leader Mohammed Mossadegh, the shah had
ruled Iran with brutality and torture designed to quell political dissent
(Roosevelt 90). The US government subsequently defended the shah, despite
his barbarity with the Iranian people. Carter’s infamous 1978 New Year’s
Eve toast praised Iran as “an island of stability in a turbulent part of the
corner of the world,” a line anonymously added to the original draft of the
speech prepared by the State Department and the National Security Council
on board Air Force One during the trip from Warsaw to Tehran. To date, no
official on the flight has publicly accepted responsibility for the wording
change (Sick, All Fall Down 344). Having established human rights as a cor-
nerstone of his foreign policy, Carter’s close association with the shah of Iran
qualified as a tragic act of shame.
As expected in the tragic genre, Carter’s act of shame became the cata-
lyst for all future acts in the Iranian hostage drama. Initially, Carter’s
public statements were consistent with the tragic hero who has yet to come
to knowledge and understanding that his own actions contributed to his
fate. Carter resisted any insinuation that he had backed away from his
commitment to human rights. He insisted that the shah’s past human
rights abuses of the Iranian people were “ancient history” (Public Papers,
1980–1981 1:307) and he was not interested in “trying to resolve whether
or not the Shah was a good or bad leader” (Public Papers, 1979 2:2205).
Carter tried to recast his decision in positive terms, maintaining that his
decision to permit the entry of the shah was a direct result of his commit-
ment to human rights. Having linguistically transformed the shah from a
public to a private figure, Carter announced he had “no regrets about it nor
apologies to make because it did help to save a man’s life, and it was com-
patible with the principles of our country” (2169). In the early months of
the crisis, Carter maintained his complete lack of responsibility for having
instigated the hostage crisis.
Members of the Carter administration strived to prevent public discus-
sion of the shah’s governance as the precipitating act of the crisis. In a mem-
orandum written in January 1980, Assistant to the President Al McDonald
reminded Carter, “The Iranian issue is one of hostage release, not the reign
of the Shah” (Memo to President). In accordance with McDonald’s advice,
the administration demanded publicly that the release of all the hostages was
a necessary precondition for consideration of any other issues. References by
administration officials to the previous reign of the shah did not appear in
prepared statements. The former Iranian regime was mentioned infrequently
and only in response to pointed questions from White House reporters.
When those outside the administration attempted to raise the topic of
the shah’s reign, the administration was vigorous in its defense of the deci-
sion to admit the shah into the United States. Carter publicly and strongly
denounced Ted Kennedy, his Democratic primary opponent in the 1980
elections, for making the statement reported over the Tehran International
Service that “The American people are now blaming those who agreed to
accommodate the deposed Shah” (“Iran-Cravath, Swaine, and Moore, III”).
Categorically, he insisted that Kennedy’s denouncements “have not been
true, they’ve not been accurate, and they’ve not been responsible, and they’ve
not helped our country” (Carter, Public Papers, 1980–1981 1:308). The
administration wanted no insinuation that Carter’s decision was responsible
for the hostage crisis; aides crafted their rhetoric to foreclose all public dis-
cussion of US culpability.
While Carter refused publicly to admit that his decision regarding the
shah had contributed to the onset of the hostage crisis, he was willing to
confess he had erred when he decided to trust the Iranian government.
Carter recalled, “We had received repeated assurances of protection from
the highest officials in the Iranian Government, even a day or two before
the mob was incited to attack and before the protection was withdrawn at
the last minute” (Public Papers, 1979 2:2124). By focusing on his own will-
ingness to take the Iranians at their word, Carter publicly bolstered his
commitment to the principles of respect and dignity that undergirded his
human rights policy.
Carter’s public statements aside, previously classified memoranda from

his administration confirm that the decision to admit the shah resulted in
the subsequent spiral of disastrous events. The shah’s presence in the United
States was the critical factor preventing the early release of the embassy per-
sonnel. By early January 1980, a report entitled Diplomatic Strategy for
Iran—The Period Ahead circulated through the offices of Carter’s top
aides. It offered insights into the subsequent negotiating postures assumed
by the various players in the hostage crisis. The report reasoned, “Our
assessment of the basic situation in Tehran is unchanged. The militants
have the hostages and will not let them go unless either the Shah is returned
or Khomeini tells them to. Khomeini will not tell them to unless he gets the
Shah. The Revolutionary Council wants to release the hostages in return for
a face-saving gesture—an international tribunal, but cannot persuade
Khomeini. The U.S. is willing to meet the Council’s terms if the hostages
are released first, but not to meet those of Khomeini and the militants. The
impasse continues.” According to Carter’s own intelligence, his refusal to
return the shah was the key factor in the continued confinement of the
American hostages.
Heroes in tragic drama, having committed the shameful act that sets off a
chain of unfortunate events, must endure agonizing suffering. The necessary
suffering can take the form of actual disaster or anticipated catastrophe. The
tragic hero can experience the suffering directly or the spectators, who have
already perceived the hero’s fall, can experience it indirectly (Palmer 148).
Throughout the ordeal, the tragic hero is simultaneously innocent and guilty:
innocent by the arbitrary, random nature of his or her lot and the dispropor-
tionate level of suffering that he or she must endure; guilty by membership
within a guilty society or one where injustices are inescapable (Frye 209;
Sewall 72). Sharing in the guilt of the tragic circumstance, the tragic hero
serves as a scapegoat who is gradually isolated from society (Sewall 5; Frye
217). The hero endures the devastating fate due to a moral nature that will
not permit the use of expediency to escape life’s consequences (Heilman 9).
Predictably, the theme of crime and punishment was prevalent in the
Carter administration’s depictions of the Iranian hostage crisis. Labeling the
seizure an act of kidnapping, blackmail, and extortion, Carter maintained the
embassy takeover constituted “a criminal act” (Public Papers, 1980–1981
1:36), “an illegal incarceration” (Public Papers, 1979 2:2242), and an “illegal
and outrageous holding of the innocent hostages” (Public Papers, 1980–1981
2:611). Carter placed the full blame for the criminal act on Iran, insisting,
“The Government of Iran must recognize the gravity of the situation, which
it has itself created” (Public Papers, 1979 2:2168).
Because Iran had committed a heinous criminal act, the administration’s
narrative called for the foreign nation’s punishment. As a matter of US
policy, Carter maintained, “failure to release the hostages will involve

increasingly heavy costs to Iran” (Public Papers, 1980–1981 1:2141). By July
1980, Carter publicly evaluated the strategy of punishment as successful:
“We are punishing Iran severely for holding the hostages. It’s costing them
literally millions of dollars every day in lost revenue, lost trade, a poorer qual-
ity of life for their people. Their Government is divided, they’re in chaos
politically, because they’re holding these hostages” (2:1312). According to
the administration’s narrative, Iran’s economic suffering was warranted due
to the fact that the guilt for the crisis was Iran’s, and Iran’s alone.
By contrast, the administration’s narrative portrayed the United States as
an innocent victim in the conflict. Statements from the White House were
adamant that the detention of the hostages was “without justification”
(Public Papers, 1979 2:2141). Carter defended the United States as the
“aggrieved party” (Public Papers, 1980–1981 1:36), maintaining the United
States had “done nothing and will do nothing that could be used to justify
violent or imprudent action by anyone” (Public Papers, 1979 2:2123). After
the militant Iranians produced a purported State Department cable proving
the hostages were CIA officers operating under diplomatic cover, adminis-
tration officials declined to even dignify the charge with a statement (“Iran-
Cravath, Swaine, and Moore, I”). Instead, the administration argued that
every international forum (e.g., the United Nations Security Council and the
International Court of Justice) had upheld the guilt of Iran and the inno-
cence of the United States. By depicting the United States as the innocent
party, the administration strived to avert its own public condemnation for the
downward spiral of events in Iran.
While deflecting personal responsibility for the hostage crisis, Carter did
acknowledge that certain actions at home had made the nation vulnerable to
Iran’s illegal actions. Carter focused on how the nation’s overreliance on for-
eign oil had left it exposed to the transgressions of militant actors in the
Middle East. Carter reasoned, “It is our entire Nation which is vulnerable,
because of our overwhelming and excessive dependence on oil from foreign
countries” (Public Papers, 1979 2:2168). America was the victim, but one that
had the power to change the course of its fate. Carter called for sacrifice by
the rank-and-file, encouraging adoption of his conservation plan of gas
rationing to avoid future incidents similar to the embassy seizure in Tehran.
As the months of the crisis continued, it was Carter himself who
accepted suffering to account for the events in Iran. The administration’s
narrative portrayed Carter’s sacrifice as occurring on many levels. Personally,
he had to endure the agony of his own inability to protect Americans abroad.
Carter admitted that the hostage crisis was “a problem that [was] always on
[his] mind” (Public Papers, 1980–1981 2:1907). He depicted the depth of his
concern by emphasizing, “It’s as though those hostages were members of my
own family, my own sons and daughters” (1641). By personalizing the

tragedy, Carter displayed the suffering expected in a tragic drama.
On a political level, Carter suffered a reduced level of public confidence
in his ability to lead the nation. Much of the criticism focused on the han-
dling of the Iranian hostage crisis itself. Five days after the seizure of the
embassy, Carter received written notification from Representative George
Hanson that he planned to introduce a congressional resolution of impeach-
ment if stronger and more effective action was not forthcoming. As the crisis
lingered, members of the press and his political opponents criticized him for
having “been too patient” (Public Papers, 1980–1981 1:670). By the first
week of January 1980, Lou Harris offered an internal administration assess-
ment of a ABC-News Harris Survey that Carter’s political fate would only
get worse: “[T]he American people are beginning to run out of patience with
President Carter’s handling of the hostage crisis in Iran. A 53-27 percent
majority now feels that if ‘in three weeks, the hostages are still held by Iran
and it does not appear that any real progress has been made in getting their
release,’ then President Carter’s policy on the Iran crisis has been a failure. If
the stalemate continues on for another three months, then an even higher
78-12 percent majority would then view the President’s efforts as a failure.”
A top secret review of foreign policy presented at the March 25, 1980 meet-
ing of Carter’s Special Coordinating Committee for the crisis confirmed the
pollster’s prediction: “On a number of specific issues, notably Iran and the
Middle East, we are in fact losing momentum, with potentially very destruc-
tive consequences for our interests” (Foreign Policy: Coherence and Sense of
Direction). By July 1980, Carter’s approval rating had fallen to an all-time
low of twenty-one percent (Greenstein 139). The public’s perception of
Carter as an indecisive leader unable to effectuate the release of the hostages
was a key component of the suffering he endured.
The administration highlighted the arbitrary nature of Carter’s fate
when the rescue mission failed to obtain the release of the American
hostages. Carter described the reason the mission failed as “we were just
plagued by bad luck” (Public Papers, 1980–1981 1:883). He noted that the
source of the problem was equipment failure, not a lack of commitment,
courage, or ability on the part of the president or the involved members of
the armed services. The rescue mission had presented Carter with the oppor-
tunity to display his effectiveness as a leader, but he again fell victim to the
arbitrary fate of the drama’s tragic hero.
In accordance with the expectation of tragic form, the administration’s
narrative presented Carter’s sacrifice not only as arbitrary, but unjust and dis-
proportionate as well. Carter publicly admitted that the Iranian hostage crisis
had made him vulnerable in his 1980 reelection bid. He reinforced that mes-
sage when he adopted the Rose Garden strategy of remaining at the White
House to respond to the hostage crisis rather than campaigning in primaries

across the nation. He stressed his willingness to endure the consequences of
the isolation when he stated, “I think at this time it’s better for me to take
that political sacrifice, accept fewer votes and fewer delegates, in order to
carry out my duties as President” (Public Papers, 1980–1981 1:733).
Appropriate to the role of the tragic hero, Carter publicly accepted the unjust
nature of his isolation and sacrifice.
Behind the scenes, some in the administration were unwilling to accept
Carter’s political sacrifice. Consider the administration’s response to charges
that Carter planned to manipulate events in the hostage crisis to assure his
reelection bid. Jack Anderson and Dale Van Atta were the first journalists
to document the charges in a series of newspaper articles written for United
Feature Syndicate (scheduled for release on August 19–23, 1980). Their
articles announced “a startling Carter plan to invade Iran and create a mili-
tary crisis on the eve of the presidential election” (“Anderson, Jack. Planned
Oct. Invasion”).
The White House responded by categorically denying the allegation. It
issued the following statement: “Erroneous and totally irresponsible reports
such as the Anderson column increase the danger to the American hostages
in Iran, impede efforts to obtain their release peacefully, and jeopardize
American interests in the area generally” (Carter, Public Papers, 1980–1981
2:1545). The deputy press secretary, Rex Granum, sent a telegram to Sidney
Goldberg, the vice president and managing editor of United Feature
Syndicate, requesting that the organization withdraw the column altogether
or that it send a telegram to each recipient of the article with copies of the
White House’s response (“Anderson, Jack. Planned Oct. Invasion”). Many
newspapers and magazines, including the Washington Post, refused to print
the series of columns. The administration’s emphatic response was consistent
with the expectation that a tragic hero would not compromise moral princi-
ple to engage in actions of political expediency.
After conducting subsequent interviews with both the journalists
responsible for the story and the relevant members of the Carter administra-
tion, the former National Security Council staff member Gary Sick con-
cluded, “Anderson’s charges were indeed false. No invasion of Iran was
planned, for October or any other time. His description of the operation,
however, did bear at least some resemblance to the plan for the second rescue
mission” (October Surprise 25). Sick’s conclusion underscored Carter’s unjust
suffering by documenting the unfair nature of the attacks the president had
to endure.
Ironically, the categorical denial of the White House was also false. The
administration insisted in its denial that “neither the President nor any other
responsible official has expressed any intention to take such an action either in
October or any other time” (Carter, Public Papers, 1980–1981 2:1545;

emphasis mine). In a memorandum written August 7, 1980, less than two
weeks before the White House denial, Brzezinski had reminded Carter,
“Foreign policy should offer you the greatest opportunity for the exercise of
Presidential leadership, in a manner that could significantly influence the
outcome of the elections” (Memo to the President, 8/7/80). In the memo he
went on to describe six dangers that might occur in the international arena,
“the handling of which could decisively affect the outcome of the elections.”
One of the six dangers included developments related to the hostage crisis.
Trigger events included that a hostage would be placed on trial, would die, or
would disappear. After itemizing the six dangers, Brzezinski followed imme-
diately by saying, “All of the above could also offer opportunities for decisive
leadership. Such a reaction could galvanize national support and cause a
patriotic upsurge. Thus, on the hostage issue we should at least have the
option to take prompt military action, either through a blockade or (perhaps)
the seizure of Kharg Island. I believe that you should ask Harold Brown to
take some quiet steps to make sure that prompt military action could be initi-
ated in the event of such a crisis.” Kharg Island was notably one of the
potential locations of the planned attack that Anderson and Van Atta had
specified (“Anderson, Jack. Planned Oct. Invasion”) and the one named in
Brzezinski’s memo to Carter (8/11/80). Brzezinski’s statements leave little
doubt that a Carter administration official had indeed expressed the inten-
tion to plan for an invasion of Iran for political effect, the “responsible offi-
cial” qualifier of the administration’s denial notwithstanding.
Within the conventions of tragic drama, the value of the tragic hero’s
suffering is that it produces knowledge. The hero and/or the spectators of
the drama develop an understanding for both the nature of the world and
humanity’s place within it (Palmer 147). Tragic heroes ordinarily come to
understand the finiteness of their powers (Vogel 115; Leech 40; Heilman
153). Spectators of the drama see evil and good in unprecedented ways
(Sewall 23–24; Krook 13). Aristotle advises that discovery is not a simple
process when he writes, “[O]f all recognitions, the best is that which arises
from the incidents themselves, where the startling discovery is made by nat-
ural means” (86). Knowledge thus gained through the events of the drama is
particularly resonant, because it appears less contrived.
Carter’s failed rescue mission functioned as the event that led to his
public acknowledgment of America’s limited power. Prior to the mission,
Carter hailed the wide range of options the United States had for asserting
leverage on Iran to release the hostages. Publicly, he detailed his systematic
process of exhausting diplomatic and economic alternatives before exercising
military options sufficient to obtain the hostages’ release. Once the mission
failed, however, the internal public affairs strategy designed to explain the
timing of the military endeavor unveiled the administration’s own acknowl-

edgment of its impotence to impact the hostage situation:
What are the reasons for the decision: 1) the failure of all diplo-
matic efforts; 2) the absence of any reason to believe that the
hostages would be released at any time in the foreseeable future; 3)
the danger posed to the hostages by the deteriorating situation in
Iran; 4) the obvious complications associated with the military
interdiction of commerce; 5) the need to resolve a crisis that was
heightening tensions in an already volatile and vital region; 6) the
need to remove a situation that complicated relationships among
friends and allies; 7) the judgment of the president and senior mil-
itary and defense advisors that the rescue operation was a sound
and feasible plan; and 8) concern for the physical and psychological
effect on the hostages of prolonged captivity. (McDonald, Memo
to Senior Staff and Deputies)
Having previously argued that the administration had exhausted all diplo-
matic and economic means prior to the rescue attempt, Carter offered little
hope through his public assurance the nation would continue to pursue
peaceful and diplomatic means in the mission’s aftermath. Carter’s recogni-
tion that America’s powers were insufficient to resolve the crisis was evident
in his national address reporting the decision to abort the rescue mission. In
what would become a prophetic statement, Carter explained the rescue team
“knew then what hopes of mine and of all Americans they carried with
them” (Public Papers, 1980–1981 1:772). Like America’s influence over the
hostage crisis, Carter’s political hopes crashed with the helicopters into the
Iranian desert.
Through the remainder of the crisis, Carter discussed the limits on the
government’s ability to obtain the hostages’ release. Publicly, he accepted
that the matter was “not in [his] hands” (Public Papers, 1980–1981 2:1827).
He recognized “We must expect prolonged management of seemingly
intractable situations and often contradictory realities” (1:873). He indicated
that he was praying that the nation’s diplomatic overtures and economic
sanctions, as well as other world events, would convince the Iranians to
return the hostages.
While the public enactment of Carter’s discovery coincided with the
rescue mission, the administration’s internal documents suggested the actual
moment of revelation came several months beforehand. A telegram sent to
the Swiss ambassador outlining the US negotiating position in February
1980 revealed that the administration was willing to accept partial responsi-
bility for the US conflict with Iran. In a straightforward repudiation of the
1953 CIA operation to influence the Iranian elections, the transmission
noted, “The US administration is prepared to make a statement at an appro-

priate moment that it understands the grievances felt by the people of Iran,
and that it respects the integrity of Iran, and the right of the people of Iran
to choose their own form of Government” (Telegram to Swiss Amb. Lang).
Accepting the legitimacy of Iranian claims, the telegram inferentially
acknowledged the precipitating role of the United States in the resulting
hostage crisis in Iran.
The final generic convention of tragic drama involves affirmation or
reaffirmation of human dignity. After the tragic hero suffers and comes to an
understanding of personal responsibility for his or her own condition, the
audience might reasonably expect to feel depression or sadness. Instead,
tragedies end with what Aristotle called catharsis (230), a paradoxical finality
alternatively described by literary theorists as a balance between pleasure and
pain, imperative and impulse, spiritual victory and natural defeat, attraction
and repulsion, or affirmation of self and suicide (Heilman 9; Raphael 15;
Palmer 112). By accepting suffering as both necessary and a result of the
hero’s actions, societal purification occurs. No resurrection of the hero is pos-
sible, as no solution exists to the catastrophic consequences that he or she
must endure. But the society, now estranged from the hero, transcends the
existing moral order. It develops a stronger sense of human dignity, having
observed the hero’s courageous confrontation with disaster (Steiner 129).
The administration’s narrative employed the theme of reaffirmation in
the immediate aftermath of the attempted rescue mission. After visiting the
five men who were injured in the rescue attempt, Carter elevated the partici-
pating members of the armed forces into models for all Americans in difficult
times. He affirmed, “[W]e are reinspired and rededicated to freedom and the
responsibilities of a free nation in a democracy by the self-sacrificial and
heroic attitude of these men” (Public Papers, 1980–1981 1:786). At the eulogy
for the American servicemen killed in Iran, Carter stressed the role that duty
must play in the nation’s consciousness. He emphasized, “[W]e know that it
is not the length of a life that determines its impact or its meaning or its qual-
ity, but the depth of its commitment and the height of its purpose” (864).
Carter defined the pursuit of duty and responsibility to be laudable ends
worth pursuing. He reasoned in his first news conference after the rescue mis-
sion, “There is a deeper failure than that of incomplete success, and that is the
failure to attempt a worthy effort, a failure to try” (793). Carter implied that
both the members of the rescue team and he himself had sacrificed to purge
American society of its collective guilt for the events in Iran.
Carter argued that reaffirmation required a steadfast commitment to the
international goals of freedom, dignity, and human rights. Carter explicitly
defined the future duty of the nation when he said, “We do not maintain our
power in order to seize power from others. Our goal was to strengthen our
own freedom and the freedom of others, to advance the dignity of the indi-
vidual and the right of all people to justice, to a good life, and to a future
secure from tyranny. In choosing our course in the world, America’s strength
must be used to serve America’s values” (Public Papers, 1980–1981 2:1556).
In his farewell address to the nation, he cautioned against temptations to
abandon such principles during difficult times. Instead, he steadfastly main-
tained, “We should never be surprised nor discouraged, because the impact
of our efforts has had and will always have varied results. Rather, we should
take pride that the ideals that gave birth to our Nation still inspire the hopes
of oppressed people around the world. We have no cause for self-righteous-
ness or complacency, but we have every reason to persevere, both in our own
country and beyond our borders” (3:2892). Through a reaffirmation of cher-
ished American values, Carter provided a means of spiritual rebirth even as
American society was in the midst of its second stunning foreign policy
defeat in a decade.
Like tragic dramas more generally, the Carter administration narrative
for the Iranian hostage crisis included an act of shame, inevitable suffering,
acquisition of knowledge, and value reaffirmation. The rhetorical approach
reinforced that the ongoing battle against terrorism would involve catharsis,
i.e., the pain of periodic setbacks coupled with the pleasure of defending the
nation’s foundational ideals.
IDEOLOGY AND THE IRANIAN HOSTAGE CRISIS
Action in tragic dramas rarely focuses on ideological conflicts. The responsi-

bility for society’s ills falls on an individual (the tragic hero), rather than on
an opposing culture. Tragic heroes, as representative of humanity’s potential,
avoid politically expedient clashes of culture and, instead, emphasize tran-
scendent moral themes. As T. R. Henn, a fellow at Cambridge University,
posits, “[W]hile it might be reasonable to expect that tragedies will be writ-
ten concerning conflict which will necessarily accumulate on the periphery of
such ideological situations, we shall not expect the central conflicts to be sus-
ceptible of tragic statement” (248). Consistent with the traditions of tragic
drama, the Carter public communication strategy generally avoided ideologi-
cal depictions of the Iranian hostage crisis.
Remaining on the outskirts of an ideological conflict, however, would
not be easy for the Carter team. The administration faced a hostage crisis
staged as ideological warfare by opposing forces within just a few days of the
embassy takeover. On November 22, 1979, the Ayatollah Khomeini labeled
the crisis a de facto “war between Islam and the pagans” (“Iran-Cravath,
Swaine, and Moore I”). The following day, the Tehran International Service
quoted Khomeini identifying a series of steps all Muslims should follow:

“(1) All Muslim officers must attack with their weapons against U.S.
imperialism and its agents in Muslim countries and must support the
Iranian people in battle. (2) All Muslims must demonstrate against the
U.S. and its agents in Muslim countries in order to make the U.S. under-
stand that Iran is not alone. (3) All U.S. interests, embassies and estab-
lishments in Muslim countries must be destroyed” (as qtd. in
“Iran-Cravath, Swaine, and Moore III”).
By the next day, Khomeini charged that the United States and Israel
had attempted to seize Moslem mosques in Mecca and Medina. Some mul-
lahs throughout Iran began equating a visit to the US Embassy in Iran with
a pilgrimage to Mecca (Taheri 124). Gary Sick has described the difficulties
the administration faced when he wrote: “Khomeini was a total ideologue.
He saw the world through the exclusive prism of his own beliefs, separating
events into opposites: right or wrong, good or bad, black or white. And
since he considered his ideology divinely ordained, he was the most danger-
ous of all ideologues” (All Fall Down 219). Given Khomeini’s status as pri-
mary religious leader for many Iranian fundamentalists, his ideological
depiction of the contest became a notable factor in the world’s perception of
the hostage crisis.
The captors who held the embassy publicly reflected Khomeini’s fram-
ing of the crisis. They called for mourning possessions carrying flags of mar-
tyrdom and revolution as a show of Muslim unity against the United States.
They announced that anyone insulting or using obscene language about the
policies of the Imam should be considered an agent of the CIA or SAVAK,
the brutal military police organization of the shah. Even when they
announced the humane treatment of the hostages, the captors were careful to
clarify that such action was not a capitulation to the United States; it was an
act consistent with Muslim ideology (“Iran-Cravath, Swaine, and Moore I”).
Khomeini and the captors elevated the international stakes of the conflict by
raising the act of hostage taking to a clash of cultures.
The calls from Khomeini and the embassy captors resonated throughout
much of the Middle East. A telegram from the Chargé d’affaires Bruce
Laingen to Cyrus Vance assessed the sentiment in Iran less than a month
after the embassy takeover. He warned, “Khomeini and his entourage of cler-
ics have skillfully used the seizure of our embassy, charges that our diplomats
are spies, and our refusal to hand over the shah to develop a mass psychology
of hate that may have few parallels in history [. . .]. In Pakistan, hundreds
stormed the US Embassy, killing one American and trapping dozens of
embassy personnel in a vault for five hours. Pakistanis also attacked the US
Consulate in Karachi, the American Library in Lahore, and the American
Cultural Center in Rawalpindi. In Beirut, fifty Iranian students marched on
the US Embassy, tore the US seal off the building, and burned an American
flag. In Libya, approximately two thousand demonstrators marched on the
US Embassy in Tripoli, chanting support for the Iranians and setting fire to
the embassy’s furniture. Amid the chants of “Death to America” and “the
Great Satan” in various quarters around the Middle East, the Carter admin-
istration faced a ready-made ideological battle with the Muslim world.
Both Carter and his key advisors recognized the importance of fore-
stalling a clash of Islam with the United States. Strategically, they believed
the United States could ill afford to make an enemy of the entire Muslim
world, given the dependence on Middle Eastern oil both at home and by key
allies abroad. A top-secret internal report entitled Foreign Policy: Coherence
and Sense of Direction offered the following assessment: “The stakes are so
great (even greater to Western Europe and Japan which are far more depen-
dent on Middle East oil) that it is strategically imperative the U.S. orches-
trate a credible response with our Allies and (to the extent feasible) the
nations of the region—and that we then together can carry out that
response.” The administration’s cost-benefit analysis strongly argued against
broadening the conflict from Iran to the broader Muslim community.
Accordingly, the administration attempted to deflect attention away
from ideological interpretations of the struggle. Charged with providing
Carter daily policy advice regarding the Iranian hostage crisis, the Special
Coordinating Committee (SCC) reported its consensus that the president
should “reaffirm that the U.S. has no quarrel with the people of Islam, has
long-standing ties with Islam, and great respect for the principles of the
faith” (Donovan). Noting that Carter was in full agreement with the SCC,
Harold Saunders recalled, “The President wanted at a minimum to be sure
that, in dealing with the Iranian revolutionaries, we did not do or say things
that would make us seem at odds with the whole Islamic world” (“Diplomacy
and Pressure” 124). Consistent with the character of the tragic hero, Carter
held to a pragmatic, rather than an ideological, approach to the public policy
governance of the Iranian situation (Morris 260).
Multiple public statements by administration officials during the hostage
crisis stressed the mutual interests of the United States, Iran, and the
remainder of the Muslim world. The State Department, for example, orga-
nized a reception for all the faculties of Islamic Studies in the Washington,
DC area. Held in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, the event fea-
tured Carter addressing the group in celebration of the close and valued ties
between America and the Muslim world. He told his audience, “We share,
first and foremost, a deep faith in the one Supreme Being. We are all com-
manded by Him to faith, compassion and justice. We have a common
respect and reverence for the law. Despite the strains of the modern age, we
continue to place special importance on the family and the home. And we
share a belief that hospitality is a virtue and that the host, whether a nation
or an individual, should behave with generosity and honor toward guests”
(Public Papers, 1980–1981 1:284). Carter closed his remarks with an
expression of his continued interest in developing closer political, eco-
nomic, and cultural ties with Islamic nations. His message was straightfor-
ward: the United States wished to continue its relationship with Muslim
nations around the globe despite the tensions resulting from the Iranian
hostage crisis.
Administration officials felt so strongly about the consequences of
alienating Muslim countries that they attempted to influence the American
media’s reporting of the hostage crisis. Aides asked reporters to avoid depic-
tions of the events in Iran as a clash between the United States and the
Muslim world. Harold Saunders was ardent in a press background briefing
of December 6, 1979: “The issue has little to do with religion, although the
Iranian authorities have cast the issue on religious terms. [. . .] It seems to
me that in the interest of sound reporting, whether it be our official com-
mentary or your reporting of the situation, we all might together reflect on
our own practice in using words like ‘Muslim’ or ‘Islamic’ to generalize
about what has been called the crescent of the crisis. This is not principally,
I think, an issue between Islamic nations and the U.S.” (Saunders, Press
Backgrounder). He then reminded the press that the United States still
enjoyed strong relations with other Muslim states and that many Arab gov-
ernments had denounced the holding of hostages as a violation of interna-
tional law and diplomatic practice.
The Carter administration used expanded Voice of America broadcasts
to send a conciliatory message to the people of Iran directly. Having elimi-
nated Persian programming due to lack of funding prior to the crisis, the
administration resumed running half-hour, indigenous language programs to
Iranian audiences. In November 1979, the Voice of America programs inter-
viewed leading Muslims discussing U.S.-Iranian relations and their unfavor-
able reaction to the taking of the hostages (Reinhardt, Memo to Brzezinski).
On a more long-term basis, James M. Rentschler, the director of the
International Communication Agency, recommended to Brzezinski on
December 3, 1979, that the United States needed to develop programming
stressing American identification with Islam. As he stated, “It should not be
too difficult for ICA people to devise a series of programs, valid over the next
one to five years, which point up the commonality of values, spiritual and
secular, that link our societies.” By stressing identification, rather than divi-
sion, the administration hoped to strengthen ties between the United States
and Iran and further America’s long-range interests in the Middle East.
The orchestrated effort to diffuse the contest between the United States
and the Muslim world was not the only potential ideological conflict facing
the Carter administration. The potential clash with a joint Muslim/Com-

munist enemy was perhaps even more ominous. From Carter’s first days in
office, the administration identified Iran as the most likely spot for conflict
between the United States and the Soviet Union. As Colonel William E.
Odom, member of the National Security Advisor’s staff, recalled, “In the
regional areas of East-West competition, the largest strategic stakes and the
most fragile situation was in Iran and the Persian Gulf area.” As early as
November 1978, Carter’s diary recorded his concern the Soviet leadership
would intervene in Iran (Keeping Faith 440).
The Soviet move was not only one of high probability; it was one with
high stakes as well. Internal administration analyses detailing the dangerous
consequences of a Soviet takeover of Iran reasoned, “In geo-political terms,
the Soviets would be in a position from Iran to dominate the Middle East
and South Asia, and ultimately to deny Gulf oil to the West. [. . .] A suc-
cessful Soviet operation in Iran, even if it did not lead to a cut-off of other
Gulf oil, would affect the power balance almost as decisively as a long-term
disruption of that supply” (“Iran-11/79”). A top-secret report of the SCC
added a projection of the economic impact of a Soviet movement into the
Iran: “The effect of Soviet control of [Persian Gulf oil], either through overt
military action or by internal subversion or political intimidation, would
destroy the free market economies and dissolve our alliances in Europe and
in East Asia” (Building Up Our Deterrent Capabilities). Administration
officials saw Iran as pivotal for the very survival of American influence
around the world.
US intelligence reports confirmed the Soviet Union was attempting to
capitalize on the Iranian hostage crisis to improve its standing in the Muslim
world. Even before the seizure of the embassy, the Soviet Union had ordered
its leftist, pro-Soviet elements in Iran to participate in revolutionary demon-
strations against the shah and had promised Soviet assistance and material
support for a left-wing coup expected sometime in 1979 (Middle East
Bureau). In the early days after the embassy seizure, Carter’s chief of the
Covert Action Staff reported that FBI summaries of National Voice of Iran
clandestine broadcasting from the Soviet Union came “close to saying Iran
has support and will be protected by the USSR.” After assessing all FBI
summary reports of Soviet clandestine broadcasting to Iran from November
1979 through March 1980, a National Security Council staff member Paul
Henze concluded, “[T]he Soviets have not only done nothing to help us in
the Iranian hostage situation—they have persistently and insidiously done
their damnedest to stir up Iranian opinion against us” (Memo to Brzezinski
4/7/80). Using available intelligence at the time, officials in the Carter
administration believed the Soviet Union was a palpable threat to Iran and
the rest of the Middle East.
The Iranians who worked with the Carter administration attempted to

exploit the struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union by
invoking the use of ideological terminology. The shah himself blamed the
rise of the revolution on enforcement of laws designed to undermine
Communist influence in Iran (Carter, Keeping Faith). Both the shah and
intermediaries of the Iranian government subsequently told Carter aides that
the militants who held the embassy were Communists or had Marxist lean-
ings (Washburn, Memo to Precht). The Iranian foreign minister Sadegh
Ghotbzadeh relayed an account of being kicked out of the embassy com-
pound by “those idiot communists” after demanding that the captors allow
an international commission to visit the hostages (Sick, Memo to
Brzezinski). Ghotbzadeh argued the United States should work through him
to release the hostages, because he remained the “main obstacle to commu-
nist influence in the new revolutionary regime” (qtd. in Precht). By April
1980, US assessments did not accept the ideological conclusions of the for-
eign minister. Instead, they concluded his argument was simply designed to
induce the United States to be more flexible in its negotiations with Iranian
intermediaries (ibid.). While members of the administration did accept that
the Soviet Union was a threat to Iran, they were reluctant to conclude that a
Communist nation was coordinating the events of the hostage crisis.
Carter was initially reluctant to publicly fuel the ideological conflict
between the United States and the Soviet Union. Having invested much of
his own political capital in the SALT II arms control treaty, Carter initially
preferred alternative explanations for the Soviets’ behavior. After the Soviets
first entered Afghanistan, Carter used labels such as “Soviet military inter-
vention,” “Soviet invasion,” and “Soviet action” (See Public Papers, 1980–
1981 1:194–200, 21–24) to depict the move. The approach steered away
from an ideological frame that would have depicted the conflict as a contest
between Communism and democracy. Publicly, Carter did not recall the
Soviet Union’s history of aggression or its current adventurism as an integral
part of the Communist ideology, opting instead for the pragmatic explana-
tion that the Soviet Union sought direct access to oil reserves of the Persian
Gulf (38–42). Early on, Carter acted to avoid a clash of cultures, leaving
open the possibility for improved relations in the future.
Eventually, Carter did adopt the rhetorical strategy of ideological war-
fare to portray the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The timing of his shift
coincided with the International Olympic Coordinating Committee’s refusal
of his request to move the 1980 Moscow games to Athens, Greece.
Cognizant of Hitler’s celebration of Nazism at the 1936 Berlin games,
Carter called on all democratic nations to refuse to send their flags to the
Soviet Union in protest of the Afghanistan invasion (Public Papers,
1980–1981 1:675). Some of the allies rebuffed Carter’s request, not wanting
to disrupt their trade with the Soviet Union (Drachman and Schank
226–27). Carter’s call for the boycott ultimately resulted in sixty out of a pos-
sible one hundred and fourteen countries complying with his request and
another sixteen refusing to participate in the opening ceremonies.
Unable to rally the entire world community around his boycott of the
Olympic games, Carter subsequently became increasingly strident in his por-
trayal of the conflict. Facing stiff competition in his 1980 presidential cam-
paign, Carter’s campaign trail appeals became increasingly ideological. At a
town hall meeting in South Carolina, Carter proclaimed, “When the Soviets
went into their neighboring nation, Afghanistan, this was not a triumph of
communism, it was an indication of the failure of communism” (Public
Papers, 1980–1981 3:2565). Having failed to rally the public behind nonide-
ological frameworks for portraying America’s foreign policy challenges,
Carter adopted a more aggressive cultural clash strategy with the approach of
his final election.
Throughout the final year of his presidency, Carter publicly associated
the seizure of the US Embassy in Tehran with the Soviet invasion in
Afghanistan. He frequently made public statements that described the two
international incidents in tandem. When discussing Afghanistan, he stressed
many of the themes of tragic drama that he had already rehearsed with the
American public in regard to the Iranian hostage crisis. Examples included:
(1) the invasion constituted an illegal act that violated international law, (2)
the Soviet Union would suffer increasing costs for remaining in Afghanistan,
(3) punitive actions by the United States were unlikely to persuade the
Soviets to withdraw, and (4) public sacrifice would be necessary during the
crisis. Merging the two foreign crises into a single phenomenon of disrespect
for international law had the advantage of providing focus to the problem.
However, failure to achieve positive results in one crisis reinforced the tragic
outcome of the other.
By linking the crises, Carter invited his audience to conclude that the
American and Islamic cultures were not at war. When speaking to Iranian
audiences, Carter administration officials actively engaged in a campaign to
present the Soviet Union, not America, as the real threat facing Iran. The
strategy, dominant by May 1980, sought to capitalize on the fear Iranian
clerics had of the Soviet-dominated Left overtaking Iran (Dodson). In Jody
Powell’s statement to David Hartman on Good Morning America, he argued
that the Soviet Union, not the United States, was anti-Muslim: “When you
have 50,000 troops right across your border who are actively engaged in
killing your co-religionists because they wish to practice the same religion
that you wish, it seems to me that might be a matter of greater concern than
any imagined threat from the United States.” Repeatedly, administration
statements referenced the vote of thirty-four Muslim nations in Islamabad
condemning the Soviet Union and calling for a withdrawal of its troops in
Afghanistan. By refocusing the conflict as one between Communism and
Islam, the Carter administration attempted to de-emphasize the antipathy
that existed between Iran and the United States.
To broaden the Iranian audience for the anti-Soviet message, Carter
approved broadcasts by the Board of International Broadcasting, a unit of the
International Communication Agency, in areas adjacent to Iran and
Afghanistan. As Harold Saunders revealed, Carter “wanted to take whatever
advantage could be taken of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, a nonaligned
Islamic nation” (“Diplomacy and Pressure” 124). Carter approved a SCC
plan of December 12, 1979 that called for increases in US broadcasts to
Muslim audiences, additional transmitters, and additional personnel. The
intent of the broadcasts was to underscore the unfavorable treatment of
Muslims by the Soviet Union. The plan for the broadcasts was to reiterate
that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan demonstrated the willingness of the
current Soviet Union to intervene in the internal affairs of Muslim countries.
Recognizing that funding for the Board of International Broadcasting
plan was insufficient to accomplish the intended task, Carter requested and
received authorization for a substantial increase in funding. On May 8, the
House Foreign Affairs Committee authorized additional appropriations of
$3 million for FY 1980 and $9.7 million for FY 1981 to the Board for
International Broadcasting to provide four new transmitters and additional
management and support personnel to enhance broadcasting by Radio
Liberty to the Central Asian areas of the Soviet Union, including areas adja-
cent to Afghanistan and Iran (“Meetings-SCC 266”). Despite congressional
approval, the Office of Management and Budget did not allocate the funding
for the project. Perhaps in a final bit of tragic irony, Paul Henze complained
in June 1980, “It is exactly six months since President’s approval of expand-
ing broadcast to Muslims. Not much has happened as a result. [. . .] Not a
penny has been allocated to expanding Muslim broadcasting staffs and no
new transmitters have been leased or otherwise secured” (Memo to
Brzezinski, 6/7/80).
The choice of a tragic narrative to depict the Iranian hostage crisis
appeared in concert with Carter’s reluctance to elevate terrorism into an ide-
ological marker of American culture. Terrorism now fell into the same cate-
gory as other great tragic themes, such as the relationship of humanity to the
environment, the place of humanity within the universe, and the meaning of
life. It had become an ongoing crisis of the ages with universal implications.
Facing such an important matter, the public began to question why Carter
did not take stronger action.
Carter’s more pragmatic approach was productive on a policy level. By
virtually any objective measure of success in hostage-taking affairs, Carter’s
methods achieved better results than those of his contemporaries who

embraced an ideological framing of terrorism. During Carter’s tenure, for
example, fewer Americans became hostages, fewer Americans died in foreign
captivity, and those who were held spent fewer years in captivity than during
Reagan’s presidency. (US Dept. State, “International Terrorism Incidents,”
US Dept. State “Casualties”). Nonetheless, it was Carter, the tragic hero,
who had to symbolically experience “death” for American society to under-
stand its own limits. His own administration’s narrative presented Carter as
willing to endure such unjust suffering so that society’s commitment to
human dignity could be reaffirmed.
The tragic framing of the Iranian hostage crisis positioned Carter for his
legacy as a strong ex-president. Because tragic heroes are willing to endure
suffering to absolve society’s responsibility for a crisis, they become ennobled
even as they are defeated. Their commitment to transcendent moral values,
such as human rights, freedom, and dignity for all people, appears all the
more substantial given their own willingness to sacrifice on behalf of their
principles. Their responsibility to the moral order becomes a defining ele-
ment of their character, as does their awareness of and resistance to the
short-term temptations of political expediency and ideological confrontation.
Recent opinion polls rank Carter as having the highest moral character of
any president, a somewhat unsurprising finding for the hero of America’s
modern tragic drama (Schulman M1).
Carter’s approach to the Iranian hostage crisis limited America’s
response options to those that responded directly to the proven perpetrators
of a criminal act of terrorism. Not wanting to risk more clashes with Muslim
nations around the globe, he refused to fully employ the ideological power of
the terrorism label. His successor would not be so restrained.
4
Origins of Terrorism as an American

Ideograph: The Reagan Era
D uring the 1980 presidential campaign, Ronald Reagan promised the

American public that, unlike Carter, he knew the answers to the
nation’s terrorism problem. Once elected, however, Reagan experienced a
sharp increase in global terrorism. Attacks against Americans and their prop-
erty rose from eight and a half percent of the world total in the five years
immediately preceding Reagan’s tenure to between twenty and thirty-five
percent from 1983 to 1988 (Terrorist Incidents). More than five thousand
terrorist attacks occurred worldwide. The Middle East became a focal point
of terrorism, serving as the site of thirty-five percent of all international inci-
dents and the source of about one fourth of all attacks in Europe (Middle
East and Terrorism). Over 550 Americans lost their lives in terrorist attacks
during the Reagan era (Turner 24).
Iran’s celebrated release of American hostages on Reagan’s inauguration
day foreshadowed the public prominence the topic would have throughout
the remainder of his presidency. Reagan gave literally hundreds of public
statements addressing the topic. A dozen specific acts of terrorism domi-
nated Reagan’s discourse, all involving the deaths of Americans outside the
United States. In the substantial majority of Reagan’s speeches, he discussed
incidents that occurred in two regions of the world: Central America and the
Middle East.
One particular Central American incident captured congressional and
public attention. It involved the murder of four American churchwomen by
the El Salvadoran National Guard in December 1980. The nuns’ previous
work with the poor had raised local suspicions that they were rebel sympa-
thizers, a position reinforced by initial administration statements on the sub-
ject (Arnson 62–63). While the executive branch assured Congress that the
government of El Salvador was conducting a full investigation, the
Salvadorans were actually engaged in a cover-up that included job transfers
65
for confessed killers and a weapons exchange designed to avoid ballistics

detection. The perpetrators were eventually brought to justice, but not until
the US government obtained the names of the murderers, turned them over
to the El Salvadoran military, and insisted upon arrests (Leogrande 93–94).
The Reagan administration, with its well-known support of the El
Salvadoran government, faced embarrassment as a result of the incident.
In the Middle East, the frequency and deadliness of terrorist attacks
spiked after Israel responded to terrorist raids across its border by invading
Lebanon in June 1982 (Hougan). The resulting violence prompted the
United States to send the Marines into Lebanon as part of a multinational
peacekeeping force. On April 18, 1983, a suicide bomber, allegedly moti-
vated by the desire to drive the United States out of Lebanon and to punish
America for supporting Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war, rammed a van loaded with
TNT explosives into the front of the US Embassy in West Beirut (Oakley).
The attack killed sixty-seven people, including seventeen Americans. In an
October 11, 1985 press briefing, Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger
claimed to have circumstantial evidence linking the bombing to the Iranian-
backed Hezbollah, but no US retaliatory response was forthcoming.
In a predawn attack on October 23, 1983, another suicide bomber
crashed into the US Marine barracks in Lebanon. Two hundred and forty-
one Americans stationed to protect the Beirut airport died in the bombing.
The US government implicated the Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah as having
caused the attack (Buhite 222–23). Reagan initially proclaimed a staunch,
continuing commitment to the initial size and mission of the peacekeeping
force (Press Briefing). Four months later he became convinced of the inability
to ensure the safety of American military forces in Lebanon and ordered the
redeployment of the Marines to ships offshore (Public Papers, 1984 1:186).
Not all of the specific terrorist acts Reagan publicly discussed victimized
American military forces; he also mentioned acts of Middle Eastern terror-
ism that targeted civilians. On June 14, 1985, two twenty-year-old Lebanese
men, armed with two grenades and a pistol, hijacked TWA Flight 847,
which was en route from Athens to Rome. One hundred and fifty-three
people on the plane, including 135 Americans, became hostages. When the
captors’ initial demand for an intermediary went unheeded, they shot Navy
Petty Officer Second Class Robert Stethem. Afterward, the captors threw
the serviceman’s dead body down onto the airport’s tarmac. Over the next
sixteen days, approximately a dozen heavily armed men took control of the
plane. They flew back and forth from Beirut to Algiers, releasing hostages
intermittently. Their demands included: the release of seven hundred
Lebanese Shia Muslims held by Israel, the release of two Shia Muslims held
by Spanish authorities for shooting a Libyan diplomat, the release of seven-
teen Shia Muslims imprisoned in Kuwait for a series of six bombing attacks
Origins of Terrorism as an American Ideograph 67
in December 1983, an end to Arab world oil and arms transactions with the
United States, a removal of US navy ships from the Lebanese coast prior to
the hostages’ release, and a pledge that the United States and Israel would
not retaliate once the situation was resolved (Summary of Events). One addi-
tional demand, never officially released to the American public, was for the
United States to admit CIA involvement in a previous covert Beirut car
bombing (Turner 191). The captors released the remainder of the hostages
on June 30, 1985, following Israel’s release of thirty-one Shia Muslim
detainees from Atlit Prison and after the US State Department’s public
statement reaffirming “its long-standing support for the preservation of
Lebanon, its government, its stability, and security and for the mitigation of
the suffering of its people” (Summary of Events). Despite the appearance
that the Israeli and US actions constituted concessions to the hostage-takers,
the leadership of both nations insisted that their actions were in no way con-
nected to the release of the TWA 847 hostages.
Less than four months later, four members of the Palestine Liberation
Front hijacked the Achille Lauro on the high seas between Alexandria and
Port Said, Egypt. The hijackers, purportedly on their way to Ashdod, Israel
to avenge an earlier Israeli bombing raid on PLO headquarters in Tunis,
took four hundred individuals hostage on October 7, 1985 (Sec. of St.,
Telegram to Amman, et al.). The hijackers threatened to blow up the ship
and to execute an American hostage every five minutes if their demand to
release fifty Palestinians imprisoned in Israel was not met (Sec. of St.,
Telegram to Am. Emb. Belgrade). Egypt mediated a resolution of the crisis
at the written request of Italy and the Federal Republic of Germany. The
subsequent agreement, previewed and approved by Reagan, required the
hijackers to release the captives in exchange for safe passage and delivery to
the PLO for prosecution (Am. Consul in Alexandria). Reagan’s consent was
contingent on the hijackers not killing any of the passengers. Captain
Gerardo De Rosa of the Achille Lauro satisfied the agreement’s conditions
when, threatened with his own life and the murder of another passenger, he
confirmed in writing that all passengers were safe. The kidnappers released
the passengers and crew fifty-two hours after the ship’s initial takeover.
A few days later, the Syrians recovered Leon Klinghoffer’s body, shot in
the forehead, on the seacoast near Tartous (US Dept. of St., Operations
Center). Recognizing the death of an American passenger, the United States
immediately asked Egypt to hold the kidnappers for Italian extradition.
Instead, an Egyptian 737 carrying the four terrorists, two Palestinians
(including the alleged mastermind Abu Abbas), and four Egyptians took off
for Tunis. When Tunis and Athens denied landing privileges to the aircraft,
it turned back to Egypt. On route, four US F14s from the USS Saratoga
intercepted the plane and escorted it to Sigonella, Italy (Weinberger). The
Italians agreed to a request for extradition of the four kidnappers. Both the
Italian and Yugoslavian governments refused to extradite Abu Abbas to the
United States, given that the case for his guilt was based exclusively on Israeli
sources (Egyptian Handling).
The Reagan administration did not limit discussion of Middle Eastern
terrorism to attacks on Middle Eastern soil. Less than six months after the
Achille Lauro incident, agents of the Libyan People’s Bureau of East Berlin
exploded a bomb in a West Berlin discotheque, killing two people and injur-
ing two hundred and thirty others (a figure that included fifty American ser-
vicemen). The US government claimed to have convincing evidence that
Libyan leader Moammar Qadhafi directed the April 5, 1996 attack, evidence
that included intercepts of contact between the bombers and the Libyan gov-
ernment both the day before and the day after the attack (Burnett). The
administration released a State Department White Paper cataloging more
than fifty instances of Libyan terrorism from 1979 to 1985 and intelligence
linking the government of Libya to the highly dangerous Abu Nidal terrorist
group. Claiming to have evidence of plans for future attacks against high-
ranking US officials and intercepts from the Libyan embassy in East
Germany verifying their prior knowledge of the attack on the discotheque,
the Reagan administration decided to respond (Libya under Qadhafi). On
April 14, 1986, administration officials asked a group of European foreign
ministers to join the United States in imposing economic sanctions against
Tripoli. When the ministers refused, the administration initiated controver-
sial air and naval strikes. Officially, the targets were Libyan command posts,
training bases, and transport capabilities, but when a US bomb hit a military
barrack that housed one of Qadhafi’s residences, speculation arose that the
actual objective was the assassination of the Libyan leader (Targets;
Drachman and Shank 245).
A second event where Reagan referred to a Middle Eastern source tar-
geting American civilians in Europe occurred on December 21, 1988. Pan
Am Flight 103, en route from Frankfort to London to New York, exploded
over Lockerbie, Scotland. The attack killed 259 individuals aboard the plane
and 11 bystanders on the ground. The day after the bombing, a group calling
itself “the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution” took responsibility for the
incident, claiming revenge for the US decision to give refuge to the shah and
for the July 1988 downing of an Iranian civilian airbus by the USS Vincennes
that had previously killed 227 adults and 63 children (Am. Emb. in
London). Years after the explosion, Reagan administration officials posited
the theory that the Pan Am 103 attack had been Qadafi’s retaliation for the
US air raid that had killed the Libyan leader’s daughter (Cannistraro).
On January 31, 2001, more than a decade after the onset of the initial
investigation by US, Scottish, and German authorities, a special three-judge
Scottish court found Abdel Basset Al-Megrahi, an alleged Libyan security

agent, guilty of murder related to the Pan Am 103 incident. Based on cir-
cumstantial evidence, the prosecution’s case linked a coat that Al-Megrahi
purchased in Malta to the inside of the suitcase bomb. He received a sen-
tence of life imprisonment with a possibility of parole after twenty years,
while his codefendant Al-Amin Khalifa Fahima was found not guilty. More
than two decades after Pam Am 103 crashed, the Libyan government agreed
to pay $2.7 billion to victim’s families in the airliner crash, with each family
receiving $10 million. Their announced timeline for payment was forty per-
cent of the amount when the UN lifted its sanctions against Libya, forty per-
cent when the United States lifted its sanctions against Libya, and twenty
percent when the United States removed Libya from its list of state sponsors
of terrorism.
While the vast majority of Reagan’s public examples of Middle Eastern
terrorism focused on bombings, he also commented publicly on hostage inci-
dents. Throughout the entirety of Reagan’s second presidential term, Islamic
fundamentalists held more than a dozen Americans hostage in Lebanon.
Targets included CIA agents, members of the clergy, journalists, and fac-
ulty/administrators of both American University in Beirut and the
International School in South Beirut. The Islamic Jihad organization exe-
cuted two hostages—William Buckley and Peter Killburn—claiming retalia-
tion for Israel’s bombing of the PLO headquarters in Tunis and for the US
bombing raid on Libya. The murder of Buckley was particularly salient
because of his standing as the most senior US intelligence officer knowledge-
able about the Middle East. Other groups holding hostages demanded arms
sales and the release of seventeen Shia Muslims imprisoned for their role in
six December 1983 bombings targeting American and French embassies in
Kuwait (Buhite 223). While publicly maintaining a stance of no concessions
to terrorists, Reagan privately authorized the sale of more than fifteen hun-
dred TOW and Hawk missile parts to Iranian emissaries from August 1985
through November 1986 (“Iran/Arms Transaction”). He also approved a
plan to release the seventeen Da’wa prisoners (Lytton). After the initial
exchange of arms for three hostages, the captors kidnapped three more
Americans and increased the price of obtaining future hostage releases
(Wroe 87). When a Middle Eastern newspaper made the arms-for-hostage
deal public, Reagan experienced a loss of US credibility abroad (Platt, Memo
to Poindexter 11/14/86), the largest drop in domestic presidential approval
ratings ever recorded over a several-week period (D’Souza 247) and the onset
of a joint congressional investigation that uncovered the diversion of pro-
ceeds from the Iranian arms sales to the Nicaraguan Contras.
While the bulk of Reagan’s discourse emphasized terrorist incidents
spawned in the Middle East, he made an exception when a Soviet aircraft
fired on a commercial US airliner. In the predawn hours of September 1,

1983, a Soviet SU-15 fighter shot down KAL Flight 007 as the plane left
Russian airspace over Sakhalin Island. All 269 passengers and crew died in
the subsequent crash, constituting the fifth worst air disaster in history (R.
W. Johnson 1). The US government condemned the attack as a wanton act
of murder against a civilian airliner; the Soviet government maintained it
was an unfortunate, but necessary, response to a provocative violation of
Russian airspace. Ultimately, both governments retracted their initial state-
ments on the crisis, with the Soviets admitting the incident had actually
happened and the United States divulging that one of its RC-135 recon-
naissance aircraft had been in the vicinity of the Korean airliner when it was
originally detected by Soviet radar (Sec. of St., Telegram to All Dipl. Posts).
Official US sources insisted the airliner’s deviation into Soviet airspace was
accidental. Interviews and an independent assessment of the flight tapes led
analyst David Pearson to conclude, “The evidence suggests that Flight 007’s
deviation was known to its crew. It suggests that U.S. civilian and military
personnel knew the plane to be headed toward the Soviet Union hours
before the shoot down and did nothing to direct it back to course. And it is
clear that the Administration has tried from the beginning to limit inquiry
into the downing” (Pearson 360–61).
The Reagan administration’s selection of these twelve examples of ter-
rorist acts was, in and of itself, a revealing act. Reagan primarily focused on
terrorist attacks (usually bombings) that involved government-backed perpe-
trators in the Middle East. As the next section of the chapter will argue,
Reagan’s focus was not random; it had important implications for the imple-
mentation of his administration’s foreign policy agenda.
LABELING THE THREAT
Faced with more than five thousands acts of international terrorism, the
Reagan administration focused on a subgroup it labeled “state-sponsors of
terrorism.” The new label carried institutional currency, given Congress’s
recent passage of the Export Administration Act of 1979. That law empow-
ered the secretary of state to place on an annual list nations found to be
sponsors of multiple acts of international terrorism. Once on the list, foreign
nations became subject to export restrictions. As would become apparent
during Reagan’s tenure, states on the list could also expect to be the recipient
of a host of other measures ranging up to and including military retaliation.
State sponsorship of terrorism was a phrase expansive enough to encom-
pass a wide range of activity perceived to be threatening to the United States.
The phrase allowed the government to differentiate state aid to terrorist
groups from self-supported terrorism or tactical terrorism (Public Report of

VP Task Force). Operationally, the administration defined the phrase as
“logistical aid, provision of weapons and/or training, granting of safe-havens,
use of diplomatic pouches and/or documentation, and—in some cases—
actual targetting [sic] and/or provision of information about the selected
target” (McFarlane). By grouping foreign states refusing to extradite accused
terrorists with others that actively conspired to commit acts of violence, the
label offered expansive possibilities for those the administration considered
deserving of public condemnation, economic reprisal, or military retaliation.
Members of the Reagan administration both recognized and exercised
broad latitude in assigning state-sponsor status. Deputy Assistant of
National Security Affairs Nancy Bearg Dyke wrote to Vice President George
Bush in March 1982 to inform him that the secretary of state had removed
Iraq from the list, despite internal intelligence demonstrating that the
Middle Eastern nation continued to sponsor terrorism. The rationale for the
decision, she explained, was that the administration wanted to encourage
Iraq to become more like other more moderate Arab nations. Dyke went on
to indicate that even for countries that did make the list, the United States
could apply different strategies of reprisal. She offered the cases of Syria and
South Yemen, which could buy civil aircraft, while Libya and Cuba could
not. Multiple factors besides a nation’s history with terrorism fed into the
decision for inclusion on the list.
The administration used the notion of state sponsorship to justify a
reengineering of the nation’s response options to terrorism. Publicly,
Reagan maintained, “The new phenomenon we have seen of the use of ter-
rorism as an instrument of state policy demands new approaches from us”
(Public Papers, 1985 1:517). Behind the scenes, much of the focus was on
the past: namely, the early republic’s approach to the Barbary pirates.
National Security Assistants Don Gregg and Doug Menarchik argued in a
memo to Bush that the Barbary pirate analogy was appropriate for develop-
ing response options to current terrorist acts. They reasoned, “Just as the
Barbary powers were held responsible for their piratical actions as well as for
actions of independent pirates who exploited the permissive environment,
the US could bring pressure to bear on state actors to ‘police’ their spheres
of influence.” Apparently impressed, Bush praised the aides’ work. In the
margins of the memo, he wrote “very good” and encouraged that it be dis-
tributed to counterterrorism spokesperson Admiral Holloway and to mem-
bers of the State Department.
Internal administration correspondence was specific about the direction
of the administration’s new approaches. One memo identified eight strategic
considerations implied by the concept of state sponsorship: “(1) more atten-
tion to physical protection, (2) may effect US ability to deploy ground forces
in high risk area (air power may be used more as a substitute for power pro-
jection), (3) may have to accept higher level of risk, (4) more retaliatory oper-
ations/preemptive strikes, (5) greater investment in Special Operations, (6)
rescue operations in a hostile environment, (7) military operations limited;
(8) utility will be debated, and military measures alone won’t solve problem”
(“Terrorism-II”). As the list detailed, the “state sponsor” label was not
innocuous; it shifted priorities within the administration for the funding and
implementation of the nation’s security initiatives.
One particular agency bolstered by the administration’s new labeling
strategy was the Central Intelligence Agency. Donald Gregg, a former CIA
agent and assistant to the vice president in the National Security Agency,
advocated both the use of increased US covert activities and use of US
unconventional forces in response to state-sponsored terrorism. Encomp-
assing both options under the rubric of “an international response,” Gregg
wrote, “Until I’m shot down in flames, I’m going to try to push ‘an interna-
tional response to international terrorism.’ Makes it easier (in some ways) to
move into a situation, and makes it harder for terrorists to retaliate.”
Involving the international community became a strategic calculation for jus-
tifying US responses to terrorism that were difficult to explain both at home
and abroad.
Despite the latitude the new label offered, the Reagan administration’s
emphasis on state-sponsored terrorism did have its drawbacks. The phrase’s
ambiguity soon became a point of controversy. Several members of Congress
insisted that El Salvador, which enjoyed the support of the Reagan adminis-
tration, belonged on the list due to its involvement in the murder of the four
nuns and the subsequent cover-up. Similarly, the Democratic Party codified
into its 1988 party platform that South Africa should be named a terrorist
state after it engaged in three simultaneous raids against alleged African
National Congress bases in Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Botswana. In the polit-
ical arena, the phrase’s flexible adaptation opened the administration to
charges of bias in the selection of who qualified as state sponsors.
The greater problem was the perception that the United States itself
belonged on the list. The American public began to question whether the
United States was sponsoring terrorism because of the government’s support
of the Nicaraguan Contras. Reports by Americas Watch and the former New
York assistant attorney general Reed Brody corroborated that the Contras
were guilty of terrorist acts such as torture, mutilation, kidnapping, and rape
of Nicaraguan civilians (Americas Watch 4–6; “Attacks” iv–xi). The
Associated Press fueled public concern when it broke a story on the CIA’s
“murder manual” for the Contras (“CIA’s Murder Manual”). The manual,
designed by John Kirkpatrick to train the Contras on how to use violence
more selectively, contained the following word choice that appeared to advo-
cate the limited use of assassination: “It is possible to neutralize carefully

selected and planned targets such as court judges, justices of the peace, police
and State Security officials, CDS [Sandinista Defense Committee] chiefs,
etc.” (as qtd. in Leogrande 364). Armed with such revelations, members of
Congress began arguing that by supporting the Contras, the United States
was sponsoring terrorism.
Media reports of administration activities in the Middle East further
underscored the concern that the United States was supporting terrorism.
On May 12, 1985, Bob Woodward wrote in the Washington Post that the
CIA had provided training for counterterrorist groups in Lebanon that had
subsequently hired others to bomb the front of Sheik Fadlallah’s house
(Woodward and Babcock A1). The CIA had targeted the sheik, due to the
administration’s belief that his chief of security was responsible for the
bombing of the Marine barracks, the first American embassy bombing in
Beirut, and the kidnapping of then CIA station chief, William Buckley
(Hougan). The attack, which took place in a public square just outside a
mosque, resulted in eighty civilian deaths and more than two hundred civil-
ian injuries. The Saudi leadership, which had allegedly provided funding and
operatives for the attack in collusion with the CIA, gave millions of dollars of
humanitarian assistance to West Beirut as compensation once the attack
failed to kill the sheik (Ibid.).
Woodward later recanted the story, and a follow-up U.S. Congressional
committee investigation found no evidence of US complicity. Carter’s former
director of the CIA Stansfield Turner questioned the inquiry’s findings,
however, based on his assumption that the committee itself would have had
prior knowledge of the event and would have shared in the responsibility for
the tragic outcome (183–85). Woodward recently changed his story for a
second time. In 2001 interview with Frontline, he claimed Casey did meet
with the Saudi ambassador to the United States and, during a garden stroll,
the two agreed the Saudis would pay two million dollars to build a car bomb
and hire operatives to kill the sheik (Woodward).
By 1985, the majority of the American public agreed that the United
States was a state sponsor of terrorism. Internal administration polls recorded
that sixty-six percent of the public responded positively to the statement,
“There is little point to our condemning a state of terrorism against
American interests in the Middle East if we support our own terrorists in
Central America” (“Libya, July 1985 [2 of 3]”). With a skeptical American
public, the administration began facing increased constraints on its ability to
carry out its foreign policy objectives.
Now on the defensive, the administration distributed an official state-
ment to White House spokespersons that specifically addressed the differ-
ence between terrorism and insurgency. The statement compared US support
for the Contras with the role that third countries played in the successful
outcome of the American Revolution. It continued by reminding the
spokespersons, “[I]t is important to differentiate between terrorism’s rampant
indiscriminate brutality against innocent third parties and the organized
armed opposition to communist tyranny that is taking place in Nicaragua”
(Kimmitt). By evoking the American Revolution, the administration sought
to align US efforts with the cause of freedom fighting, while retaining the
latitude to denounce terrorists abroad.
To bolster its case, the administration produced an expanded definition
of terrorism that highlighted the differences between the actions of the
Nicaraguan Contras and those of terrorists. In a memo to Attorney General
Edward Meese, National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane provided the
administration’s definition of terrorism:
Terrorism is the use or threatened use of violence for a political
purpose to create a state of fear, which will aid in extorting, coerc-
ing, intimidating or causing individuals and groups to alter their
behavior. A terrorist group does not need a defined territorial base
or specific organizational structure. Its goals need not relate to any
one country. It does not require nor necessarily seek a popular base
of support. Its operations, organization and movements are secret.
Its activities do not conform to rules of law or warfare. Its targets
are civilians, non-combatants, bystanders or symbolic persons and
places. Its victims generally have no role in either causing or cor-
recting the grievance of the terrorists. Its methods are hostage-
taking, aircraft piracy or sabotage, assassination, threats, hoaxes,
and indiscriminate bombings or shootings.
By providing an expanded definition of terrorism, the administration
attempted to distinguish the actions of the Contras from those engaged in
terrorist acts of political violence.
Despite administration officials’ repetition of the new list of characteris-
tics, the public remained unconvinced the Contras were not engaging in ter-
rorist activities. In response, members of the administration publicly
highlighted the characteristic features of freedom fighters. In his memo to
Meese, McFarlane provided a contrasting definition of insurgency, empha-
sizing that the two terms diverged with regard to intentions, organizational
makeup, operational methods, targeted populations, international law com-
pliance, and level of secrecy:
Insurgency is a state of revolt against an established government.
An insurgent group has a defined organization, leadership and
location. Its members wear a uniform. Its objectives are acquisition
of political power, achievement of participation in economic or

political opportunity and national leadership or, ultimately, taking
power from existing leadership. Its primary interests relate to one
country. Its methods are military and paramilitary. Its targets are
military, both tactical and strategic, and its legitimate operations
are governed by the international rules of armed conflict. It oper-
ates in the open, and it actively seeks a basis of popular support.
Administration officials, armed with the contrasting definitions of ter-
rorism and insurgency, received instructions to use them “only on an if
asked basis” (McFarlane). Publicly, Reagan’s spokespeople balked at the
cliché that one man’s terrorist was another man’s freedom fighter (see, for
example Reagan, Public Papers, 1986 1:563). Privately, Reagan’s national
security advisors warned that, despite the coordinated rhetorical strategy,
the “distinction [was] not clear” (Menarchik). The failure to persuade the
public had its costs; the administration lacked the ability to mobilize the
necessary pressure on Congress to have it reverse the decision to prohibit
support for the Contras.
As the administration was defending itself against charges the United
States was a state sponsor of terrorism, it was simultaneously shifting to a
public communication strategy of merging drug trafficking and terrorism
into a joint threat. In 1984, US Ambassador Lewis Tambs used the encom-
passing phrase “narco-terrorism” to describe guerilla activity in Colombia
(Qtd. in Executive Intelligence Review). Beginning in 1985 and more fre-
quently in 1986 and 1987, Reagan himself argued the nation would increas-
ingly have to face terrorism and narcotic drug trafficking as “twin menaces”
(Public Papers, 1986 1:45) and “twin killers” (162). Drug traffickers, not
renegade foreign states, were now depicted as being in collusion with terror-
ists and had become the nation’s dangerous new threat.
The shift in labeling strategy invited the public to rehabilitate the
administration’s image in response to the terrorism problem. By highlighting
nonstate actors, the new framing refocused the administration’s public
agenda away from potentially embarrassing questions about who qualified as
a state sponsor of terrorism. In its place was a new approach designed to
delegitimate the terrorists. Terrorists, now associating with the drug traffick-
ers, were not misunderstood freedom fighters; they were dangerous enemies
who plagued American society. The strategy encompassed hope of renewed
innocence for the United States and reinforced guilt for those who attacked
American values and principles.
At the time Reagan was publicly espousing terrorism and drug traf-
ficking as associated threats, his administration began a concerted cam-
paign to reveal the extent of the linkage. Reagan signed National Security
Directive 221 on April 8, 1986 (as rpt. in Simpson 640). While the specific
wording of the directive remains classified, a draft of the agency’s public
responses revealed that the directive empowered the intelligence commu-
nity to “continue its efforts to target specific drug source and transit regions
for in-depth analysis of the links between drug trafficking organizations,
insurgent groups, and terrorists” (Agency Responses). Bush announced
that implementation of the directive would initially target Nicaragua,
Cuba, and Colombia to discover evidence of a narco-terrorist threat (as
rptd. in Simpson 640). Over the next seven years, the Reagan and Bush
administrations spent more than three billion dollars to implement NSDD
221 (ibid.).
By June 1988, the administration was still in the process of building its
case that an actual link existed between drug trafficking, terrorism, and
guerilla activity in Central America. Responding to a request for information
from Washington, the American Embassy in Bogota wrote a telegram to the
secretary of state describing ten incidents of hostage-taking that occurred in
Colombia between February 1980 and June 1988. Also included in the
embassy’s response was the admission that its conclusions were drawn from
the incomplete consular files and the faulty memories of its personnel.
Included within the report’s ten incidents were ones that the embassy freely
admitted lacked detailed information or the identity of the groups involved.
At no point did the response claim to have solid intelligence linking acts of
kidnapping with drug trafficking in the region.
Privately, administration officials warned that even if actual events did
support a linkage between terrorism and drug trafficking, emphasizing the
association would undermine Reagan’s case that he had an effective strategy
for responding to terrorism. Terry Mattke, another national security assistant
to the vice president, warned of the consequences of conflating the two
threats in the public’s mind. Mattke wrote,
There is a fundamental difference in character between the war on
drugs and the war on terrorism. The war on drugs involves efforts
to confront both the supply and demand sides of the equation.
The supply is interdicted and harassed, and we are steadily edu-
cating the population in an effort to reduce the market, the
demand. But until the market, the demand dries up, we face an
enormous task. In the war on terrorism we face a very different sit-
uation. The world’s demand or market for terrorism is limited to a
few unprincipled causes and regimes. Civilized nations uniformly
reject the concept and the use of terror. So what we intend to do
is confront the issue at the source, the supply [. . .] and the terror-
ist resources. [T]he human supply although too great at present,
will be easier to dam than the flow of chemicals and substances

that poison our societies.
In short, some advisors feared that the public merger of terrorism and drug
trafficking was risky. They believed it opened Reagan to charges he was
overstating the extent of the problem, and it risked the public’s judgment
that Reagan was ineffective in handling terrorism when he would not be able
to stop the flow of drugs into the United States.
Why take such risks? One possibility was the administration may have
wanted to reduce its vulnerability to charges the United States was sponsor-
ing narco-terrorism in Central America. With a highly touted public cam-
paign of “Just Say No” to drugs, the Reagan administration found itself in
the awkward situation of supporting allies in Central America linked to drug
running. As early as 1984, the CIA had received information the Contras
were involved in drug trafficking into the United States (Castillo). The story,
made public in an Associated Press article in December 1985 (Barger and
Parry A22), resulted in an administration admission that, “Individual mem-
bers of the resistance [. . .] may have engaged in such activity [drug traffick-
ing] but it was, insofar as we can determine, without the authorization of
resistance leaders” (as rptd. in Leogrande 464). William Leogrande, former
staff member of the Democratic leadership working on Central American
policy, suggested that the administration’s denial of resistance leader involve-
ment was suspect, given linkages between the firms hired to ship nonlethal
aid to the Contras and involvement by those same firms in trafficking and
drug laundering (464). With evidence supporting that the Contras were
associating with drug traffickers, the administration’s new strategy of focus-
ing on the linkages of the nonstate actors was again carrying political risks.
To make matters worse, the administration could not corroborate its
claims that the group it opposed in Central America was involved in drug
trafficking. In August 1984, a supposed Nicaraguan government defector
accused high-level Sandinista officials (including Minister of the Interior
Daniel Ortega) of smuggling drugs into the United States. After conducting
an investigation, members of Reagan’s Drug Enforcement Administration
admitted, “no evidence was developed to implicate the Minister of the
Interior or other Nicaraguan officials” (as qtd. in Arnson 336). In short, the
administration aligned itself against narco-terrorism in the public arena at a
time when it needed to divert attention from its private sponsorship of allies
linked to drug trafficking.
With both state sponsorship of terrorism and narco-terrorism raising
questions about the actions of the US government, Reagan faced mounting
political difficulties. Having promised the public he held the answers to the
terrorism problem, Reagan needed a convincing strategy. As the next section
will reveal, the administration responded by crafting a deceitful application of

the Cold War narrative. In the process of that strategy’s implementation, the
criminality of terrorism became subordinated to the war metaphor. When
public confidence in Reagan’s approach waned by the start of his second term,
the stage was set for elevation of terrorism into an American ideograph.
THE TERRORIST NARRATIVE IN THE REAGAN ERA
Having lost more Americans to terrorism in 1983 alone than in the previous
fifteen years of US history combined (McFarlane, Memo to Meese), Reagan
aides were stinging from the humiliation of having to withdraw US troops
from Lebanon. Current retrospectives by the administration’s central players
reveal the depth of the reaction to the forced retreat. On Frontline, Vincent
Cannistraro summed up the reigning sentiment at the time: “Hezbollah won
a victory. That war was over. We lost that war. I don’t know if it was recog-
nized at the time, but the withdrawal of the U.S. represented a victory for
Hezbollah.” Also appearing on Frontline, US State Department coordinator
for counterterrorism, Robert Oakley, likewise remembered, “It was a huge
shock [. . .] it caused us to reevaluate a lot of things.” Convinced they had lost
a war against terrorists, the Reagan administration committed itself to
making a change.
Just a few days after the terrorist attack on the marine barracks in
Lebanon, the Republican House minority whip Newt Gingrich wrote to Ken
Duberstein, Reagan’s chief of staff, expressing his concerns for Reagan’s
political future. In that memo to Duberstein, he worried the American
public and media were shocked by all the violence around the world, includ-
ing outbreaks in Lebanon, Grenada, Nicaragua, and El Salvador, as well as
the nuclear missile demonstrations in Europe. He warned,
In fact, if Reagan gets bogged down in the technical detail of each
fight in each theatre he begins to look like a man who has walked
into a room and started to randomly pick fights with people. Since
there is no time in American memory that we have been involved
in this much violence in this many places, it will begin to sink in to
many Americans that if they are separate incidents, then maybe we
ought to get a less violence-prone President. After all, if he has
found four different areas of tension simultaneously, maybe he
really is a troublemaker.
Having won a recent presidential election in which his Democratic opponent
had characterized him as irresponsible in the foreign policy arena, Reagan
could ill afford to compound the problem.
Gingrich stressed the need for the administration to adopt a single

explanation for why so much global violence was occurring. Later in the
memo, he predicted, “If we allow our vision to be fragmented, then we will
lose piecemeal on each front as the American people come to conclude that
ours is a randomly violent, short-tempered and overbearing administration.”
The solution, according to Gingrich, was to blame the Soviet Union for
international violence whenever and wherever it occurred. He predicted such
a rhetorical framing would have considerable political advantages for Reagan.
As he explained, “If in fact we are faced with Soviet trained, financed and
guided terrorists, guerilla and military coups, then it is Andropov rather than
Reagan who is the real cause of all the problems. Then the American people
can focus their anger on Andropov, the KGB, and the Soviet Union.” The
approach, Gingrich noted, would result in a lasting political alliance between
the friends of Israel, those who cared about access to oil fields, and those
who wanted freedom in the Caribbean. Gingrich, in short, recommended
Reagan scapegoat the Soviet Union for all acts of worldwide terrorism.
Members of Reagan’s own executive branch echoed Gingrich’s conclu-
sion that blaming the Soviets would have political advantages for the admin-
istration. Their expressed motivation for urging the strategy was less about
Reagan’s political future and more about garnering public support for the
administration’s policy in Nicaragua. An analysis of two years of polls on
Nicaragua led analysts in the State Department to conclude, “[T]he conflicts
in Central America have aroused less concern among the public than such
other foreign policy issues as relations with the Soviet Union, arms control
negotiations, trying to deal with terrorism, and reducing the US trade imbal-
ance” (Smalley, Memo to Sec. of St. 5/16/85). Lacking strong public support
and facing a Congress steadily withdrawing its financial support from the
Contras, Reagan’s presidential assistant Robert Smalley recommended a
reframing of the threat posed by the Sandinistas. He told the secretary of
state, “Perception of threat to the US would be enhanced to the extent the
Sandinista regime could be credibly pictured as a surrogate of Cuba or the
USSR, as repressive at home, or as subversive among its neighbors.” In
agreement, Gingrich and Smalley both worked to persuade Reagan that he
had political and policy reasons to blame all international terrorism on the
Soviet Union.
One difficulty with the plan was that Reagan’s CIA analysts did not
believe the Soviets were involved in organizing the bulk of international
terrorism. A December 1981 report, “Growing Terrorist Danger in
America,” by the National Foreign Assessment Center of the CIA con-
cluded, “The actions of some terrorist groups may influence future behavior
of other groups, but we see no evidence of a central coordinating authority.
[. . .] The US is facing terrorist threats from several quarters which,
although unconnected, will challenge the US ability to react to widely dis-

persed and potentially serious international terrorist attacks.” Reagan’s intel-
ligence at the time was unequivocal: the Soviet Union was simply not
responsible for all acts of terrorism around the globe.
In a recent interview on Frontline, Vincent Cannistraro, Reagan’s direc-
tor of National Security Council Intelligence, remembered how the adminis-
tration resolved the discrepancy between the recommended public strategy
and the extant realities of terrorism. He recalled, “[CIA Director] Bill Casey
had already been trying to cook the analytical books on terrorism, particularly
by the pressure he had placed on the analysts to come up with an analysis
that said the Soviet Union was behind these acts of terrorism.” Despite its
apparent basis in fiction, Gingrich’s proposed strategy gathered momentum
as the preferred administration approach. Within a matter of weeks, the
Reagan administration adopted a Cold War narrative to frame its public dis-
cussions of terrorism.
Reagan’s terrorism narrative reflected the scene, characters, and themes
of Cold War discourse. Echoing the terrorist narrative of the Vietnam War
era, the scene was the fragile state of freedom and democracy around the
globe. Reagan identified two areas of the world particularly vulnerable to
outside forces. The first was Central America. Reagan maintained, “In
Honduras, democratic institutions are taking root. In El Salvador, democ-
racy is beginning to work even in the face of externally supported terrorism
and guerrilla warfare” (Public Papers, 1983 2:1192). Relying on natural,
organic metaphors that suggested the possibility of renewal and regenera-
tion, Reagan referred to “the fragile flower of democracy” (Public Papers,
1985 1:370) that was blossoming in Central America. The administration’s
narrative insisted democracy would flourish in Central America if it were
simply permitted to grow.
The other vulnerable region was Lebanon. Reagan described Lebanon’s
history by recalling, “In the early 1970’s many thousands of Palestinians
entered Lebanon. Lebanon’s fragile political consensus collapsed, and a
savage civil war broke out” (Public Papers, 1983 2:1679). Reagan depicted
Lebanon in the present day as “a small country” and a “troubled land,” (1517)
but insisted it had “made important steps toward stability and order” (1518).
Praising Lebanon’s progress, Reagan said, “Lebanon has formed a govern-
ment under the leadership of President Gemayal, and that government, with
our assistance and training, has set up its own army. In only a year’s time,
that army has been rebuilt” (ibid.). Like its companion state in Central
America, Lebanon held potential for the spread of democracy in Reagan’s
articulated public view.
The administration’s narrative presented the Soviet Union and its client
states as enemy forces attempting to take advantage of the fragility of the
emerging democracies. Following Gingrich’s advice, Reagan argued that the

general rise of state-sponsored terrorism could be traced back to “increased
Soviet support for terrorism, insurgency, and aggression coupled with the
perception of weakening U.S. power and resolve” (Public Papers, 1984
1:480) in the 1970s. He insisted that in Central America, there was a
“Soviet-Cuban-Nicaraguan plan to destroy the fragile flower of democracy
[. . .]—a plan that could, for the first time, bring tyranny to our own bor-
ders, carrying the same specter of economic chaos, the same threat of politi-
cal terrorism, the same floodtides of refugees we’ve seen follow every
Communist takeover from Eastern Europe to Afghanistan, Laos, Vietnam,
Cambodia, Ethiopia, and, now, Central America” (Public Papers, 1985
1:370). Shifting regions, he maintained that Syria, backed by the Soviet
Union, used terrorism in hopes of acquiring portions of Lebanon to create
greater Syria (Public Papers, 1983 2:1713). The goal in each region around
the globe was the same: “to bring about a one-world Communist state”
(1714). Reagan publicly maintained all acts of international terrorism were
the direct results of an aggressive Soviet influence.
The means terrorists used to accomplish their objectives further paral-
leled the conventional claims of Cold War discourse. Within the narrative
framework, terrorists relied on savage acts of barbarism to instill fear in civil-
ian populations. Reagan told Congress that terrorists relied on “indiscrimi-
nate threatening, intimidation, detention, or murder of innocent people”
(Public Papers, 1984 1:576). He labeled their methods “uncivilized” (Public
Papers, 1983 2:1556), “crude” (Public Papers, 1984 2:806), “cowardly” (ibid.),
and “evil to its core and contemptible in all its forms” (ibid.). Committed to
uncivilized methods of attack, terrorists posed a dangerous threat to
American society.
The description of the final primary character in the administration’s
narrative, the United States, borrowed heavily from conventional Cold War
discourse. As in the case of the Vietnam War narrative, the United States
emerged as a missionary for peace and freedom in the global arena. Reagan
described the moral nature of his quest in a toast to Queen Elizabeth II: “
[T]he greatest glory of a free-born people is to transmit that freedom to their
children. That is a responsibility our people share. Together, and eager for
peace, we must face an unstable world where violence and terrorism, aggres-
sion and tyranny constantly encroach on human rights. Together, committed
to preservation of freedom and our way of life, we must strengthen a weak-
ening international order and restore the world’s faith in peace and the rule
of law” (Public Papers, 1982 2:752). For Reagan, the United States was
uniquely qualified and responsible for preserving the values of peace, free-
dom, and justice. Speaking to Christian evangelists in Florida, he described
the confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union as a
struggle between good and evil. He labeled the Soviet Union the “evil
empire” (Public Papers, 1984 1:364), thus elevating the mission of the
United States into a religious calling. He declared, “There is sin and evil in
the world, and we’re enjoined by Scripture and the Lord Jesus to oppose it
with all our might” (362). Placing his argument within the context of the
divine, Reagan argued the public should accept on faith their responsibility
for spreading peace and freedom.
In sharp contrast to the destructive, evil nature of the Communist
nemesis in the narrative, the administration portrayed the United States as
having a commitment to a constructive approach toward emerging democra-
cies. The United States, with its goal of rooting out the fragile conditions
that spawned terrorism, adopted a multifaceted model of political, economic,
and security assistance reminiscent of America’s policy toward Vietnam.
Nowhere was the strategy more apparent than in Central America. A brief-
ing paper for Ambassador Kirkpatrick’s visit to Central and South America
demonstrated the three-pronged strategy of promoting democratization, eco-
nomic revitalization, and security support (US Dept. of St. Briefing Paper).
In 1982, the United States committed $400 million of economic assistance
and $120 million of security assistance to Central America in an effort to
“break the region out of its cycle of right wing dictatorships vs. left wing
insurgencies” (ibid.). As the Cold War narrative portended, the constructive
approach of the United States promised to effectively guard against the evil
forces operating around the globe.
Reagan’s application of the Cold War narrative transformed the national
debate about the crime of terrorism. The metaphor of crime was still present,
but reconstituted within the context of war. Terrorism became less about
individuals committing crimes and more about the Soviet Union and its
client states permitting and encouraging terrorism as the means of furthering
their ideological perspective. The shift placed the primary burden for
responding to terrorism on the heads of state, not on federal prosecutors or
judges. States that permitted terrorists to flourish in their spheres of influ-
ence had to face the possibility of answering to the full range of response
options available to the American commander in chief.
The public generally accepted Reagan’s application of the Cold War
narrative to the situation in Central America, but not in a beneficial way for
the administration. With the most recent public memory of Cold War dis-
course being the Vietnam War, the public mapped their perceptions about
America’s first losing war effort onto the Nicaraguan conflict. After review-
ing national polls conducted in late 1984 and early 1985, Smalley noted that
the majority of the public believed “U.S. involvement in Nicaragua could
lead to ‘another Vietnam’ with US forces becoming entangled in a drawn-out,
internal conflict in which both sides are viewed negatively” (Memo to Sec. of
State 5/16/85). Various administration officials reached the conclusion that

even Reagan, the great communicator himself, could not change the negative
perceptions of the public (ibid.). Compounding the problem of public opin-
ion was the difficulty the administration had of making a credible case that
its counterterrorism strategy was actually bolstering democratic governments,
economic recovery, or national security (Dallek 163-194). By the mid-1980s,
the Reagan camp determined that rather than build public support for the
administration’s policy of engagement in Central America, its narrative was
hardening attitudes against reinstating aid for the Nicaraguan Contras.
Reactions to the administration’s use of the Cold War narrative in rela-
tionship to the events in the Middle East were no better. The American
public no longer accepted the claim that the Soviet Union was behind all acts
of international terrorism. Internal administration polling revealed that the
public blamed Iran for the TWA 847 hijacking, not the Soviet Union or Syria
(Smalley, Memo to Sec. of State 6/20/85). Smalley surmised from his review
of the administration’s internal polls that “Principle blame ‘for the current
hostage situation’ is placed on security conditions at Athens airport and Nabih
Berri, ‘the leader of the Shiite Moslems” (ibid.). By the mid-1980s, the public
appeared ready to assign responsibility for terrorist acts on a case-by-case
basis, and the executive branch complied with the new sentiment. In a 1985
interview with Time, CIA Director William Casey admitted, “There is no one
person, there is no one capital in the world that controls terrorism. [. . .] This
is a war without clear borders, without clear enemies.”
On a more general level, the public was losing patience with Reagan’s
inability to win the fight against terrorism. The administration’s internal
polls showed almost half of the public reporting they disapproved “of the way
Ronald Reagan is handling terrorism” (Decision Making Information).
Terrorism against Americans was on the rise, and the administration antici-
pated further escalations of terrorist activity in response to the administra-
tion’s covert foreign policies (McFarlane, Memo to Meese).
Reagan’s Task Force on Combating Terrorism took up the charge of
assessing why the public was losing faith in administration’s response to ter-
rorism. Young and Rubicam, the firm hired by the task force to more fully
understand the viewpoint of the American public, conducted focus groups of
regular readers and viewers of the news in Des Moines Iowa, Trumbull,
Connecticut, and New York City. The groups ranged from eighteen to sixty-
four years of age and were balanced for political ideology. In November of
1985, the firm presented its conclusions to the task force. While the study
revealed no direct effects of terrorism on the citizens who participated, it
found that terrorism reduced “America’s status to being seen as a pawn: pow-
erless, easily manipulated, and at the mercy of those who attack us because
we cannot fight back” (Young and Rubicam). Focus group members reported
feeling fearful, vulnerable, helpless, victimized, [and] angry” (ibid.). Reagan’s

analysts concluded that the public was frustrated with the ability of terrorists
to expose the limits of America’s power.
Internal assessment of public sentiment coalesced around the call to have
a stronger response to terrorism. Young & Rubicam reported that
“Americans want to fight back against terrorism because it (1) Emasculates
the American nation; (2) Is wrong and must be stopped; (3) Threatens
American lives; and (4) Makes Americans mad.” A Newsweek poll, appearing
in a widely circulated internal memorandum at the time of the TWA hijack-
ing in June 1985, underscored the need for more forceful responses. It noted,
“54% believe that Reagan’s actions have not been tough enough [. . .]”
(McDaniel, Memo to McFarlane). Reagan’s polling information was consis-
tent; both the administration’s public communication strategy and its terror-
ism policy needed to change.
In a May 1985 speech delivered before the American Bar Association,
Reagan introduced the new approach. The Soviet Union was no longer the
sole source of terrorism around the globe; instead, five foreign states that
sponsored terrorism emerged as the primary enemies of the United States.
Reagan identified the offending nations to be Iran, Libya, North Korea,
Cuba, and Nicaragua. His public list of state sponsors of terrorism differed
from those identified by the State Department under the Export
Administration Act of 1979. Syria and the People’s Republic of South
Yemen were labeled state sponsors on the official list but omitted in Reagan’s
account; Nicaragua and North Korea were named by Reagan as state spon-
sors but did not qualify for the secretary of state’s list (McFarlane, Memo to
Meese). Despite these discrepancies, the new narrative shifted the identity of
the enemy to new state sponsors of terrorism, but retained the depiction of
the scene, character traits, and themes of the previous Cold War narrative.
At times, transitioning between the two approaches posed rhetorical dif-
ficulties for the administration. Recasting the scene consistent with the
administration’s prior rehearsals of the narrative, for example, was problem-
atic. Now the targets of terrorism (i.e., Americans traveling abroad,
European nations, etc.) were no longer fragile democracies or new nations in
search of their right for self-determination. They had established govern-
ments, they had stable economies, and they belonged to the world’s preemi-
nent security alliance. To argue that such democracies were fragile risked a
loss of credibility, if not ridicule, at home and abroad.
To resolve the problem, the new narrative shifted the emphasis away
from the fragility of a particular nation to the vulnerability of democracy as a
whole to terrorism. Reagan reasoned, “Terrorism is the antithesis of democ-
racy . [. . .] Where democracy seeks to consult the common man on the gov-
ernance of his nation, terrorism makes war on the common man, repudiating
in bloody terms the concept of government by the people” (Public Papers,

1985 2:1019). The United States, as the exemplar of an effective democracy,
became the natural target of choice for terrorists in the administration’s nar-
rative. As Reagan explained, “[T]he very reason for [terrorists’] cruelty and
viciousness of their tactics is to disorient the American people, to cause dis-
unity, to disrupt or alter our foreign policy, to keep us from the steady pur-
suit of our strategic interests, to distract us from our very real hope that
someday the nightmare of totalitarian rule will end and self-government and
personal freedom will become the birthright of every people on Earth” (899).
The terrorists’ focus, coupled with their growing collusion with foreign
states, had ominous implications for free nations around the globe. As
Reagan asserted, “Government-sponsored terrorism, in particular, cannot
continue without gravely threatening the social fabric of all free societies”
(Public Papers, 1986 1:512). Reagan’s new narrative preserved the vulnerable
nature of the scene called forth by conventional Cold War discourse, but it
reconstituted terrorism as an inevitable outcome of a healthy democracy, not
a sign of national fragility or governmental weakness.
As Reagan publicly expanded the scene of his narrative from a single
emerging democracy to democracy as a whole, the leaders of his executive
branch disagreed. The task force report, touted by the administration as its
most comprehensive examination of international and domestic terrorism,
concluded that attacks on democracies were not the sole or even the primary
cause of terrorism. The Public Report of the Vice President’s Task Force,
approved by the National Security Council, the Department of Defense, the
Central Intelligence Agency, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Federal Bureau of
Investigation, and the White House, among others, noted that Middle
Eastern nations (i.e., those without democratic forms of government) were
frequently the intended targets of terrorism.
Charles Hill, the executive secretary for the State Department provided
a more detailed explanation for why the United States had come under
increasing attacks from terrorism in a memo to the National Security
Advisor, Robert McFarlane. In the text of that June 1984 memo, he wrote,
“We are a prime target because we have an extensive official and commercial
presence overseas which is high in numbers of people and profile; and citi-
zens and facilities are accessible and open to the public; our policies are
opposed to the interests of many terrorist groups; and we often support gov-
ernments which terrorists are attempting to bring down.” While terrorists
had chosen to attack the citizens of a democracy as Reagan had suggested,
the Hill memo suggests that the reasons for doing so were not clearly related
to America’s political ideology.
Official spokespersons even undercut Reagan’s contention that terrorists
placed the US culture in jeopardy. James Holloway, the executive director of
the task force, told reporters on March 6, 1986, “While terrorism poses no
serious challenge to the national will or national survival, it remains a com-
plex, dangerous threat for which there is no quick or easy solution”
(Holloway, Draft Statement). The administration appeared far from publicly
united on the stance that terrorism was a dangerous juxtaposed enemy of
democracy and freedom.
Portraying the state sponsors of terrorism as having similar traits to their
Communist predecessors posed a second rhetorical challenge for the Reagan
administration’s effort to reconstitute its Cold War narrative. To a certain
extent, the former characterization of the Soviet Union and the new state
sponsors of terrorism offered a good match. The use of savage, barbaric
means to achieve political objectives was a trait the administration could
readily apply to either enemy. Reagan aides could also argue that the inability
to trust the adversary equally pertained to both threats.
More difficult was making a credible case that the five individual states
identified as sponsors of terrorism qualified as a homogenous collective. Kent
Oots’ 1986 study of transnational terrorism argued that coalitions among
such groups were infrequent, ad hoc, and short in duration (116–17). Martha
Crenshaw’s three-year study of international terrorism between 1985 and
1987 reached a similar conclusion: “[I]n reality there is no monolithic terror-
ist entity. Instead, terrorism appears highly eclectic and pluralistic” (10–11).
At the time the administration shifted to its new narrative, a globally net-
worked group of state-sponsored terrorists did not exist.
Despite the empirical evidence to the contrary, the administration’s
revised narrative held to the notion that state sponsors of terrorism functioned
as an internationally orchestrated syndicate of criminals. Reagan insisted,
“Most of the terrorists who are kidnapping and murdering American citizens
and attacking American installations are being trained, financed and directly
or indirectly controlled by a core group of radical and totalitarian govern-
ments—a new, international version of Murder, Incorporated” (Public Papers,
1985 2:897). By focusing on the parallel to organized crime, the new nar-
rative helped prepare the audience for stronger measures in response to
the threat.
Another difficulty for the administration was establishing that the state
sponsors in its revised narrative were not only colluding, but were harboring
a shared goal of global domination consistent with the conventional charac-
terization of the Cold War enemy. For Reagan, all state sponsors were bent
on the destruction of the United States. He proclaimed, “[A]ll of these states
are united by one simple criminal phenomenon—their fanatical hatred of the
United States, our people, our way of life, our international stature” (Public
Papers, 1985 2:897). For Reagan, the threat posed by state sponsors of terror-
ism simply could not be tolerated.
Once again, statements from other administration officials weakened the

credibility of Reagan’s public shift. Reagan’s task force report belied the con-
clusion that terrorists harbored a goal of world conquest. It pronounced,
“The motivations of those who engage in terrorism are many and varied”
(Public Report of VP Task Force). It acknowledged that the actual motiva-
tions behind terrorism included serving as a strong-arm, low-budget means
of conducting foreign policy or as the means to pursue national insurgency
movements (ibid.). The totality of public positions taken by executive branch
speakers made it more difficult to conclude that terrorists were at the same
level of global threat as their communist counterparts.
A undated memo entitled, The Middle East and Terrorism, identified the
causes of terrorism in that region of the world to be as follows: Frustrations of
traditional societies confronting rapid modernization, including maldistribu-
tion of income, oil wealth, and unfilled expectations; Intractable political
problems such as Arab-Israeli question, East-West competition, strategic oil
resources and strategic location; Deep-seated political animosities: Arab-
Israeli, intra-Arab (e.g. Syria and Iraq, Persian-Arab, Islamic fundamental-
ist-secularist, and anti- and pro-communist divisions; A sense of hopelessness
and a profound lack of faith in the peaceful means of attaining one’s political
and personal goals, peaceful or otherwise; Exploitation of disaffected by
charismatic leaders with no respect for human life or dignity, (e. g. Qadhafi
and Khomeini). In short, the causes for terrorism spawned in the Middle
East were multi-faceted.
The new narrative deflected attention away from alternative public
explanations of why various state sponsors of terrorism were colluding to per-
petrate such violent acts. Reagan insisted in his 1986 address to the United
Nations General Assembly: “No cause, no grievance, can justify [terrorism]”
(Public Papers, 1986 2:1231). In press background briefings, administration
officials reiterated, “Nothing can justify terrorism. No political causes or ends
can explain or rationalize the brutal murder of civilians” (Platt, Memo to
Poindexter 1/6/86).
Foreclosing discussion of the terrorists’ specific motives not only reduced
the possibility that the administration’s stance would become muddled, but it
positioned the Reagan camp to depict themselves as an innocent party sub-
jected to unwarranted attacks. Accordingly, the narrative invited the public
not to consider the Palestine Liberation Front’s contention that the hijacking
of the Achille Lauro was a justified response to the Israeli air raid on the
Palestinian headquarters in Tunis. Likewise, the public was not to concern
themselves about the Guardian of the Islamic Revolution’s claim that the
bombing of Pan American Flight 103 was justified retaliation for the USS
Vincennes downing of an Iranian airliner in July 1988 (Situation Room
Note). Finally, citizens were to ignore Lebanese accusations that CIA
involvement in a Beirut car bombing warranted the continued confinement

of American hostages in Lebanon and the hijacking of TWA 847.
The administration’s revised narrative continued the conventional char-
acterization of the hero’s role in response to the threat in the Cold War nar-
rative. The United States was critical for an effective response to the global
threat of terrorism. The characterization of the US motivations remained the
same: restoring peace, freedom, and civilized values around the globe. The
stated mission preserved its religious quality. Reagan told the International
Forum of the Chamber of Commerce, “I’ll remind our allies of the truth of
what Edmund Burke said long ago: ‘When bad men combine, the good must
associate; else they will fall, one by one.’ Well, together the free people of
this world will ensure that liberty not only survives but triumphs and that our
sons and daughters, too, will know the blessings of the winds of freedom”
(Public Papers, 1986 1:512). By again placing his appeal to unity within the
context of the divine, Reagan underscored the Cold War theme of needing
all members of the community to have faith for the mission to succeed.
While the goals remained the same, the means for accomplishing the
mission did change. Reagan announced a series of strategies that his admin-
istration would need to increase intelligence cooperation with friendly
nations regarding terrorists and their state supporters, improve readiness to
strike back against states that offered refuge to terrorists, implement preven-
tive security measures around the globe, make murder of US citizens abroad
a federal crime, and expand the number of extradition treaties available to
bring terrorists to justice. Concurrently, the administration publicly touted
that its improved intelligence had already helped abort 126 terrorist incidents
during 1985 alone (Public Papers, 1986 1:20).
In the ABA speech announcing his new narrative, Reagan evoked a his-
torical analogy to cast the future direction of his approach to terrorism.
Recalling the nation’s experience with the Barbary pirates, he insisted, “We
can act together as free peoples who wish not to see our citizens kidnapped
or shot or blown out of the skies – just as we acted together to rid the seas of
piracy at the turn of the last century” (Public Papers, 1985 2:899). During the
previous week, the Reagan administration had received internal polling
results designed to assess public sentiment regarding twelve potential courses
of action that the United States could take against terrorism. Ninety-one
percent had responded favorably to an option that reflected virtually word for
word Reagan’s reference to the Barbary pirates in his ABA speech: “Just as
civilized nations united against piracy a century ago, today the democratic
world must act in concert if we are to eliminate terrorism” (“Libya, July 1985
[ 2 of 3]”). While the parallel wording of the two statements suggests that
public support was a desire of the administration, it did not explain how the
historical analogy would drive U.S. terrorism policy.
More revealing was a memorandum by Don Gregg and Doug

Menarchik congratulating Bush on the administration’s decision to liken
modern international terrorism to nineteenth-century piracy. The memo
recalled the history of the Barbary pirates as follows: “The Founding Fathers
were torn between paying tribute as a pragmatic ‘economical’ way of dealing
with the pirates versus a more noble military response. Young America had
neither the resources (an American Navy was virtually non-existent), experi-
ence nor political will to take a bold unilateral approach against the scourge
of piracy. Humiliation and a war declared by the pirates finally forced the US
into action.” Gregg and Menarchik extracted five lessons from the Barbary
pirates that received written praise in the memo’s margins by the vice presi-
dent. They included:
• Bold unilateral leadership and military action were necessary by

the US to end pirate attacks against US interests.
• The United States needs to find the “address” for the power domi-
nating the region used by the terrorists and use a variety of means
to get that power to exercise its authority to police terrorist actions.
• Piracy and terrorism are “profitable” and will continue so long as
these forms of violence have no consequences. Bilateral, govern-
ment-to-government pressure proved the most efficacious diplo-
matic way to achieve results. Private initiatives tended to
undermine official policy and should be discouraged.
• Bilateral approaches which emphasized common concerns and
maximized mutual interests proved more effective than multilat-
eral approaches such as forming a league against piracy.
• Americans were enslaved up to ten years by pirates. Modern ter-
rorists hold US citizens captive for years. The US should consider
establishing a trauma center for victims and their families.
The lessons addressed the public call for more forceful measures against ter-
rorism. Their implementation would, in part, be quick, as the bombing of
Libya was only months away.
Reagan’s move to dub five foreign states as the core responsible for ter-
rorism around the globe did not go unnoticed. The leadership could now
label any foreign nation a state sponsor of terrorism, with the consequence
that all nations could potentially be held accountable for terrorist acts occur-
ring anywhere around the globe. Diplomatic, economic, and military pres-
sure could all be brought to bear should the U.S. consider a foreign nation
insufficiently motivated to stamp out the terrorist threat.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the shift in the narrative received a skeptical

response within the international arena. The United States Information
Agency tracked the foreign media’s reaction to the public presentation of the
new approach. The agency concluded, “Media reaction was critical of the
President’s American Bar Association speech Monday. Commentators saw
his ‘furious’ remarks as a ‘hollow threat,’ saying Mr. Reagan had taken the
‘most extreme rhetorical position’” (as qtd. in USIA, Morning Digest
Foreign Media Reaction). The conservative press in Britain argued, “Mr.
Reagan’s hollow threats are destroying his most valuable foreign policy asset:
his credibility” (ibid.). The most influential newspaper in France, Le Monde,
argued, “Reagan’s imprecations against terrorists and those who help them
[. . .] reveal his powerlessness” (ibid.). Some media outlets even questioned
Reagan’s veracity. Mexico’s Unomasuno argued the address was “a laughable
distortion of reality aimed mainly at destroying the Nicaraguan revolution”
(ibid.). In large measure the international community considered Reagan’s
new public stance not to be credible. As the final section of this chapter will
argue, however, terrorism’s emergence as a term that carried ideological force
rendered the factual accuracy of administration’s claims far less of a concern
for the American public.
Reagan’s recharacterization of terrorism as a continuing, ever-present threat

against democracies around the globe received a positive reaction from his
domestic audience. The term garnered such persuasive force that it functioned
as an ideological marker of American culture. Unlike during the Vietnam
War, where Communism dominated terrorism as a justification for US mili-
tary involvement for the American public, terrorism now served as an ideo-
graph on its own. Terrorism had become a shorthand term of political
allegiance that defined the in-groups and out-groups of American culture.
Consistent with the defining characteristics of the ideograph, terrorism
served as an ordinary term of political discourse. The term became the focus
of hundreds of presidential speeches, hundreds of scholarly books, thousands
of media articles, and several popular movies during the Reagan presidency.
After analyzing presidential rhetoric and broadcast media coverage during
the Reagan years, Bethami Dobkin concluded that terrorism functioned as
an umbrella term used to portray a wide range of political violence and to
represent an archetypal enemy in opposition to American identity (40). The
Middle East scholar Edward Said agreed, arguing terrorism had acquired “an
extraordinary status in American public discourse,” replacing Communism as
“public enemy number one” (149). During the Reagan era, terrorism became
a term of political discourse used repeatedly by the nation’s leaders and citi-
zens alike.
Terrorism also functioned as a higher-order abstraction that repre-
sented collective commitment to a particular but equivocal and ill-defined
goal. Administration officials concluded the public wanted Reagan to do
something about terrorism; they just were not sure what it should be.
Reagan’s national security advisors argued in 1985, “[T]he public’s prefer-
ence for a ‘major effort’ by the Government to counter terrorism has risen to
the level of top public concerns during the past year” (Holloway, Memo to
Fuller, Gregg and Menerchik). They cited a June 1985 Roper poll that
found seventy percent of Americans favored a major effort to take steps to
combat terrorism, up from fifty-four percent in 1984. They concluded,
“Concern about controlling terrorism now matches the level of concern
reached by only a few domestic issues during the last decade: nuclear
weapons, crime, inflation and unemployment.” While the poll underscored
a united commitment by the public to fight against terrorism, its vague ref-
erence to “a major effort” to counter the threat was revealing about the
abstract nature of the public’s commitment.
The administration confirmed through internal polling that the public
did not have firm expectations about the specifics of the nation’s terrorism
policy. Executive Secretary Rodney B. McDaniel of the National Security
Council’s Executive Secretariat underscored the potential flexibility the
administration had when responding to terrorism. Based on his assessment
of the totality of the administration’s internal national security polling, he
told John M. Poindexter, the deputy assistant of the National Security
Agency, that “Americans will give the President a limited, but not insignifi-
cant time frame to resolve a terrorist incident. The President will have policy
latitude, with the public only likely to disapprove of ‘extreme’ actions such as
military operations that jeopardize or harm hostages or innocent people, or
on the other hand, capitulating to terrorist demands. As time passes without
a resolution, however, the President will receive greater criticism no matter
what he does” (Memo to Poindexter). With terrorism now an assault on the
American way of life, the public would allow the president to do what he
determined was necessary, as long as he did it quickly.
Besides functioning as an ordinary term of political discourse that united
the public, terrorism also warranted the use of power in ways the community
would not ordinarily accept or consider laudatory. A good example was the
administration’s decision to intercept the Egyptian 737 during the Achille
Lauro crisis, an act viewed by many in South Asia and the Middle East as a
case of American-sponsored skyjacking. The consequences of the act abroad
were substantial. Demonstrations of three thousand to four thousand stu-
dents broke out at the University of Cairo. US diplomatic assessments of the
reaction of the Egyptian populace concluded, “[T]he sense of outrage and

grievance is widespread” (Am. Emb. Cairo), and “[T]he aftermath of the
Achille Lauro hijacking is not only reinforcing anti-U.S./Israel feeling on
campus, but also appears to be turning student activists against the
Government of Egypt” (ibid.). Headlines in the Middle East read,
“American Ambush Hijacks the Hijackers” and “America Crowns Herself
Leader of Terrorism.” Members of the foreign press interpreted the intercep-
tion as evidence that the United States had “lost its mind completely,” that
“America is determined to wreck all peace efforts,” that the United States
“presides over the mafia of terrorism,” and that the United States was begin-
ning “the real American war against the Arabs” (as qtd. in USIA, Special
Report). Taken as a whole, Reagan’s decision to intercept the aircraft risked
the long-term relationship the United States had with its closest and most
pivotal ally in the Middle East. It simultaneously undermined American
credibility in many quarters of the international community.
Despite the consequences to US foreign relations, the American public
supported Reagan’s handling of the crisis. An ABC News/Washington Post poll
conducted late in October 1985 showed eighty percent approved of Reagan’s
handling of the Achille Lauro hijacking and the events that followed, while
only seventeen percent disapproved (Public Opinion Online, #0005872). A
late October 1985 Harris poll added that ninety-one percent of the public
believed Reagan was right “not to apologize for the takeover of the Egyptian
plane, since it was about time that the U.S. did something to tell hijackers
that we weren’t going to let them get away with it in the future, where
American lives were involved” (Public Opinion Online, #0062595). The vir-
tual unanimity of the public response may, at first glance, appear surprising.
Taken out of its ideological context, the act of seizing a foreign aircraft
might reasonably be predicted to engender some outrage. Instead, the bulk of
the American public appeared to view the action as a necessary step to pre-
serve the safety of citizens traveling abroad.
Besides warranting the use of international skyjacking, terrorism became
a justification for encroaching on the sovereignty rights of foreign nations.
The administration knew that despite a long-standing public commitment to
see the perpetrators of terrorist acts “brought to justice” (Public Papers, 1986
1:575), the United States actually had a dismal record of prosecuting and
punishing international terrorists. A study conducted in the late 1980s, for
example, revealed that since 1968, international terrorists involved in kidnap-
ping had an eighty percent chance of escaping capture or death and an even
chance of having some or all of their demands met. Of the individuals
involved in all forms of terrorist activity, few got caught and tried, and of
those who did, the average sentence was less than eighteen months (C.
Johnson 281).
By the mid-1980s, the administration vowed to remedy the problem. It

sponsored the Terrorist Protection Act of 1985, which made the murder or
assault of American citizens abroad a federal crime under US law. The effect
of the law was to create joint jurisdiction over crimes previously seen as sov-
ereign matters of foreign states. In 1986, the Congress authorized the FBI to
abduct terrorists located outside of US borders (Kash 141). The new law,
when implemented, produced havoc abroad. During the Achille Lauro affair,
the Italian media reported that Italy’s failure to meet the Reagan administra-
tion’s demand to arrest Abu Abbas had fractured the relationship between
the United States and Italy (USIS Rome). When several members of the
Italian cabinet threatened to resign over Italy’s handling of the incident, the
US Department of State’s Operation Center warned, “The dissatisfaction of
three of the five Italian coalition partners with the government’s actions may
provoke a cabinet crisis.” By insisting on extradition, the United States jeop-
ardized the internal affairs of its allies abroad.
Perhaps even more devastating was the result in Colombia. In response
to a US demand for extradition of Colombian drug lords, the guerilla group
M-19 seized Colombia’s Judicial Palace on November 6, 1985, and took
hundreds of hostages. The final death toll from the resulting shootout was
more than one hundred, including several members of the Supreme Court
who had been in the process of hearing arguments on the extradition ques-
tion (Executive Intelligence Review).
As a final example, the need to respond to terrorism became the admin-
istration’s rationale for preemptive uses of military force around the globe.
On April 3, 1984, Reagan signed NSDD 138, which authorized the use of
active defense measures in response to state-sponsored terrorism. While the
directive and much of its implementation remains classified, publicly avail-
able documents revealed administration officials interpreted active defense
measures to include preemptive military strikes against groups or individuals
planning strikes against US interests “when the host country is unable or
unwilling to take effective action” (Hill). The directive authorized sabotage,
killing of suspected guerillas and lower-level state officials, preemptory and
retaliatory raids, deception, and expanded intelligence against suspected radi-
cals and people regarded as their sympathizers, particularly in Iran, Libya,
Syria, Cuba, Nicaragua, North Korea, and the USSR (Simpson 365–66).
At the time of the directive’s implementation, administration officials
were aware it would have adverse consequences for individual American citi-
zens. Previously classified documents reveal that as early as 1984, administra-
tion officials at the highest levels of government said that “Active defense
measures by the United States are expected to prompt retaliation and at least in
the short run to increase [the] level of terrorist activity against us, including
within the United States” (McFarlane). Given that the Reagan era experienced
the highest level of terrorist activity and the most deadly terrorist acts of any
modern president, the pessimistic projections appear to have been prophetic.
The public, which was never briefed on the potential consequences of
the directive, supported the administration’s strategy of using preemptive
attacks. By November 1985, John Poindexter, Reagan’s national security
advisor, had received internal polling results that concluded: (1) the public
favored taking military action against known terrorist facilities to discourage
future acts of terrorism; (2) the public recognized the president must some-
times carry out an antiterrorist policy without prior consultation with the
Congress or American allies; (3) the public would more likely support mili-
tary action against known terrorist bases in Iran or Lebanon than against
similar bases in Syria, Nicaragua, or Cuba; and (4) the best time to carry out
a military response was after an embassy or military bombing, when fears for
the hostages’ lives might complicate the issue (McDaniel, Memo to
Poindexter). The public was willing to grant wide latitude to the Reagan
administration in its handling of the terrorism threat.
When Reagan decided to use military force against Libya, his adminis-
tration justified the bombing according to the preemptive standards estab-
lished in NSDD 138. In addition to a more traditional claim of self-defense
related to the intercepts, he insisted that the United States had evidence the
Libyans had been involved with dangerous terrorists groups in the past and
that they were planning future incidents against American citizens. The
White House’s talking points recalled Qadhafi’s declaration that Libya
would train, arm, and protect Arab guerillas for “suicide and terrorist mis-
sions,” his vow that Libyan forces would not give up their “brave confronta-
tion” against the United States, and his urging for “all Arab peoples” to
attack anything American, “be it an interest, goods, a ship, a plane or a
person” (White House Talking Points). Official spokespersons expressed
concerns about Qadhafi’s “money, training, and technical support to revolu-
tionary and terrorist groups as disparate as the Sandinistas, Colombian M-19
guerillas, Caribbean leftist movements, the Irish Revolutionary Army, rebel
movements throughout Africa and muslim [sic] insurgents in Thailand and
the Philippines” (ibid.). The public overwhelmingly supported the approach,
with seventy-one percent supporting the air raid, even though thirty-nine
percent believed the act would increase the amount of terrorism (Falk 873).
While supported at home, Reagan’s preemptive approach was highly
controversial on the international scene. Many foreign countries interpreted
the air strikes on Libya to be an act of war. In varying degrees, Iran, Jordan,
Syria, China, India, Pakistan, North Yemen, South Yemen, Kuwait, Saudi
Arabia, the UAE, France, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, the USSR,
Germany, Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Nicaragua all condemned
the attack (International Reaction).
Debates over terrorism versus freedom-fighting, warranted interception

versus international skyjacking, extradition versus international kidnapping,
and preemptive measures versus acts of war all demonstrated the cultural
variability of the term’s meaning throughout the Reagan era. Who qualified
as terrorist, what acts constituted terrorism, and who deserved condemnation
were all open questions that prompted culturally specific answers.
Following on the heels of two American tragedies (the Vietnam War
and the Iranian hostage crisis), Reagan was the first contemporary US
leader to both elevate and capitalize on terrorism as a negative ideograph
within American society. He did so conscious of the costs of failing to
achieve the status of a strong leader against terrorism. In 1987 his own vice
president articulated the possible political consequences associated with the
terrorist enemy:
Except in the case of a catastrophe resulting from biological, chem-
ical or nuclear terrorism, the gravest threat [from terrorism] is the
potential political impact: a short term crisis, reduced American
credibility in the eyes of others, and an upsurge in activity by ter-
rorists who believe they have succeeded. We can minimize the
political effects of a successful act of terrorism against the United
States so that it will not upset or cast doubt on our process of gov-
ernment or our leadership. To do this we must emphasize at all
levels of government that adherence to our policy, our program,
and our procedure is most important. Only in this way, by demon-
strating resolve and consistency in dealing with the threat, can the
political impact be blunted.
By the time Reagan exited his office, the ideological stature of the terrorist
label had become firmly established and was a linguistic resource available for
all who would follow. The implications were far-reaching. Individual actors
committing terrorist atrocities were no longer just the responsibility of law
enforcement; heads of all states now had an obligation to respond and pre-
vent such acts within their spheres of influence. American presidents could
use the full range of state powers, including preemptive military strikes and
violations of historically recognized boundaries of state sovereignty, in their
pursuit of terrorists. While Reagan limited his application of the ideograph
to a small group of state sponsors, his successor would go further and apply
the powerful term to a foreign head of state that took aggressive actions
against a neighbor.
5
The Persian Gulf Conflict of 1991: The Cold

War Narrative in the Post–Cold War Era
O n August 2, 1990, Iraqi military forces invaded Kuwait, a small Persian

Gulf nation that controlled ten percent of the world’s oil supply. Two
hours and twenty minutes later, George Bush publicly condemned the attack
as a naked act of aggression. Working with foreign nations around the globe,
the United States assumed a leadership role in securing twelve related United
Nations Security Council resolutions. One resolution called for Iraqi forces
to immediately withdraw from Kuwait. Others condemned Iraqi actions,
including its invasion and annexation of Kuwait, its holding of foreign
nationals, its attempts to change Kuwait’s demographic composition, and its
violence against foreign embassies and diplomatic personnel in Kuwait. The
remaining resolutions specified how the international community would
respond to the act of Iraqi aggression: imposing economic and trade sanc-
tions, governing restrictions on humanitarian aid, assigning financial respon-
sibility for losses resulting from the invasion, and authorizing the use of all
necessary means to enforce the UN resolutions.1
By the beginning of 1991, the Bush administration maintained it had
exhausted diplomatic channels for resolving the crisis. On January 16, the
United States, along with its coalition partners, initiated Operation Desert
Storm, a military action that began with a massive air bombardment of Iraq
designed to gain air supremacy and disrupt Iraqi communications and power
systems. Before the end of the five-week air campaign, the US Air Force
expended more than half of its total arsenal of non-nuclear missiles (Yetiv
32). The air campaign neutralized Iraqi air defenses, destroyed artillery, dis-
rupted transportation routes, and limited Iraqi maneuverability on the battle-
field. Spokespersons for the US Air Force originally hailed the move as
having crippled the Iraqi war-fighting capability, but later assessments dra-
matically deflated earlier estimates of success (Gordon and Trainor 465).
During the air campaign, allied forces lost thirty-seven combat aircraft, a
figure that included twenty-eight American planes.
97
On February 24, 1991, allied ground forces entered the conflict. The
maneuvers included a decoy amphibious assault off the coast of Kuwait, a
flanking initiative three hundred miles west of the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border, and a
raid across the Kuwaiti-Saudi border designed to recapture Kuwait City. The
ground war lasted approximately one hundred hours. By February 27, Iraq
conceded and announced its decision to comply with the UN resolutions.
The casualities on the two sides of the conflict were widely disparate.
From the day Iraqi forces moved into Kuwait until the day they withdrew,
the allied forces lost 698 soldiers. Included in that figure were 207 Americans
who died in noncombat related accidents. Early calculations made at the
time of the conflict estimated Iraqi deaths, during the same period, to be
between 30,000 and 115,000, with an additional 111,000 Iraqis dying after-
ward from the health effects of the war (Yetiv 118; Warner and Winkler
180; Dapointe 186). Such casualty figures for Iraqi deaths have been difficult
to verify, given access issues. More recent estimates place the number of Iraqi
casualties suffered during the military operations at 10,000 (Yetiv 118).
As this chapter will demonstrate, the Bush administration struggled ini-
tially with whether to call Iraq’s move on Kuwait an act of terrorism. At the
time of the incursion, the US government considered Iraq a potential ally in
the Middle East that might further American interests in the region. Not
wanting to irreparably harm bilateral relations between the United States and
Iraq, the Bush administration gradually escalated its rhetoric against the Iraqi
leader. Eventually, the administration decided to depict the events in the
Gulf as terrorist acts and borrowed the Reagan strategy of reconstituting the
Cold War narrative. Unlike the previous administration, however, the Bush
camp remained cautious about invoking the full ideological potential of the
terrorist label.
LABELING THE CRISIS
Initially, the Bush administration did not label the Iraqi move on Kuwait as
an act of terrorism. The first administration statements on the crisis referred
to the action as “aggression,” “an unwarranted attack,” “a reckless action,” “an
irrational action,” “naked aggression,” “intolerable behavior,” “unprovoked
aggression,” “ a miscalculation,” “an invasion,” and “a contravention of inter-
national law” (Public Papers, 1990 2:1107–09; 1130–37). The administration
exercised restraint, even after receiving intelligence that the Iraqi government
was refusing exit privileges to more than six hundred foreign nationals in
Kuwait and that Iraqi troops were moving US citizens from Kuwait to Iraq.
Bush told reporters he was concerned about the foreign nationals, but main-
tained he was “not going to invite further harassment by elevating the value
The Persian Gulf Conflict of 1991 99
of any citizen” (1120). Faced with an opportunity to arouse public concern by

evoking terrorism, Bush initially demurred, choosing instead to work behind
the scenes to resolve the conflict.
The administration publicly offered reasoning for why it avoided the use
of the terrorist frame. Secretary of State James Baker gave the following
explanation early in the crisis: “[N]othing has been demanded or asked in
connection with permitting them to leave the country [. . .] we think it would
be a mistake to characterize it as a hostage situation and to use a word like
that since we are in discussion with respect to the matter. And as far as we
know, no American citizens have as yet been mistreated” (Public Papers,
1990 2:1126). In his memoirs, Bush made clear the actual motivation behind
his restraint had more to do with public reactions both at home and abroad
than it did with a failure of Iraqi behavior to qualify as terrorism. He revealed
he “had been reluctant to use the word ‘hostage’ in public statements because
[he] did not want to invite comparison to Tehran and lose the international
focus on Kuwait, the real issue” (Bush and Scowcroft 350). Unwilling to risk
framing the Iraq-Kuwaiti conflict as another American tragedy, Bush was
circumspect about his word choice.
By late August 1990, the administration changed its mind and began
arguing Iraq had left it no choice but to use the hostage label. Bush described
the rationale for his rhetorical shift to the annual conference of the Veterans
of Foreign Wars: “We’ve been reluctant to use the term ‘hostage.’ But when
Saddam Hussein specifically offers to trade the freedom of those citizens of
many nations he holds against their will in return for concessions, there can
be little doubt that whatever these innocent people are called, they are, in
fact, hostages” (Public Papers, 1990 2:1148). By late September, public
threats of terrorism from Iraqi officials and Palestinian terrorist groups, as
well as evidence of Iraqi operatives planning a major worldwide terrorist
campaign, prompted Bush to declare, “We hold Saddam Hussein responsible
if there is any terrorist act against us” (1265). Bush’s personal use of the ter-
rorist label left little doubt that he now considered the conflict to be one of
high stakes.
Despite intermittent use of the hostage label to describe those held in
Kuwait and Iraq in the early months of the crisis, the administration initially
rejected the use of terrorism as an overarching theme for Saddam Hussein’s
behavior during the Gulf conflict. Drafts of Bush’s speeches throughout
August and September 1990 reveal the administration considered, but even-
tually discarded, terrorism as an encompassing rational for American involve-
ment. Bush’s September 11, 1990 address to a joint session of Congress
demonstrated that the administration was still cautious about branding Iraqi
actions as terrorist atrocities. A draft of the speech’s introduction, cast aside
prior to final delivery, spun the entire situation as terrorist aggression: “We
gather as an Iraqi aggressor suppresses peaceful Arab neighbors whose coun-

try he has ruthlessly invaded—an Iraqi President who, in violation of law and
decency, holds innocent people from many nations hostage; an Iraqi dictator
who, if left unchecked, would hold the global economy hostage to his
expanding control of oil; and who, if not restrained, might extend his reign
of terror with chemical weapons, as he has done before” (Speech with Draft
Notes, “Iraq and the Economy.”). A proposed applause line for the speech
reinforced the theme: “But we cannot allow ourselves—or the world—to be
terrorized.” Abandoning terrorism as an organizing principle for the speech,
the final manuscript relegated “freedom from terror” to one of several goals
Bush grouped under his fifth objective for the contest (i.e., creating a New
World Order). The term “hostages” similarly received a mention, but as only
one of five UN resolutions related to the Iraqi situation. The applause line
was omitted altogether. A comparison of the two drafts reveals that the Bush
administration decided not to embrace, but still chose to preserve, the option
of casting the crisis as terrorism.
The decision not to inflame the public with the discourse of terrorism
was also evident in how the administration chose to describe Saddam
Hussein prior to and during the crisis. Immediately following Iraq’s move on
Kuwait, the Bush administration adopted a public strategy of downplaying
terrorist portrayals of the leader that would evoke negative stereotypes. Early
drafts of Bush’s remarks at the Pentagon courtyard on August 15, for exam-
ple, included the following, subsequently omitted, linkage of the Iraqi leader
to infamous terrorists: “Today, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq stands as an interna-
tional outlaw, a haven for mercenaries and terrorists like the notorious Abu
Abbas, whose jackals gunned down an American retiree on the Achille Lauro,
tossing him and his wheelchair into the sea” (Haass, Speech with Draft
Notes to Winston). Only once throughout August and September 1990 did
Bush refer to Hussein’s previous use of chemical weapons on the battlefield,
and then, only in response to a reporter’s direct question about the Iraqi’s
potential for using chemical weapons (Public Papers, 1990 2:1110). By down-
playing Hussein’s past acts of terrorism, the Bush administration reserved the
future ability of the United States to restore its alliance with the Iraqi leader
in the event that he withdrew from Kuwait.
Having discarded the overarching theme of terrorism early in the crisis,
the Bush administration relied instead on a lengthy list of justifications for
American involvement in the Persian Gulf conflict. In the three months after
the Iraqi attack, administration spokespersons offered the following public
rationales for engagement of US military forces: (1) stemming Iraqi aggres-
sion, (2) maintaining stability and security in the Middle East, (3) preventing
a dictator from strangling the global economic order through control of the
oil supplies, (4) restoring Kuwait’s legitimate government, (5) protecting the
lives of American citizens held hostage in Iraq and Kuwait, (6) protecting the
lives of foreign nationals held hostage in Iraq and Kuwait, (7) creating a New
World Order, (8) defending Saudi Arabia, (9) getting Iraq out of Kuwait,
(10) deterring future proliferation of chemical, biological, ballistic missile,
and nuclear technologies, (11) protecting jobs, and (12) destroying Iraq’s
military capability. Public diplomacy themes distributed to White House
spokespersons added even more justifications for military involvement: the
protection of US embassies, the enhancement of America’s image as a reli-
able ally, and the protection of interests considered vital by every president
since Harry Truman (Public Diplomacy Themes, n.d.). By listing so many
rationales for US involvement, the administration risked the perception it
wanted to intervene militarily regardless of the reason.
Despite the myriad of public rationales for a military presence, private
memoranda from the American Embassy in Riyadh demonstrated that the
Bush administration had even more goals that it never shared with either the
American public or with the full complement of its coalition partners.
Examples of such objectives included the elimination of Iraqi nuclear, bio-
logical, and chemical capabilities, the military downsizing of Iraq’s offensive
war-fighting capability, a restored balance of power in the region between
Iran, Syria, and a rehabilitated Iraq, and stronger US. economic, political,
and military cooperation with members of the Gulf Cooperation Council.
Embassy personnel lobbied the White House not to abandon these US
objectives because they lacked the full support of the international coalition;
they argued, instead, that the administration should consider these additional
aims as falling within the coalition’s broad consensus goal of “restoring secu-
rity and stability to the region” (US and Coalition War Aims). The internal
correspondence revealed that a primary justification for US involvement was
a reduction of Iraqi influence in the Middle East, a cause not palpable to the
broader international audience.
In his memoir, coauthored with George Bush, Brent Scowcroft discloses
that during the first months after the Iraqi invasion, the administration expe-
rienced widespread frustration at its apparent inability to communicate the
war aims of the Gulf crisis to the American public. When faced with criti-
cism, Scowcroft maintained the administration “tended to react to com-
plaints by expanding the list of U.S. interests, leading to charges that each of
the principals had his own reasons and we really didn’t have our act together”
(Bush and Scowcroft 399). Assuming Scowcroft was correct in his analysis,
the administration compounded its lack of focus even as it tried to communi-
cate more persuasively with the American public.
By late October 1990, the national polls reaching the administration’s
Persian Gulf Working Group demonstrated waning support for Bush’s leader-
ship during the Gulf crisis. A USA Today survey showed a thirty-one percent
drop in the number of respondents who approved of Bush’s handling of the

crisis from August 20 to November 13 (Press Clips). An ABC
News–Washington Post poll showed a similar twenty-six percent drop from
August through October 1990 (Press Clips, Natl. Journal 12/15/90).
Accompanying the general drop in support for the Bush’s handling of the
Gulf crisis was growing uncertainty about why US military forces were nec-
essary. A National Journal poll conducted in August and again in November
showed a nineteen percent drop in the number of Americans who believed
“Bush has explained the Middle East situation well enough so that you feel
you understand why the United States is sending troops to Saudi Arabia”
(ibid.). The public appeared to be reacting to the growing list of justifications
for US involvement by becoming more confused.
In an effort to understand why public support was dwindling, several
polling organizations probed further. The results indicated that some of the
administration’s rationales for engaging US forces simply did not resonate
with the American public. Again in a poll reviewed by the administration’s
Persian Gulf Working Group, the Los Angeles Times reported on November
14, 1990, nationwide “Just 1 in 6 of those polled said the United States
should go to war to protect oil supplies, and only about 1 in 8 said restoring
the Kuwaiti government—another of the President’s core objectives—would
be worth bloodshed” (Press Clips). The administration’s primary justifica-
tions for the use of military force were simply not persuasive with the bulk of
the American populace.
By October, members of the administration began lobbying the presi-
dent to regain focus in his public justification for going to war. Robert
Teeter, Bush’s chief pollster, implored him to recognize that the administra-
tion simply had too many public rationales for military involvement in the
Persian Gulf Crisis. He encouraged Bush to limit the administration’s public
statements to two main justifications: Iraqi aggression and protecting the
lives of Americans held in Kuwait and Iraq (Woodward, Commanders 315).
James Baker argued similarly that the administration should emphasize the
plight of the hostages in Iraq and Kuwait, given that the public was not
accepting the value of oil supplies or the dismantling of Kuwait as sufficient
rationales for war (Hybel 72).
Making the hostages the focus of the public justification for war had a
number of advantages for the Bush administration. Perhaps foremost among
them was that the hostages provided a legal justification for Bush’s assump-
tion of commander-in-chief powers. As Steven Rademaker, the deputy legal
adviser to the National Security Council, opined, “The President’s authority
to commit U.S. forces to combat in self-defense exists not only with respect to
attacks on U.S. territory and U.S. forces, but also with respect to attacks on
U.S. citizens and property abroad. Therefore, so long as Iraq continues to
hold U.S. citizens hostage, and U.S. military actions against Iraq are in any
way calculated to obtain their release, those actions can be defended as legit-
imate exercises of the President’s authority as Commander in Chief.” By
focusing on the hostages, rather than on acquiring oil access or the protec-
tion of the Kuwaiti government, the administration could justify US involve-
ment on defensive grounds more acceptable to the public.
Emphasizing the hostages also positioned the administration to advo-
cate the primary concern of the American public. A USA Today poll, con-
ducted nationwide in mid-November 1990 and then reviewed by central
administration officials, found, “50% still say saving the 1,000 U.S. hostages
in Iraq and Kuwait is the top priority” (Press Clips). A tracking poll con-
ducted by NBC News–The Wall Street Journal in August, September, and
December 1990 revealed that a majority of the public considered terrorism a
hair trigger issue justifying US military action. Asked whether the United
States should take military action in response to a hypothetical scenario
where “Iraq imprisons or mistreats Americans left in Kuwait,” fifty-five to
seventy percent of the respondents indicated that it should (Press Clips, Natl.
Journal 1/12/91). The terrorism label, having already achieved the status of
an ideograph during the Reagan administration, again demonstrated its abil-
ity to mobilize the public.
A third way that focus on the hostages benefited the administration
involved avoiding controversy with his domestic audience. Bush himself was
vulnerable to charges that his desire to maintain Kuwaiti sovereignty
stemmed from self-interest, given that his was the first US oil company to
drill wells in Kuwait (Wayne 47). During the administration’s campaign to
garner support for the war effort, Bush’s general connections to oil interests
had been a topic of public discussion, but his specific association to Kuwait
had yet to attract concerted media attention.
The strategy of highlighting the plight of the hostages, however, was not
without risk. Bush’s immediate two predecessors—Jimmy Carter and Ronald
Reagan—each suffered sharp twenty point drops in their presidential
approval ratings in the face of lingering hostage crises (“Presidential
Popularity” 7). For many observers both at home and abroad, the Iranian
hostage crisis and the Iran-Contra scandal demonstrated the weakness,
rather than the strength, of American power in the international arena. Bush
was particularly vulnerable to such criticism, given his role as Reagan’s chief
counterterrorism official during the Iran-Contra affair and his decision as
president to pardon members of the Reagan administration found guilty of
involvement in the scandal.
Focusing on the hostages to justify US military intervention also carried
the risk of elevating Saddam Hussein’s leverage within the conflict. Bush
advisors warned Hussein might decide to release the hostages and continue
to occupy Kuwait, an eventuality the Iraqi leader exercised by December

1990 (US and Coalition War Aims). As Stephen Rademaker forecast, “If the
hostages are freed, the individual self-defense rationale for U.S. military
operations against Iraq will become more attenuated. The argument then
becomes that we are acting in collective self-defense of Kuwait and related
U.S. interests rather than U.S. lives and property.” While perhaps sufficient
to sustain a legal justification for going to war, the stance, if accepted,
realigned the administration with rationales for war that had failed to garner
public support.
Despite the risks involved, the administration began emphasizing the
hostages held in Iraq and Kuwait as a primary justification for going to war.
By late October 1990, the government’s public statements began detailing
the plight of the hostages, including their shortages of food, their inadequate
housing, and the terrorizing impact of being forced to act as human shields
(see Baker, “Why America Is in the Gulf” 237). The Bush administration
proceeded to employ an overarching frame of terrorism to characterize the
conflict. In Bush’s rhetoric, Saddam Hussein became an “international ter-
rorist” (Public Papers, 1991 1:26). Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait became “a sys-
tematic campaign of terror on the people of Kuwait—unspeakable atrocities
against men and women and among the maimed and murdered, even inno-
cent children” (12). Iraq’s capture of Kuwaiti oil reserves became a means to
“finance further aggression, terror and blackmail” (11). Iraq’s Scud missile
attack on Israel was “purely an act of terror” (48). Iraq’s torching of Kuwaiti
oil wells was an act of “tragic and despicable environmental terrorism” (79).
By November 1990, the administration depicted every action by the Iraqi
leader as an act of terrorism.
In brief, the administration was initially reluctant to frame the Persian
Gulf crisis as terrorism. When other justifications for US involvement in the
crisis failed to garner public support, the administrations shifted to a coordi-
nated public campaign of denouncing the Iraqi leader as a terrorist. By doing
so the Bush administration transformed the crisis in the Persian Gulf from a
conventional war scenario between two foreign nation-states into an interna-
tional battle against the scourge of terrorism. The framing encouraged the
public to evaluate the administration’s handling of the crisis, not from the
position of a distant ally of an attacked nation, but in accordance with its
status as the leader of the free world in a fight to protect the civilized world.
The Bush administration’s framing of Saddam Hussein as a terrorist
built upon the Reagan administration’s conception of states providing logis-
tical and financial support for terrorism. The key difference between the two
approaches was that terrorism in Bush administration discourse not only
encompassed foreign states connected in some way with the terrorist acts of
others; it also included nations with leaders who committed bad acts in the
conduct of their own foreign policy. The Bush administration used the shift
in strategy to reconstitute the Cold War narrative into a fitting story for the
post-Cold War era.
THE NARRATIVE OF THE 1991 PERSIAN GULF CRISIS
The Bush administration faced a significant rhetorical challenge in its

attempt to tell the story of the Persian Gulf situation. The typical public
terrorism strategy of modern Republican presidents, the Cold War narra-
tive, appeared outmoded in the post-Cold War period. Bush’s Persian Gulf
Working Group reviewed an analysis comparing two previous Cold War
conflicts with the situation in Kuwait. The report concluded, “The present
situation in the Persian Gulf does not feature the same compelling cold war
motivations as earlier conflicts. The need to destroy Iraq’s nuclear and
chemical capabilities, the need to protect U.S. hostages, and the removal of
Saddam Hussein from power are all factors that may be able to fill the gap
left by the absence of cold war labels, but not one of these justifications is
as deeply rooted in American culture as the cold war psychology was in
early conflicts” (Historical Overview). With the collapse of the Soviet
Union, conventional modes of public persuasion in foreign policy became
more attenuated.
In the end, Bush chose to follow the lead of his predecessor. He adopted
Reagan’s approach of reasserting central themes and character traits of the
Cold War narrative, while reconstituting certain plot elements consistent
with his new vision of the post-Cold War era. Such a strategy provided
rhetorical continuity to appeal to his political base; simultaneously, it pre-
sented a new foreign policy approach that administration officials hoped
would attract the popular support of the general electorate.
The Bush narrative borrowed the theme of a fragile scene from the his-
toric Cold War narrative. The Kuwaiti monarchy, however, neither func-
tioned as an emerging democracy (the conventional backdrop of traditional
Cold War discourse) nor as a preexisting democracy vulnerable due to its
open form of government (Reagan’s reconstituted scene). The Bush adminis-
tration resolved the problem by ascribing the characteristic of fragility to the
New World Order. Bush explained, “Today that new world is struggling to
be born, a world quite different from the one we’ve known. A world where
the rule of law supplants the rule of the jungle. A world in which nations rec-
ognize the shared responsibility for freedom and justice. A world where the
strong respect the rights of the weak” (Public Papers, 1990 2:1219). From the
perspective articulated by Bush, order was an option for all nations: the
strong and the weak, the large and the small, the democratic and the not-so-
democratic. The New World Order constituted a frail international context

that held the promise to yield a more peaceful, a more just, and a more liber-
ated world.
The Bush administration recalled the traditional Cold War scene by
claiming that emerging democracies around the globe were vulnerable to
Hussein’s actions. The fact that Iraq had not yet invaded a democratic nation
did not prevent the administration from arguing that such countries were
suffering. In Bush’s public statements, the emerging democracies shouldered
the bulk of the economic consequences of the conflict between Iraq and
Kuwait. He explained, “The fledgling democracies in Eastern Europe are
being severely damaged by the economic effects of Saddam’s actions. The
developing countries in Africa and in our hemisphere are being victimized by
this dictator’s rape of his neighbor Kuwait” (Public Papers, 1990 2:1719).
Behind the scenes, the Bush administration was concerned about the eco-
nomic impact of the Iraqi move on the United States. Aides articulated fears
of a recession, a potential $300 billion deficit, and even worse long-term eco-
nomic problems (For Discussion). While the New World Order became the
label for the new scene in the reconstituted Cold War narrative, it was broad
enough to include both established and new democracies worldwide.
The Bush administration’s depiction of the scene functioned to rebut a
charge embedded in the competing Iraqi narrative about the conflict. In the
months leading up to the takeover, Iraq had blamed Kuwait for the eco-
nomic distress that prompted its move on Kuwait. Saddam Hussein charged
that Kuwait had moved its border northward seventy kilometers and was
engaging in slant drilling to pump oil from Iraqi oil fields during the Iran-
Iraq War. As compensation, he demanded $2.4 billion from the Kuwaitis.
At the Arab Summit in Baghdad at the end of May, Hussein accused Kuwait
of acting again to hurt Iraqi interests by flooding the world oil market and
driving prices down to a low of $7 per barrel. On July 16, 1990, Hussein
argued that Kuwait’s oil policy had cost Iraq $14 billion (Am. Emb.
Baghdad). Privately after the summit, Saddam Hussein told the Saudi oil
minister, “I will never agree to let Iraqis starve, and Iraqi women go naked
because of need” (Aziz, as qtd. in Baram 16). Kuwait, not Iraq, became the
aggressor in the public stance of the Iraqi leader.
In response, the Bush narrative presented Kuwait not as an actor self-
ishly out for its own self-interest, but as one of many nations that made up
the frail scene of the New World Order. Bush insisted Kuwait was “a peace-
ful neighbor” (Public Papers, 1991 1:74), “a much smaller neighbor” (Public
Papers, 1990 2:1107), and “a small and defenseless neighbor” (Public Papers,
1991 1:78). It was not the aggressor. Bush reinforced the innocence and rel-
ative powerlessness of Kuwait by feminizing its victim status in light of the
Iraqi crimes committed against it. Bush portrayed the Iraq’s invasion as “a
ruthless systematic rape of a peaceful neighbor” (74). The metaphor of rape

highlighted the action’s indiscriminate nature (Griffin 35), the intimidation
involved in the act (Brownmuller 15), and the perpetrator’s use of force
(Muehlenhard, Danoff-Burg, and Powch 129). It also chastised those who
would blame the victim as callous and unsympathetic. As a small, defenseless
state in the New World Order, Kuwait qualified for the support of larger
nations striving for peace and stability around the globe.
As the guilty party in the Bush administration’s public strategy, Iraq
assumed many of the negative characteristics ascribed to the Communists in
the Cold War narrative. Iraq, like the Communist menace before it, har-
bored the goals of worldwide conquest. Only, this time, the purpose of the
expansion was control over the world’s economic resources, rather than the
spread of an ideological perspective. Bush held that Saddam Hussein was
“bent on regional domination” (Public Papers, 1990 2:1580), and wanted to
establish “a chokehold on the world’s economic lifeline” (ibid.). Bush insisted
the reason Hussein sought dominance over Kuwaiti oil supplies involved his
“desires to control one of the world’s key resources” (1719). In the Bush nar-
rative, greed and economic power replaced ideological dominance as the pri-
mary motivations behind Hussein’s conduct.
Credibly presenting Saddam Hussein as a worldwide economic threat,
however, posed a rhetorical challenge for the administration. Bush himself
had been involved in a number of executive branch decisions that presumed
Iraq to be a potential ally of the United States. Most dramatic was the case of
Iraq shooting on the USS Stark, an incident that occurred during Bush’s
term as Reagan’s vice president. When the US government asked the Iraqi
regime to explain the incident, the foreign government argued it had mistak-
enly fired two missiles on a warship escorting American-flagged Kuwaiti oil
tankers out of the Persian Gulf. The Reagan team, denied an interview with
the pilot, publicly accepted Iraq’s explanation that the killing of the thirty-
seven American sailors and the wounding of twenty-one others had been an
accident. Efforts to improve relations between the two countries ensued.
Formally, the Reagan administration had taken steps to strengthen the
ties between the two nations. Working to block an Iranian move to assume
control of Iraq, the United States removed Iraq from the State Department’s
list of official state sponsors of terrorism in 1982. Even more embarrassing
for Bush, the administration had provided critical battle planning assistance
to Iraq “at a time when American intelligence agencies knew that Iraqi com-
manders would employ chemical weapons in waging the decisive battles in
the Iran-Iraq war, according to senior military officials with direct knowl-
edge of the program” (“Officers Say” 1). In a variety of contexts, Bush was
connected with US moves to establish closer relations with Hussein and the
Iraqi government.
Once Bush assumed the presidency, he continued the pattern of work-

ing to strengthen the alliance. His secretary of state refused to place Iraq on
the official list of state sponsors of terrorism, even after Hussein used chemi-
cal weapons against his own people. In October 1989, Bush signed National
Security Directive 26, the official policy of cooperative engagement with
Iraq. The government’s rationale for its new conciliatory policy with Iraq
read, “Normal relations between the United States and Iraq would serve our
longer-term interests and promote stability in both the Gulf and the Middle
East” (G. [H. W.] Bush, Memo of NSD 26). The directive authorized the
government to pursue opportunities for US firms to participate in the recon-
struction of the Iraqi economy in the aftermath of the Iran-Iraq war and to
consider the sale of nonlethal forms of military assistance to Iraq.
Subsequently, the administration supported the extension of $3 billion in US
agricultural credits to Iraq between February 1988 and July 1989. A congres-
sional delegation visiting Baghdad on April 12, 1990, reassured Saddam
Hussein privately of continued US support, a message that Glaspie reiterated
to the Iraqi leader two weeks later.2 In light of the administration’s policy of
cooperative engagement, transforming Saddam Hussein into an evil menace
bent on control over a key world resource would not come easily.
To counter the claim that the government had misjudged Iraq’s poten-
tial as an ally, the Bush administration recalled a theme from conventional
Cold War discourse. In short, the narrative held that like the Communists
before, the Iraqi dictator was a liar. Bush told reporters that Iraq had lied
about its plans to invade Kuwait and its promise to withdraw a few days into
the conflict. Bush publicly declared that Saddam Hussein’s “promises mean
nothing” (Public Papers, 1990 2:1108). The United States was no longer in
denial about Saddam Hussein’s true intentions. When a reporter asked “why
it is that not all that long ago it was Saddam Hussein that the U.S. was
dealing with in the Middle East,” Bush responded, “[H]e hadn’t invaded
Kuwait. He hadn’t raped, pillaged, and plundered the people in Kuwait and
the city of Kuwait itself. He hadn’t violated this fundamental norm of inter-
national behavior” (1679). Within the Bush narrative, Iraq’s assault on
Kuwait removed all doubt about the nation’s trustworthiness on the interna-
tional stage.
The charge of misjudging Iraqi intentions gained strength from the
Bush administration’s failure to prevent the Iraq’s military buildup on the
Kuwaiti border in late July 1990. Internal intelligence briefings at the time
confirmed that US military analysts had suspected that an Iraqi invasion
might be imminent. A briefing memo sent from Sandra Charles through
Richard N. Haass to Scowcroft on July 27, 1990 summarized the day’s intel-
ligence: “Saddam apparently has increased his military force strength by one
division along the border. [. . .] Analysts believe that a shallow incursion into
the northern oilfield, Rumaylah, cannot be ruled out, while drastic military
action is also possible if less likely.” Convinced by counterarguments that
Iraq would not risk the invasion, Bush and his top aides sent a message to
Saddam Hussein later the same day reiterating the conciliatory posture of the
United States. The communication assured the Iraqi leader that the United
States was trying to find a way to work with him and insisted Iraq recipro-
cate (Woodward, Commanders 215). On the morning of the Iraqi move into
Kuwait, Bush further contributed to the controversy by telling reporters he
considered the Iraqi takeover a fait accompli (Greenstein 166). Whether too
conciliatory or too fatalistic, the Bush administration’s failure to prevent the
events in the Gulf raised lingering questions about the evil characterization
of a foreign leader recently courted by the US government.
The Bush administration narrative, however, supplied an explanation of
why the government had failed to prevent Iraqi forces from invading Kuwait.
When the six-month buildup of Iraqi forces had begun, the United States
had considered Hussein the leader of a nation with the potential to become a
valued member of the international community; now, he was a terrorist who
no longer employed a rational decision-making calculus. The Bush adminis-
tration relied on the stereotype of the irrational terrorist to transform the
character of Saddam Hussein. Bush insisted Saddam’s actions were “sense-
less,” “irrational,” and “reckless,” and offered “no military advantage to him
whatsoever” (Public Papers, 1991 1:69). Bush admitted he “[couldn’t] figure
out what he’s thinking” (107). James Baker added that Saddam Hussein had
“an inflated sense of Iraq’s leverage and a very high pain threshold”
(“Statement before Senate Foreign Relations Comm.” 308). Facing an irra-
tional opponent, the Bush administration could not reasonably have been
expected to anticipate the ill-conceived Iraqi attack.
The administration returned to the Cold War narrative to frame the
means the Iraqi leader used in the Persian Gulf conflict. Bush argued that
Hussein relied on barbaric acts to accomplish his objectives. The most horri-
fying and vivid story of the war involved Iraqi soldiers throwing premature
babies out of incubators before stealing the machines to take home to Iraq.
On October 10, the Congressional Human Rights Caucus heard what they
thought was firsthand testimony from a fifteen-year-old girl known only as
Nayirah. Nayirah told the committee that she only wished to use her first
name in order to protect her friends and relatives in Kuwait. Not under oath,
the girl testified that Iraqi soldiers had come into the al-Addan Hospital in
Kuwait where she was volunteering, removed fifteen premature babies from
their incubators, and left them to die on the floor.
Once told, the story received substantial attention both at home and
abroad. In late October 1990, Bush repeated the essence of Nayirah’s story,
this time attributing it to the emir of Kuwait. He stated, “[D]ay after day,
shocking new horrors reveal the true nature of the reign of terror in Kuwait.
In one hospital, dialysis patients were ripped from their machines and the
machines shipped from Kuwait to Baghdad. Iraq soldiers pulled the plug on
incubators supporting 22 premature babies. All 22 died. The hospital
employees were shot and the plundered machines were shipped off to
Baghdad” (Public Papers, 1990 1:1482). Bush repeated the story in various
venues and the public relations firm of Hill and Knowlton presented it before
the United Nations Security Council. In December 1990, Amnesty
International confirmed in a press release the looting of the incubators, but
raised the number of deaths of premature babies to 300. The story, told
repeatedly in multiple forums, became the representative anecdote of Iraqi
barbarity. Six pro-war senators mentioned the incubator account in speeches
explaining their votes to support the Senate resolution to authorize the war.
In the end their number was significant. The resolution passed by only a
five-vote majority.3
The incubator incident was false. By April 1991, Amnesty International
retracted the story after its fact-finding team found “no reliable evidence that
Iraqi forces have caused the deaths of babies by removing them or ordering
their removal from incubators” (Koch). Some earlier witnesses recanted par-
ticular details of the story, while others discounted it altogether. Revelations
that Nayirah was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United
States, that she had never been in the hospital, and that she had been
coached for her testimony by the public relations firm of Hill and Knowlton
further undermined the story’s credibility (K. Phillips 309).
To further dramatize the barbaric nature of the Iraqi enemy, the
administration emphasized the plight of Americans held hostage in Kuwait
and Iraq. By late October 1990, James Baker expounded on the unaccept-
able conditions the hostages faced in captivity. He announced, “Americans
are being forced to sleep on vermin-ridden concrete floors. They are kept
in the dark during the day and moved only at night. They have had their
meals cut to two a day. And many are becoming sick as they endure a terri-
ble ordeal. The very idea of Americans being used as human shields is
simply unconscionable” (“Why America is in the Gulf” 237). On
November 1, 1990, the administration highlighted the conditions of the
hostage’s confinement in its briefing to fifteen congressional leaders on the
status of the Persian Gulf conflict. Bush began the meeting by explaining
that the United States was receiving more reports of maltreatment of
American and British hostages. The members of the delegation were skep-
tical. They questioned whether any escalation of maltreatment had
occurred. They suggested the administration might simply be using the
plight of the hostages to justify going to war. Senator William Cohen, the
vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, offered that officials
of the CIA and DIA, when testifying before his committee the preceding
week, had indicated there was no new evidence of mistreatment
(Woodward, Commanders 17). Throughout November and December, the
administration nevertheless reminded the public that Iraq was starving the
embassy personnel in Kuwait. By January 1991, administration officials had
recounted repeated instances of Iraqi disrespect for fundamental tenets of
international law and order.
The Bush administration reinforced the idea of Iraqi barbarity by
renouncing the initial reluctance by US officials to discuss the Iraqi leader-
ship’s prior bad acts. After Hussein had used chemical weapons to kill more
than eight thousand Kurdish civilians in Iraq in 1988, the Bush administra-
tion had worked initially to downplay the incident and weaken a bill in
Congress to impose economic sanctions in response to the atrocity.4
Members of the Bush administration did so knowing that the United States
had supplied Iraq with six strains of botulinum toxin, three strains of
anthrax, and three strains of gas gangrene bacteria, West Nile fever virus,
and dengue fever virus since 1983 (Niman 20–22). During the buildup of US
forces in the Gulf, the administration abandoned its earlier public restraint.
Bush denounced Hussein’s callous use of weapons of mass destruction
against “innocent villagers, his own people” (Public Papers, 1991 1:11). Based
on lessons learned from past experience with Iraq, Bush insisted that Saddam
Hussein’s current pursuit of a chemical and biological weapons arsenal would
become a precursor to future acts of barbarism.
In Bush’s reconstituted Cold War narrative, Iraq shared the characteris-
tic barbarity of the Communist threat, but shifted the object of its conquest
ambitions to the economic arena and its chosen method of achieving domi-
nation to weapons of mass destruction. To successfully respond to the revised
threat, the hero character in the Bush narrative also needed to be recast. The
new hero became the broader international community, with the United
States assuming a leadership role.
Even while shifting the hero’s identity, the administration’s new narra-
tive did not abandon the prior persona of the United States in conventional
Cold War discourse. Bush grounded the nation’s motivations in those
rehearsed many times for his domestic audience. He laid out his administra-
tion’s goals as, “You know how America remains the hope of ‘liberty-loving
people everywhere’” (Public Papers, 1990 2:1150). On a mission to defend the
freedom and self-determination of all members of the international commu-
nity, the United States retained its earlier objectives.
The administration justified the means necessary for responding to the
Iraqi threat by drawing from the lessons of the nation’s war history. As a
recent and resonant public memory of US success against terrorism, World
War II became the resurrected standard for how America should respond.
The Vietnam War, as a compelling recent episode of a US failure against ter-

rorism, became a cautionary tale for how not to engage the enemy.
The Bush administration capitalized on the collective public memory of
World War II to draw a number of public lessons about how the United
States should react to the takeover of Kuwait. The first of these was that the
United States should shed its unilateral posture in times of international
crisis and, instead, assume a leadership role within the broader global com-
munity. Accordingly, Bush framed the crisis as one facing the entire civilized
international community: “[W]e’re not in this alone. [. . .] It is the United
Nations against Saddam Hussein. It is not Iraq against the United States”
(Public Papers, 1990 2:1169). He touted the rewards of global cooperation for
ultimate success in the conflict when he stated, “[T]ogether, we can success-
fully oppose tyranny and help those nations who look to us for leadership
and vision” (ibid.). While the United States still played a vital role in the nar-
rative’s battle against terrorism, it no longer assumed sole responsibility for
overcoming the threat.
The folly of appeasement was a second lesson the Bush administration
borrowed from World War II. Bush warned the public of the consequences
of appeasement by historical references to Adolf Hitler. In one warning, he
remembered that “Half a century ago, the world had the chance to stop a
ruthless aggressor and missed it” (Public Papers, 1990 2:1150). When Bush
sent James Baker to meet with Iraqi foreign minister Tariq Aziz in early
January, he assured the public he would not repeat the mistakes of World
War II. In his January 9 news conference, Bush declared that he “sent Jim
Baker to Geneva not to negotiate, but to communicate” (Public Papers, 1991
2:18). In accordance with the new framework, the government did not fail if
it was incapable of securing a negotiated settlement; instead, it failed if it
made even a minor concession to a recognized terrorist.
The Soviet Union experienced the transposed standard firsthand when it
offered concessions to Iraq in exchange for an agreement to withdraw from
Kuwait immediately prior to the ground war. The proposal was along the
lines of domestic US opinion polls conducted from November 9 to
November 13, 2000, which showed that sixty-nine percent of the respon-
dents favored “Agreeing to a negotiated settlement, under which in return
for getting out of Kuwait, Saddam Hussein is allowed to have access to the
Persian Gulf through the northern part of Kuwait, as a face-saving device for
him to get out” (L. Harris, “Public Wants” 2). Nevertheless, Bush remained
consistent with the no-negotiation pledge of the revised narrative and
rejected the proposal immediately. He announced that the Soviet proposal
fell “well short of what would be required” (as qtd. in Rosenthal A1). The
World War II standard of unconditional surrender became the Bush admin-
istration’s only standard for an acceptable outcome in the conflict.
Despite the public stance, officials in the Bush administration perceived

that a substantial portion of the public actually favored making concessions
to avoid war in the Gulf. After the United States moved offensive force
strength into Saudi Arabia in November 1990, for example, advisors warned
the Persian Gulf Working Group, “Americans are not convinced that the
President has taken all the relevant diplomatic steps” (Troops in the Gulf).
The Opinion Analysis Staff of the Bureau of Public Affairs in the State
Department identified particular concessions that had the potential to under-
mine public support for US military involvement in the region. Their report
to the Working Group in early January 1991 stated, “Partial Iraqi withdrawal
produced a 5–10 point decline in support for using military force to free
Kuwait completely. A total withdrawal produced about a 25-point decline in
support for using force (‘to destroy Iraqi’s military threat’), plus increased
support for removing US troops” (US Dept. St., PA/Opinion Analysis
1/14/90). Members of the administration concluded that specific diplomatic
outcomes had majority public support.
Nonetheless, the Bush administration chose not to work toward the
concessions the public appeared to favor. Instead, they used certain linguistic
codes that recalled the Hitler analogy, thereby softening the public’s call for
diplomatic concessions to Iraq. The strategic replacement of the term
“appeasement” for “diplomacy” was particularly powerful, given the memo-
ries it evoked regarding Great Britain’s unsuccessful concessions to Germany
during World War II. Bush’s chief of staff, John Sununu, received a confi-
dential memorandum in late December 1990 that specifically addressed the
power of the appeasement label. The memo, originally sent from Tony
Fabrizio of the polling firm Fabrizio, McLaughlin and Associates to Sam
Zakhem, chairman of the Freedom Task Force, reported the results of a
commissioned national survey of voter attitudes regarding US policy toward
the Middle East.
The poll assessed the impact of the appeasement label with the public by
drawing a simple comparison. First, the survey employed the term “diplo-
macy,” by asking the question, “As you may have heard, the U.N. recently
passed a resolution demanding Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait by January
15th. At that time, President Bush has three options. Which option would
you personally favor?” Of the respondents, 45% chose “continue diplomatic
relations,” 37.8% chose “act militarily,” and 11% chose “withdraw from the
region completely” (Fabrizio). With diplomacy as a survey option, far less
than half the public favored a military engagement in the Gulf.
A second polling question asked the public what actions they would
support if, instead of diplomacy, the term “appeasement” appeared in the
wording of the survey. Fabrizio highlighted the swing such phrasing would
prompt in public support for the war effort in the report’s conclusion. It read,
“[W]hen asked whether we should ‘appease’ Saddam Hussein or Force him

out of Kuwait even in the face of war, a commanding majority (65.0%) favor
forcing Hussein from Kuwait even if it leads to war” (Fabrizio.). By recasting
diplomacy as appeasement, the Bush administration recognized that it could
push public support for military engagement by as much as twenty percent-
age points.
A third theme that the Bush administration borrowed from World War
II was the need for an urgent response. Bush echoed the words of Franklin
D. Roosevelt when he argued that the consequences of waiting were simply
too high. Repeating the phrase “while the world waited” (Public Papers, 1991
1:42–45), Bush argued Iraq had raped, pillaged, and plundered Kuwait,
added to its chemical weapons arsenal, fortified its military forces, and
undermined the economies of nations throughout the world. As a terrorist
state, Iraq could only be expected to take maximum advantage of any delay.
The decision to stress the urgency of an early military engagement was a
strategic one. The Bush administration believed the costs of waiting for
sanctions to work far outweighed its benefits. An October 29, 1990 telegram
from the American Embassy in Riyadh to the secretary of state identified a
number of potential consequences that worried administration officials about
waiting to use military force. These included: “incidents between Israelis and
Palestinians which divide Arabs and Muslims from [the] US and our
European Allies; incidents between religious activists in Saudi Arabia and
the non-Muslim forces deployed here which could make our presence unten-
able for the Saudi monarchy; the crumbling of the coalition at the UN as a
consequence of one or more major actors going their own way, e.g. the
French or the Soviets’ erosion of sanctions’ enforcement before sanctions can
work their will in Iraq; and a collapse of American public support for the
U.S. force presence in the gulf or—more likely—a rise in domestic U.S.
opposition to offensive action to liberate Kuwait and punish Iraq” (Amer.
Emb. in Riyadh). The same telegram also warned that weather conditions
for exercising an offensive military operation would be unfavorable between
February and September. For a multitude of reasons, the administration con-
cluded that waiting to engage military forces posed substantial risks for the
coalition forces.
By contrast, the administration concluded that Saddam Hussein’s costs
of waiting for sanctions to work were inconsequential. On January 10, 1991,
William Webster, the director of the CIA, reported in a letter to Les Aspin,
the chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, “We have seen
little hard evidence to suggest that Saddam is politically threatened by cur-
rent hardships endured by the populace. Moreover, Saddam has taken few
actions that would indicate he is concerned about the stability of his regime.
Assessing the populace’s flash point is difficult, but we believe it is high
because Iraqis have borne considerable hardship in the past. During its eight-
year war with Iran, for example, Iraq endured a combination of economic
difficulties, very high casualties, and repeated missile and air attacks on major
cities without any serious public disturbances.” Comparatively, the adminis-
tration’s internal analyses concluded that waiting for sanctions to work would
disadvantage the United States more than Saddam Hussein.
Despite the strategic benefits of attacking Iraq sooner, many in the
administration believed the majority of the public did not support early inter-
vention. In December 1990, State Department analysts reported that public
attitudes about going to war in the Gulf were not favorable. They argued
that public reaction broke down into four groups: the hawks, the hawkish,
the dovish, and the doves (US Dept. of St., PA/Opinion Analysis 12/11/90).
The analysts’ summary assessment of attitudes of the four groups revealed
“The hawks and hawkish together comprise about 40% of the public. They
are prepared to go to war in order to liberate Kuwait, either now or after
January 15. The doves and dovish comprise about 55% of the public. Doves
oppose the deployment of U.S. forces. The dovish, who support the original
deployment, sub-divide into those prepared to fight if sanctions don’t work
after an extended period (about a half-year or more) and those who would
eventually settle for a compromise.” In short, Bush’s conservative base was
clearly in favor of moving forward, but the majority of the public remained
opposed to early intervention.
Bush’s problem of uniting the electorate behind a military engagement
was compounded in November and December 1990 when members of
Congress went public with their concerns regarding whether the government
had given economic sanctions on Iraq sufficient time to work. The Senate
Armed Forces Committee opened hearings on the Persian Gulf conflict in
late November. Sam Nunn, chairman of the Armed Services Committee,
introduced the hearings by criticizing the administration for changing the
originally stated goals in the Persian Gulf conflict and for failing to give
sanctions enough time to work (Lampley). Given the State Department’s
assessment of dove and dovish attitudes, the administration knew the
approach had the potential to resonate with the majority of the public.
Members of the Bush administration worried about the impact that
statements by Nunn and other Democratic leaders would have upon the
American public. The Working Group received an internal analysis that
argued, “In the current situation, Democratic party leaders as of late October
1990 had not outlined an alternative Persian Gulf strategy, and Republican
and Democratic partisans at that time differed very little in their attitudes
toward attack vs. defense vs. withdrawal. The predominant Democratic
theme today, restraint/give the sanctions more time, will bear watching,
however. Since the time of the last RNC study, Senator Nunn, Senator
Mitchell, and others have become more vocal in their opposition to the
attack option. [. . .] Now that Democratic leaders have enunciated an alter-
native position, it is possible that partisanship will prompt Democrats to
shift some of their support away from that option” (Historical Overview).
With an alternative strategy competing with the administration’s view,
public attitudes in support of the Bush team’s perspective had further
potential to erode.
Evoking the public memory of World War II highlighted the costs of
waiting for sanctions to impact Iraq. Just as Adolf Hitler continued to usurp
territories while the allies debated whether to enter into the conflict, Saddam
Hussein could be aggressive before the United States responded. Further, the
World War II analogy invited the conclusion that giving the enemy time to
strengthen its own position carried the consequence of raising the costs of
future engagement. The narrative theme was unequivocal: neither the
American public nor the international community could afford to wait and
see if Saddam Hussein changed his mind; Iraq’s intention to develop
weapons of mass destruction made inaction simply too risky.
Even if the administration could have garnered public concurrence with
its need to act, members of the executive branch worried that the nation’s
history in Vietnam raised doubts about the citizenry’s support for a long-
term military engagement involving American casualties. Bush’s Working
Group considered John Mueller’s historical assessment of the Vietnam and
the Korean conflicts to help gauge the impact of likely American casualties
on public opinion: “[P]ublic support in both conflicts fell in direct relation to
casualties suffered (killed, hospitalized, wounded, missing)—‘every time
American casualties increased by a factor of 10, support for the war dropped
by about 15 percentage points.’[. . .] Both conflicts lost clear majority support
at about the 60,000 casualties level (60,000 casualties today would probably
include 15,000 troops killed in action)” (Historical Overview). Translated
into the realities of the Persian Gulf context, Mueller’s conclusions offered
the administration a sobering perspective on its ability to retain public sup-
port for a military engagement.
Internal polling conducted in the months following Iraq’s move into
Kuwait offered the administration little hope of sustained public support. A
Wirthlin Group poll conducted for the administration in November
reported that seven in ten Americans agreed with the statement, “[T]he
death of American soldiers in a fight with Iraq is too high a price to pay in
this Middle East conflict.” In the same month, poll numbers from Lou
Harris confirmed a lack of support for the use of ground forces when casu-
alty figures were included in survey questions. Harris reported, “[B]y 61–35
percent, a majority now would oppose ‘sending U.S. troops and those of our
allies in Saudi Arabia across the border into Kuwait against the 425,000
Iraqi troops to liberate that country from Iraqi control, even if that would
mean as many as 30,000 American casualties from the fighting’” (Public
Wants to Give Sanctions) Harris’s ominous conclusion for the administra-
tion was: “Clearly, the public does not want a massive assault of U.S.
ground force to liberate Kuwait today.” By December, Harris saw little
change, noting, “The underlying attitude about the Gulf is distinctly against
the expenditure of many American lives” (Bush Rating 59% Positive).
Fearful of committing to another Vietnam, the majority of the public was
reticent to send troops into Kuwait.
The public’s intolerance for high casualty figures was particularly trou-
bling for the administration, given its own internal, worst-case scenario pro-
jections. A private briefing of Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney and
General Colin Powell in December estimated up to twenty thousand
American casualties during a military confrontation in the Gulf (Woodward,
Commanders 349). That number, only several thousand below the figure
included in the Harris poll, was dangerously close to the trigger point for
public opposition to the war effort.
The Bush narrative responded to the public’s concern about high casual-
ties by contending the best hope for preserving American life was a strong
commitment to confronting terrorism before it spread throughout the civi-
lized world. Bush recalled the concessions logic employed in the global
response to Palestinian terrorists holding Israeli athletes hostage during the
1972 Olympic Games. By not giving into a terrorist’s demands, he reasoned,
“We will succeed in the Gulf and when we do, the world community will
have sent an enduring warning to any dictator or despot, present or future,
who contemplates outlaw aggression” (Public Papers, 1991 1:79). By provid-
ing an alternative cost-benefit analysis for determining the acceptable
number of casualties during wartime, the Bush narrative invited the public to
change its standard of evaluating US success in a military conflict.
Besides encouraging the public to reconsider how it weighed the costs of
a war effort, the Bush administration promised to minimize the costs of war.
The Bush camp, claiming to have learned the lessons of the Vietnam War,
reiterated that it would not repeat those mistakes. By late November 1990,
the public diplomacy themes of the administration stressed five key differ-
ences that all official spokespersons should emphasize between the two con-
flicts: “US interests/stakes critical and clear in Gulf; US has support of
almost entire international community; US position has strong UN backing;
unlike North Vietnam, Iraq is not receiving massive outside assistance; and if
we must use force, it will be decisive from the outset. We are here to suc-
ceed” (Haass, Memo to Sununu et al.). In the Bush administration’s narra-
tive, the Persian Gulf conflict and the Vietnam War were not the same; this
time, the United States would prevail.
State Department polling analysts concluded that the majority of the

public did draw distinctions between the Vietnam War and the Persian Gulf
conflict. On February 1, 1991, they reported, “At present, most Americans
believe the war against Iraq will be won in a matter of ‘months’ (62%) and
the cost of lives of fewer than 5,000 U.S. troops (55%). Of those holding
these views, about two-thirds support the war” (U.S. Dept. of St.,
PA/Opinion Analysis 2/1/91). Only a minority (26%) believed the war
would cost more than five thousand lives, the key benchmark where support
for the war drops to less than half of the public (ibid.). Optimism that the
United States would prevail in the conflict was high as the nation prepared to
begin its ground offensive.
Taken as a whole, the Bush narrative placed the terrorism label within
the conventional framework of presidential war rhetoric. Saddam Hussein’s
terrorist acts were not crimes; they were acts of war on Kuwait and on all
nations committed to stability and order around the globe. Bush, as com-
mander in chief of the only remaining military superpower, was obligated to
respond. The administration’s ability to capitalize on the full ideological
potential of the terrorist label, however, was circumscribed by the nondemo-
cratic government under attack and the ideological diversity of US allies in
the conflict. Constrained from presenting the conflict as a threat against
democracy, the Bush camp depicted the military action as a pragmatic neces-
sity in the goal of sustaining the New World Order.
IDEOLOGY AND PERSIAN GULF TERRORISM
The leadership of Iraq and of the United States disagreed on the role of ide-
ology within the public discourse of the Persian Gulf conflict. While both
sought to form alliances with Muslim nations to strengthen their position in
the war effort, they split on how to accomplish that objective. The Iraqis
magnified the ideological divisions between the West and Muslim commu-
nities, enough so that the US National Security Council concluded, “[Iraq’s
communications] support Saddam’s efforts to define and describe the conflict
in terms most likely to gain Arab/Muslim support” (Arab Public Opinion
#14). The United States, by contrast, preferred to downplay distinctions
between the two cultures in hopes of encouraging other Muslim nations in
the region to join the coalition effort to repel the Iraqi move on Kuwait.
The Iraqis portrayed the confrontation in Kuwait to be yet another
battle in the ongoing war between Muslims and the Western colonialist
forces with their Zionist allies. Saddam Hussein, along with the Iraqi
Revolution Command Council, argued the Iraqi annexation of Kuwait was a
necessary step to reverse artificial, nationalistic divisions imposed on the
Arab world by Western imperialist forces in the aftermath of the Arab states
gaining their independence.5 The blame for the region’s economic woes
rested with the West, as Hussein explained: “The malicious Westerners,
while partitioning the Arab homeland, intentionally multiplied the number
of countries with the result that the Arab nation could not achieve the inte-
gration needed to realize its full capability. In this way, they also fragmented
capabilities. While fragmenting the Arab homeland, they intentionally dis-
tanced the majority of the population density and areas of cultural depth
from riches and their sources[. . .]” (as qtd. in Bengio 113). For Hussein, the
annexation of Kuwait became a restorative act that strengthened and inspired
the Arab population to meet to its full, united potential.
To bolster his case, Saddam Hussein argued that the West was exploit-
ing the Persian Gulf conflict in an effort to eliminate the Arab culture. He
accused the United States and its coalition partners of attacking the sacred
places of the Muslim faith. Hussein insisted the Iraqis were fighting to pro-
tect from defilement by American military forces Muslim holy places,
namely, Mecca, the birthplace of Mohammed, and Medina, his burial site.
Recalling the ongoing conflict between Muslims and Christians since the
seventh century,6 Hussein summoned all Muslims to meet their obligations:
“[W]e are duty-bound to engage in holy jihad so that we can liberate the two
holy mosques from captivity and occupation. [. . .] Your brothers in Iraq will
know no peace of mind until the last soldier of occupation departs by choice
or is expelled from the land of Arabism in Najd and Hejaz (Saudi Arabia)”
(as qtd. in Bengio 140). The Iraqi leader also accused allied forces of bomb-
ing holy shrines in Karbala and Najaf (P. M. Taylor 120). By cataloging
multiple examples of where coalition forces were defiling sacred grounds,
Hussein built the case that the underlying purpose of the allied campaign
was to dominate all those who worshipped within the Muslim faith.
The Bush administration took seriously Hussein’s allegations of allied
attacks on Muslim sacred places. It understood that Hussein’s message
would resonate with some in the Middle East. A contemporaneous National
Security Council assessment stated, “Shia Muslims in Bahrain and Eastern
Saudi Arabia are potentially susceptible to disinformation on the bombing of
shrines in Karbala and Najaf, as are their counterparts in Iran and South
Asia” (Arab Public Opinion #14). While not persuasive with the broader
global community, the Iraqi charge carried the possibility of uniting key
Muslim populations within the region.
To reinforce the claim that the US military campaign constituted an
attack on the Muslim faith, the Iraqi leadership raised the specter of Israeli
involvement in the Persian Gulf conflict. The Middle East scholar Bernard
Lewis has argued that Hussein’s mention of Israel was particularly persuasive
with audiences in the region because it recalled the humiliation of five Arab
states fighting and failing to prevent a half of million Jews from establishing
a state in 1948 (Lewis 154). Evoking the Jewish stereotype of cunning and
deceit, Hussein blamed the allied air campaign on “the hostile policy that is
being made in the corridors influenced by criminal Zionism” (as qtd. in
Bengio 188). Radio Baghdad fueled the controversy by broadcasting a story
claiming that scores of Israeli planes had joined the coalition air forces in the
aftermath of Iraqi Scud missile attacks on Israel. The report concluded that
the Israeli move had only heightened “the determination of the struggling
men of the armed forces and Iraq’s people to continue Jihad” (P. M. Taylor
98). Hussein, bolstered by the Iraqi media, attempted to incite the entire
Muslim community to rise up and defeat the Zionist threat.
The Bush administration tracked Middle Eastern media sources to
ascertain the extent and nature of the claims related to Israeli involvement.
Among the stories it recorded were: Israel was receiving funds from Saudi
Arabia via the United States; the CIA was asking the Israeli intelligence
agency to launch an assassination operation against Saddam Hussein that
used Iraqi Jews posing as foreign journalists; Israel was moving 65 (later
raised to 142) attack planes to bases in Saudi Arabia and another 44 attack
planes to a base in Turkey; Israeli pilots, disguised as Americans, were flying
bombing raids as part of the multinational force; and Israeli planes disguised
with Iraqi markings were planning to attack Turkey, Syria, and Egypt (Iraqi
Disinformation). The director of the USIA, William Rugh, evaluated the
probable impact of such stories as devastating for US interests in the conflict.
He concluded, “Israeli military involvement looms as potentially the most
inflammatory and destructive of these stories. Both Syria and Yemen have
indicated that Israeli attacks against Iraq may cause a shift in their position.
Public opinion in other Muslim countries would probably react violently to
Israel’s entry into the war” (Rugh, Memo to Seaquist and Hullender). The
poignancy of Israeli involvement potentially threatened the continued exis-
tence of Bush’s international coalition.
The Iraqis fueled anti-Western sentiment by charging that American
attacks on the Muslim religion extended to the moral teachings of the faith.
One circulated story accused the Pentagon of sending thousands of Egyptian
women to the Gulf to serve as prostitutes for US forces. Another maintained
that AIDS was rampant among US forces in the region. Another charged
Saudi leaders with drinking alcohol at US military bases. The stress on the
immoral conduct of the coalition forces underscored a common preconcep-
tion amongst certain Islamic factions, namely, that acquiescence and adop-
tion of Western morals would lead to societal decay (Rush, Memo to
Seaquist and Hollonder).
Finally, the Iraqis accused the United States and its coalition partners of
directly attacking the Arab people. The Iraqis reiterated that allied forces
were intentionally targeting the civilian population of Iraq. When speaking

to the UN Secretary General, for example, Tariq Aziz complained of the
“horrendous and deliberate crimes against Iraqi citizens” (as qtd. in P. M.
Taylor 184). Baghdad Radio reinforced the point, calling for Iraq to deal
with its captured coalition pilots “on the basis of their being killers of
defenseless women, children and old people, not as soldiers waging a war
against other soldiers” (ibid., 111). Allied bombings of the Amiriya suburb of
Baghdad and a purported baby milk factory dramatized Iraqi claims of civil-
ian damage. The Iraqis, initially reluctant to admit the existence of civilian
casualties for fear of showing weakness to the global community, eventually
encouraged and exploited public discussions of the collateral damage of the
conflict (85–86).
Refugee accounts from those fleeing across the border from Iraq sup-
ported the leadership’s claims that civilian casualties were widespread. Some
of the refugees claimed to have seen coffins on car roofs and city buses hit by
bombs. Despite the fact that Arab correspondents admitted refugees lacked
reliable details of civilian casualties (P. M. Taylor 174), the Bush administra-
tion remained fearful of the public relations value of the personal statements.
The director of the USIA warned, “[E]ye witness accounts of casualties have
a strong emotional appeal” (Rugh, Memo to Hullender). The powerful testi-
monials reinforced the perception that allied forces were attacking innocent
Muslim civilians in communities sympathetic with the Iraqi perspective.
Taken as a whole, Iraq’s ideological framing of the crisis was a major
concern of the Bush administration. Assessing the potential impact of the
entire Iraqi public campaign, the administration concluded, “Iraqi propa-
ganda finds a ready reception in pro-Saddam publics in North Africa,
Jordan, Yemen, and—to a controlled degree—in Syria. [. . .] Iraqi propa-
ganda has so far failed to make much impression on pro-coalition publics.
But it hammers away at themes close to Arab preconceptions. Their contin-
ued repetition and replay in Arab and Western media could begin to impact
on opinion which has so far been resistant” (Arab Public Opinion #14).
Given rank-and-file opposition to America’s aims in a number of allied
Middle Eastern countries, the administration feared Hussein’s ideological
framing would result in the breakup of the coalition, a reality far more likely
if the war went on beyond several days (see Arab Public Opinion #12, #13,
and #14).
In response, the Bush administration engaged in a public diplomacy
campaign designed to downplay the ideological nature of the conflict. The
campaign involved twenty-nine million leaflets, extensive psychological
operations broadcast on the Voice of the Gulf from Saudi Arabia and Turkey,
and thirteen hours a day of Arabic programming over Voice of America
Radio. The campaign’s officially stated goal was “to reach Iraqis, other
Arabs, and other Muslims with facts and themes in the U.S. interest” (Dyke
and Charles).
A substantial portion of US public diplomacy involved timely and
unequivocal denials of Iraqi charges of cultural attacks. Within one day of
Iraq’s annexation of Kuwait, the United States led a UN Security Council
effort to pass Resolution 662, declaring the annexation null and void. The
administration’s public rebuttal highlighted the fallacious reasoning of the
Iraqi claim to Kuwaiti land. It insisted, “Kuwait as an ‘eternal’ part of Iraq
surfaced after August 8 and Iraq’s initial claims that it had invaded at the
request of a new government in Kuwait. No countries accepted this canard
on August 2 any more than they do now. Before its invasion Iraq recognized
Kuwait as a sovereign, independent state, and a full member of the Arab
League and the UN. In addition, the two countries maintained full diplo-
matic relations” (Iraqi Public Affairs). The US message rejected the historical
claim made by the Iraqi government; instead, it held that Kuwait had
modern status as a sovereign nation.
The administration was equally emphatic in its denial of Iraqi accusa-
tions that US troops were defiling Muslim holy places. The administration’s
public affairs rebuttal read, “The multinational forces are not in Mecca or
Medina. These forces are primarily in northern and eastern Saudi Arabia”
(Iraqi Public Affairs). To lend credibility to the denial, the Saudi govern-
ment invited Moslem journalists to the holy sites in late October 1990.
Ambassador Glaspie argued that the United Sates could reinforce the credi-
bility of its denial if the conflict continued until the Moslem religious obser-
vances of Raj and Ramadan. As she reasoned, Islamic pilgrims could then see
for themselves that US troops were not present.7
The administration adopted a similar strategy of denial in response to
Iraqi charges that Israel was participating in coalition military activities. Both
Saudi Arabian officials and the Israeli ambassador to the United States
issued announcements stating that Israel had not bombed Iraq. US spokes-
persons reinforced the message, publicly applauding the restraint and respon-
sibility that the Israeli government had exercised in its decision to allow
coalition forces to respond to Iraqi attacks on its homeland (see Baker,
“Opportunities” 82).
Denial was also a critical element of the public strategy to respond to
charges of coalition-inflicted civilian casualties. The administration ordered
the Judge Advocate General Corp. to review all targets to ensure that civil-
ians and antiquities were not on the lists. On January 17, Powell offered that
twenty percent of the aircraft attacking Iraq returned without dropping their
ordinance. A primary reason for the return rate, according to Powell, was
“the very tight control we had over the aircraft. They did not make the kind
of positive identification of the target that we required before going in and
launching under the rules of engagement to minimize collateral damage”

(Iraqi Disinformation). The next day Lt. Gen. Charles Horner,
Commander of the US Central Command Air Forces, added, “[O]ne of the
strongest guidances [sic] we had from the very start was to avoid any damage
to civilian targets and to the holy shrines located in Iraq” (ibid.). By drawing
on the authority of the nation’s military commanders, the administration
hoped to position more credibly its claims that the allied forces did not
target Iraqi civilians.
Besides denying Iraqi accusations, the administration emphasized the
role of its Arab partners in the coalition to dispel the ideological frame of the
conflict. The Bush administration spent months prior to the onset of the
military campaign ensuring that the coalition included active participation by
the Arab states. When discussing the story about the US defiling shrines in
Medina and Mecca, administration public affairs guidelines stressed that one
hundred thousand Muslim troops were participating in the coalition force
that occupied Saudi Arabia (Iraqi Public Affairs). In response to claims of
intentional civilian casualties, the guidelines described the air force involved
in the initial air campaign to be a joint force of pilots from Kuwait, Saudi
Arabia, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States (ibid.).
Framing the conflict as Iraq against the rest of the world, the Bush
administration argued that the true enemy of the Muslim faith was Saddam
Hussein. As early as September 10, 1990, the former Iranian ambassador to
the United Nations, Fereydoun Hoveida, had informed US officials that
Saddam Hussein’s use of foreigners as human shields violated the norms of
both the Arab world and Islam (Memo of Conversation). The US govern-
ment picked up the theme, stressing again and again that Iraqi actions were
in opposition to the Islamic faith. The message received extensive media
attention when it became one of three main focal points in a UN program
entitled “the Rape of Kuwait” presented before the Security Council on
November 26–27, 1990 (Haass, Memo of Conversation to Gates).
The official rebuttals developed in response to Iraqi accusations rou-
tinely highlighted the threat Saddam Hussein posed to the Muslim faith. In
response to the accusation that imperialist forces were attacking Muslims and
Arabs, the administration’s official statement read, “On August 2nd Iraq
began this war when it attacked Kuwait, an Arab, Muslim nation. [. . .] It is
Iraq that has launched two massive wars against Muslim nations—Iran and
Kuwait—that have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Arabs
and Muslims, and the displacement of many more” (Iraqi Public Affairs). In
response to the alleged attacks on Muslim holy places by the United States,
administration guidelines placed the blame for the risk to the shrines on Iraq.
One US rebuttal proclaimed, “Once Iraq has withdrawn from Kuwait, a for-
eign force presence will no longer be required to defend Saudi Arabia from
further Iraqi aggression” (ibid.). As for the claim that the coalition forces
were intentionally targeting civilians, the US rebuttal reiterated that it had
been Iraq that had intentionally ordered missiles into civilian areas of Saudi
Arabia. Regardless of the accusation lodged against coalition forces, the Bush
administration attempted to shift the responsibility for the problems of the
Muslim people to the Iraqi leader.
In public diplomacy themes developed specifically for consumption by
the Iraqi population, the administration underscored that Saddam Hussein,
not the United States, was the true enemy of the Arab people. USIA media
outlets distributed two themes directly to Iraqi citizens that stressed
Hussein’s transgressions against Muslims. The first was “Saddam Hussein is
wrong in his invasion and plunder of Kuwait and its people. He is not
defending Arabs, he is attacking them” (Public Diplomacy Themes to Target
on Iraqis). The second was “Iraq’s policies are a scandal (fadhiha), bringing
humiliation and disgrace to Iraqis: Invasion of a brother Arab state, the set-
tlement with Iran, the taking of innocent hostages, the thievery in Kuwait”
(ibid.). Coupled with persistent denials of Iraqi charges, the administration
hoped that repetition of these themes would counter the strategic framing of
the Persian Gulf conflict as an ideological battle between the United States
and Muslims.
In short, the Bush administration’s faced a public relations battle in the
Persian Gulf conflict potentially more serious than the one it faced on the
battlefield. Iraq’s depictions of the allied forces as being anti-Arab and anti-
Muslim embodied the potential to ideologically divide the United States
from its coalition partners. Through denial of Iraqi claims and public associ-
ation with Arab partners, the Bush administration attempted to counter
growing negative sentiment within the Middle East regarding US involve-
ment in the Gulf. Vilifying Hussein as the true enemy of the Arab people
offered a competing explanation for who was to blame for the suffering of
Iraqi people. A quick victory, coupled with an extensive public relations
effort in the Middle East, worked to hold the coalition together throughout
the air and ground campaigns.
The Bush camp rhetorically presented the Persian Gulf conflict as a
battle between the old and the new. Saddam Hussein’s ideological call for all
Muslims to join his cause remembered centuries of historical injustice against
those who practiced Islam and promised a return to the days of a united
Arab empire. Bush’s urgings for those same members of the Muslim faith to
join his coalition offered a vision of a new international community, tolerant
of difference and ripe with advantages for all who participated. The Bush
appeal was not as ideological as his predecessor’s; it depended on members of
the international community seeing far-reaching, pragmatic benefits for
order and security in the post–Cold War environment. The next president
would also promise global benefits and resist the ideological potential of the
terrorism label. In the process, however, he would return to publicly empha-
sizing terrorism as crime, not war.
6
Terrorism and the Clinton Era:

A Prophetic Moment
T he number of international terrorism incidents dropped precipitously

during the Clinton presidency. The yearly average of terrorist attacks
targeting Americans was 351, as compared with 435 during the Bush admin-
istration and 569 during the Reagan years (US Dept. of State, Patterns: 1989
100). Despite the overall decline in terrorist episodes, the amount of presi-
dential discourse devoted to the topic of terrorism expanded significantly.
Clinton gave more than a thousand speeches that discussed acts of terrorism
happening both at home and abroad.
Three of the attacks that Clinton referenced most frequently occurred
within the borders of the United States. The first happened on February 26,
1993, when a yellow Ford Econoline van, rigged with a timing device,
exploded in the parking garage under the World Trade Center. The bomb-
ing killed six people and injured more than a thousand others. One of the
defendants, a possible Iraqi operative named Ramzi Yousef, reported that the
terrorists had planned to topple one of the World Trade Center towers into
the other, with the goal of causing as many as 250,000 casualties. Judge
Kevin Duffy, speaking at the first World Trade Center trial, claimed the
bombing caused more injuries and hospital casualties than any other event in
domestic American history apart from the Civil War (as rptd. in Reeve 15).
Three New York juries found the defendants Yousef, Mohammad Salameh,
Mahmud Abouhalima, Nidal Ayyad, Ahmad Ajaj, and Eyad Ismoil guilty
for their roles in the bombings. Each received 240 years in prison, but Yousef
(the supposed mastermind of the operation) was sentenced to carry out his
term in solitary confinement.
Clinton’s next featured terrorist attack on US soil occurred April 19,
1995. A Ryder rental truck exploded outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal
Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. One hundred and sixty-eight people
died in the bombing, including nineteen children under the age of six. Initial
accounts by witnesses and media organizations mistakenly claimed that the
127
bombing was the work of Middle Eastern terrorists (Hamm 54–55). After
investigating the crime, the government charged two Americans, Timothy
McVeigh and Terry Nichols, with both the planning and implementation
of the attack. At the trial the prosecution argued that McVeigh and
Nichols had acted alone in retaliation for the government’s intervention at
Ruby Ridge and Waco. Defense attorney Stephen Jones adamantly
defended the position that McVeigh and Nichols were not sole actors,
offering an unidentified left leg as proof that someone else had to have
been present at the bombing. Jones argued that McVeigh had been caught
up in an international conspiracy, involving Afghan Arabs, Osama bin
Laden, Iraqi operatives, and/or white supremacist groups. He accused
Judge Richard Matsch of unfairly excluding the evidence of conspiracy
prior to trial (Jones and Israel 284). After Colorado juries found the two
guilty of murder of federal employees, Nichols received a life sentence. The
jury gave McVeigh the death penalty, a sentence the government carried
out on June 11, 2001. Later, another judge sentenced Nichols to another
life sentence after an Oklahoma jury found him guilty of 161 counts of
murder, arson, and conspiracy.
The third domestic terrorist incident prominent in Clinton’s discourse
occurred July 27, 1996. This time, a bomb exploded during an open-air rock
concert at Centennial Olympic Park during the 1996 Olympic Games in
Atlanta, Georgia. Two people died and another 111 were injured. The sub-
sequent FBI investigation initially focused on Richard Jewell, a park security
guard, who sued and settled a case against the Atlanta Journal and Consti-
tution for libelous claims about his involvement in the park bombing. The
FBI censured two agents and suspended another without pay for asking
Jewell to waive his right to an attorney during initial questioning. More than
five years after the park bombing, and more than a $25 million FBI man-
hunt, police eventually captured and arrested Eric Robert Rudolph while he
was searching for food in a trash bin in Murphy, North Carolina. Rudolph, a
Christian fundamentalist, later explained that he had planned a sequence of
bombings during the 1996 Olympic Games in protest over the federal gov-
ernment’s support of legalized abortion. In exchange for information about
the location of about 250 lbs. of hidden explosives, Rudolph received a life
sentence without parole for his role in the Centennial Park bombing.
While attacks on American soil dominated much of the public discourse
of the Clinton era, three terrorist events abroad were also featured in presi-
dential discourse. On the morning of March 20, 1995, five members of the
Aum Shinrikyo religious cult punctured eleven plastic bags of sarin they had
previously placed under the seats or on the baggage racks of five trains
headed toward the Kasumigaseki Station of the Tokyo subway system. The
attack resulted in twelve deaths and more than five thousand injuries.
Terrorism and the Clinton Era 129
According to 1997 courtroom testimony in Tokyo, Aum Shinrikyo had also

planned to release sarin in the United States (Kristoff A1). Nine Aum mem-
bers received sentences of between twenty-two months and seventeen years
in prison; one was acquitted.
A second international incident highlighted in Clinton’s discourse hap-
pened the morning of August 7, 1998. Two bombs exploded almost simulta-
neously outside the US embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam,
Tanzania. Combined, the two attacks killed twelve Americans and nearly
three hundred Africans. The bombings were part of a broader campaign
against US embassies and military installations designed to drive the United
States out of the Middle East (“Ex-U.S. Sergeant”). With evidence that
Osama bin Laden had orchestrated the attack, the United States responded
with retaliatory bombing raids on terrorist training camps in Afghanistan
and on a pharmaceutical plant allegedly involved in chemical weapons pro-
duction in the Sudan. The US government tried codefendants and alleged al
Qaeda members Mohamed Rashed Daoud Al-Owhali, Mohamed Sadeek
Odeh, Wadih El-Hage, and Mamdouh Mahmud Salim for their role in the
bombing conspiracy. Ali Mohamed, another defendant in the case, pleaded
guilty to conspiracy charges and agreed to testify for the prosecution regard-
ing the inner workings of the bin Laden organization. Al-Owhali was found
guilty and received a life sentence. Tanzania and Great Britain subsequently
arrested nine other alleged al Qaeda members in relation to the bombings.
More than four months after the embassy attacks, bin Laden was asked in an
interview whether he had masterminded the bombings. He responded,
“[T]he World Islamic Front for jihad against ‘Jews and Crusaders’ had issued
a ‘crystal clear’ fatwa. If the instigation for jihad against the Jews and the
Americans to liberate the holy places ‘is considered a crime,’ he said, ‘let his-
tory be a witness that I am a criminal’” (as qtd. in National Commission,
Final Report 70).
The final international incident to receive Clinton’s sustained public
attention occurred October 12, 2000. A small boat loaded with two suicide
bombers, TNT, and C-4 exploded next to the USS Cole in Aden, Yemen.
The explosion blew a 40⬘ by 60⬘ hole in the naval destroyer, killing seventeen
US sailors and injuring thirty-nine others. CIA analysts initially suspected
Osama bin Laden in the bombing, a charge he publicly denied. Yemeni offi-
cials claimed to lack evidence against bin Laden, but FBI investigators were
not convinced of his innocence (“Bin Laden Denies Link;” “No Proof;” and
Page “Why Clinton Failed to Stop Bin Laden.”). After detaining more than
eighty potential suspects, the government of Yemen planned to try six people
who had allegedly participated in the bombing (“Cole Attack”). In April
2003, ten men accused of being key planners in the attack escaped from jail
while in Aden, Yemen. Over the next month, Saudi Arabia extradited four
other Yemeni members of al Qaeda as suspects in the attack. The 9/11

Commission Report argued that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had orchestrated
the attack from Afghanistan, Jamal al Badawi and Fahd al Quso had been the
local al Qaeda coordinators, and Hassan al Khamri and Ibrahim al Thawar
had been the two suicide bombers in the attack (National Commission, Final
Report 190–91). The Clinton administration did not initiate a military
response against al Qaeda, because the United States could not confirm bin
Laden’s personal involvement in the attacks until captured operatives revealed
the information in 2002 and 2003 (ibid., 193). Armed with evidence of bin
Laden’s connection to the Cole attack, the Bush administration also chose not
to act, because too much time had passed, the event was stale, and they did
not want a counterproductive tit-for-tat interchange with al Qaeda (202).
Taken together, these six incidents received the most frequent mention
in Clinton’s corpus of presidential discourse related to terrorism. By his
selection of examples, Clinton invited public discussion about terrorism to
shift from state to nonstate actors. Individuals or the groups operating across
state boundaries became the focus of whom the US should hold accountable
for acts of international terrorism. At first glance, the approach might seem
reminiscent of the late 1960s and early 1970s, when small bands of extrem-
ists served as stereotypical terrorists. As the next section will reveal, however,
Clinton presented a different sort of threat.
LABELING THE THREAT
Within Clinton’s public rhetoric, the terrorists that threatened America did
not conform to old stereotypes. Clinton insisted that the United States was
experiencing a “modern terrorist threat” (Public Papers 1995 1:722), one that
had “assumed new and quite dangerous dimensions” (Public Papers 1995
2:1547). He maintained that the terrorist challenge was something “the
statesmen of 50 years ago simply did not imagine” (Public Papers 1995
1:255). Having stressed the need for new thinking, Clinton proceeded to
define the nature of the emerging threat.
Clinton insisted that one key change in modern terrorists was their tac-
tics. A reader of his statements on terrorism, denied other historical informa-
tion, might conclude that terrorists operating in the Clinton era no longer
used hostage-taking as a method of pressuring governmental actors to meet
their political objectives. In Clinton’s first term, he offered one hundred and
fourteen examples that specified the terrorists’ methods. Fifty-nine of the
examples referred to bombings, forty-eight to attacks (including gas), and
seven to assassinations, killings, or murders. Publicly, he did not offer a
single example of hostage-taking, despite the chronicle by his own State
Department of fifty-three international incidents of kidnapping, hijacking,

or other forms of hostage-taking during the same time period (US Dept. of
State, Patterns: 1993–1997). Clinton did not raise the subject of hostage-
taking even when he made public mention of Colombia, the worldwide
leader in daily kidnappings (Schweitzer and Dorsch 177). His focus on
bombings, attacks, and assassinations invited the public to disassociate the
threat he faced from the politically difficult ones of his predecessors, namely,
the Iranian hostage crisis and the Iran-Contra scandal.
When Clinton explicitly defined terrorism in public, he reinforced the
exclusion of hostage-taking from his conceptualization of the threat. He
defined terrorism as an act of killing, not an ongoing act of extortion to
achieve political gain. He told members of the Arab news media, “There are
clear definitions of terrorism, and one of them is the willful killing of inno-
cent civilians who themselves are not in any way involved in military combat”
(Public Papers 1993 2:1480). When speaking after the Oklahoma bombings,
he reinforced the more narrow interpretation: “Terror is when someone,
allegedly for some philosophical or political reason, believes they have the
right to take innocent lives [. . .]” (Public Papers 1996 1:550). In Clinton’s
public frame, terrorism was not a drawn-out saga; it was series of quick,
unpredictable attacks. He told members of the US Air Force Academy,
“Terrorists do not go slow, my fellow Americans. Their agenda is death and
destruction on their own timetable” (Public Papers 1995 1:768). Clinton
directed public attention to acts of violence that had apparent closure.
Having de-emphasized the taking of hostages, Clinton argued that
terrorists were now planning to use weapons of mass destruction as their
method of choice. Repeatedly, he warned audiences that the use of chemi-
cal weapons by terrorists was no longer just a theoretical possibility. He
recalled the dramatic empirical example of the sarin gas attack on the
Tokyo subway in more than fifty of his public remarks in the three years
immediately following that attack. Clinton also maintained that biological
weapons were the emerging tools of international terrorists. Speaking to
the members of the United Nations, he cautioned, “Recent discoveries in
laboratories working to produce biological weapons for terrorists demon-
strate the dangerous link between terrorism and the weapons of mass
destruction” (Public Papers 1995 2:950). Finally, Clinton displayed concern
regarding terrorists’ use of nuclear weapons. He stressed, “One of my high-
est national security priorities has been to ensure that the breakup of the
former Soviet Union did not lead to the creation of new nuclear states.
Such a development would increase the risks of nuclear accidents, diver-
sion, and terrorism” (Public Papers 1994 1:248–49). Clinton insisted that
access to chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons made the new terrorists
a more dangerous threat to the nation.
Mounting empirical evidence substantiated Clinton’s claim that terror-

ists were becoming increasingly involved with weapons of mass destruction.
Particularly worrisome was the widespread availability of such weapons in
the international arena. During the 1990s alone, governmental sources
revealed that more than seventy countries had built approximately ten thou-
sand underground military facilities; of those, more than fourteen hundred
housed weapons of mass destruction, ballistic missiles, or military commands
(Tyson 1). The diffusion of weapons of mass destruction around the world
heightened the likelihood terrorists would acquire the means to inflict mas-
sive fatalities.
During the Clinton era, more than twenty nations produced or used
chemical weapons. Iraq, North Korea, and Libya did so under the guise of
growing pesticide industries. Insecure storage sites for chemical agents in
Russia compounded the problem. In 1996, the administration threatened
Libya with nuclear retaliation if it continued to build a large chemical
weapons plant inside a mountain located south of Tripoli (Tyson 1). By
1999, the Clinton team had information that bin Laden was conducting
chemical weapons training and development at its Derunta camp (National
Commission, Final Report 141). Inside the boundaries of the United States,
federal agents recovered thirty-five gallon drums of cyanide from the home
of a white supremacist who purportedly was planning to dump the contents
into either the New York City or Washington, DC water supply.1
Terrorists were also turning to biological weapons. Terrorists had
threatened the use of such weapons against the Arab world, Germany,
British Columbia, Australia, Great Britain, and the United States. UN
reports revealed that Iraq had planned to use biological weapons during the
1991 Persian Gulf War in the event America opted to launch a nuclear
attack on Baghdad. The US government had many reasons for taking the
threats of the terrorists seriously. During the Cold War, a school in Berlin
had trained Iraqis on the use of biological weapons. Mustard gas had been
stolen from US installations in Germany. Stockpiles of biological toxins had
been discovered in safe houses in Paris and Germany. Even within the bor-
ders of the United States, members of a religious cult had used a biological
toxin to poison 750 patrons of an Oregon salad bar (Laqueur, New Terrorism
61–63; Schweitzer and Dorsch 109–28).
Like chemical and biological weapons, nuclear weapons were posing a
new and heightened challenge. Terrorists had attempted to sabotage nuclear
power plants in South Africa, Canada, Belgium, Holland, Italy, and the
Philippines. CIA Director John Deutsch announced that Chechen leaders
had threatened to turn Moscow into a desert by using radioactive waste
against the city. The Chechen rebels demonstrated the credibility of their
threat by placing a small container of cesium 137 in a Moscow park
(Laqueur, New Terrorism 73). A defector, Jamal Ahmed al-Fadl, told

American officials that al Qaeda had also been trying to buy a nuclear bomb
(J. Miller A1). Conventional restraints on weapons of mass destruction (e.g.,
not wanting to provoke a massive retaliatory US response and not wanting to
undermine sympathy for one’s cause) were no longer containing certain ter-
rorist groups.
Besides the focus on weapons of mass destruction, Clinton insisted that
terrorists were turning to the Internet to wreak havoc on the social order.
Clinton introduced the term “cyber attack” (Public Papers 1998 1:1826) into
presidential terrorism discourse. Officials at his Justice Department added
“cybercrime,” “cyberpiracy,” “cyberstalking,” “cyberterrorism” and “cybersecu-
rity” to the national lexicon (Reno, “Remarks;” Reno, “Symposium;”
Podesta). Clinton explained that the Internet could aid the enemy in tradi-
tional terrorist functions, such as moving around quickly and finding infor-
mation related to bomb making. The potential dangers involved in cyber
terrorism, however, did not stop with the strengthening of conventional ter-
rorist methods. Clinton warned that new modes of attack were available to
terrorists who used the Internet. He reasoned, “Hackers break into govern-
ment and business computers. They can raid banks, run up credit card
charges, extort money by threats to unleash computer viruses. If we fail to
take strong action, the terrorists, criminals and hostile regimes could invade
and paralyze these vital systems, disrupting commerce, threatening health,
[and] weakening our capacity to function in a crisis. [. . .]” (Public Papers
1998 1:826). For Clinton, the Internet enabled the terrorist to achieve wide-
spread societal disruption.
Public announcements by the U.S. Justice Department established the
magnitude of the cyberterrorism problem. Janet Reno referred to an
FBI/Computer Security Institute survey of Fortune 500 companies that
found financial losses stemming from cybercrime (such as hacking, viruses,
and crashing networks) exceeded $360 million from 1997 through 1999
(“Remarks”). Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder cited a Business
Software Alliance estimate that the cost of software piracy amounted to more
than $11 billion in 1998 alone (“Remarks to High-Tech Crime Summit”).
The Justice Department’s Web site cataloged media reports of cyberterror-
ism. Targets from 1999 and 2000 included the US Postal Service, the State
of Texas, the Canadian Department of Defense, the NASA Jet Propulsion
Lab, Stanford University, the US Department of Defense, AT&T, MCI,
Sprint, the US Army, the White House, Ameritech, US Cellular, the US
District Court for the Eastern District of New York, USIA, NATO, and a
FAA control tower. In 1995 alone the Defense Department experienced
more than two hundred and fifty thousand attempts at intrusion, theft, alter-
ation, or destruction of data from its computers (Schweitzer and Dorsch 45).
Behind the scenes, the administration had even more startling data sup-
porting the threat of cyberterrorism. Richard Clarke, the administration’s
counterterrorism czar, made the decision to find out just how vulnerable the
United States was to a cyberterrorism attack. In 1998, he paid a group of
hackers to break into the Pentagon’s most secure computer systems. Not only
did the hackers gain access to Pentagon data, they controlled the military
command center, the command-and-control apparatus used by the leader-
ship during an attack on the nation (“Clinton’s Secret War”).
The distinctiveness of modern-day terrorists in Clinton’s public dis-
course went beyond tactics; terrorists had also changed the location of their
attacks. Clinton announced that contemporary terrorists would now strike
anywhere, including within the boundaries of the United States. He labeled
the new terrorist “an equal opportunity destroyer, with no respect for bor-
ders” (Public Papers 1996 2:1257). Publicly, Clinton focused on attacks that
occurred primarily against the world’s economic superpowers. In the
speeches he delivered between 1993 and 1998, fifty-seven percent of the
incidents he mentioned happened in either Japan or the United States. Data
from the State Department belied the notion that terrorists targeted Japan
and the United States more than they did other regions of the world. Less
than one percent of the international terrorist attacks occurred in the United
States, and less than nine percent occurred in all of the countries in Asia.2
Despite the patterns of terrorists in the past, however, Clinton had intelli-
gence that indicated that the United States was at risk. One National
Security Council memo (undated) warned that, “Foreign terrorist sleeper cells
are present in the US and attacks in the US are likely” (as qtd. in National
Commission, Final Report “italics in original” 179). In line with the NSC
intelligence, Clinton emphasized the potential impact terrorist assaults could
have on the world’s economic centers by reiterating a handful of dramatic
past occurrences.
The final change in Clinton’s characterization of terrorists focused on
the groups’ organizational structures. No longer isolated bands of extremists,
modern terrorists were dangerous members of a threatening international
syndicate of criminals. Increasingly, Clinton portrayed them as colluding
with drug traffickers and organized criminals. Reminiscent of Reagan’s refer-
ences to the twin threats of terrorists and drug traffickers, Clinton’s approach
merged multiple causes of public concern into a new, conglomerate threat.
He reasoned, “In the world we’re living in, with computer technology, with
open borders, one of the biggest challenges is seeing the people who are ter-
rorists, the people who are drug runners, the people who are organized crim-
inals, and the people who smuggle weapons of mass destruction, including
chemical and biological weapons, coming together and working together”
(Public Papers 1996 1:506).
Empirical evidence supported Clinton’s contention that terrorists, orga-

nized criminals and drug traffickers were becoming more interconnected.
Reno reported that by 1989, the expansion of domestic organized crime
stemmed from its linkages with drug-trafficking groups, such as the
Colombian cartels, the Asian Triads, Mexican foreign nationals, and
Jamaican posses (as cited in Martin and Romano 83). The Southern Poverty
Law Center established that there was a domestic link between other crimi-
nal groups and terrorists. Its report concluded that drugs were increasingly
funding terrorist acts of the extreme right (as cited in Snow 106).
Abroad, the joint efforts of the terrorism, organized crime, and drug
trafficking were even more substantial. Terrorism and drug trafficking had
particularly strong ties in Colombia, Peru, Sri Lanka, and Southeast Asia
(Schweitzer and Dorsch 165–70). The PKK, a Kurdish terrorist organiza-
tion, controlled one hundred percent of Europe’s drug trafficking (Tezcan,
as rptd. in Mourad 174). In a 1997 Cairo Terrorism Seminar attended by
thirty nations, the Turkish participant reasoned that terrorists and orga-
nized criminals made an effective alliance, because their needs were comple-
mentary. Organized crime provided organizational cover, logistical support,
and necessary country contacts; terrorists bought arms, used their state con-
tacts to aid transport of individuals involved in illegal activity, and laundered
money (Mourad 178). The final declaration of the Cairo Terrorism Seminar
assessed the yearly proceeds from the international alliance of terrorism,
drug trafficking, and organized crime to be approximately eight hundred
billion dollars, with total profits at least two hundred times that figure
(Mourad 247–48).
Before leaving office the Clinton administration institutionalized terror-
ists as nonstate, criminal actors. Caught between the desire to officially
declare Afghanistan a terrorist state for providing safe haven to bin Laden
and an unwillingness to recognize the legitimacy of the Taliban government,
the administration initially demurred on a decision to place Afghanistan on
the secretary of state’s list of state sponsors. Instead, Clinton signed an exec-
utive order in July 1999 that designated al Qaeda as a foreign terrorist orga-
nization subject to the same sanctions traditionally reserved for state sponsors
of terrorism (National Commission, Final Report 125). The new designation
resulted in the freezing of the group’s assets within the United States, the
denial of visas for group members, and the elevation of supporting the group
into a federal crime.
Overall then, Clinton argued that terrorists posed a new threat because
of shifts in the weapons they used, the nations they targeted, and the
alliances they built to improve their organizational abilities. From the presi-
dent’s public viewpoint, such new and dangerous challenges demanded extra-
ordinary leadership that, if unavailable, would place the entire international
community at risk. Clinton’s terrorist narrative asserted that he possessed the

inspired type of leadership required for global survival.
CLINTON’S TERRORIST NARRATIVE
On multiple occasions Clinton received criticism that he lacked a coherent,

publicly articulated vision of leadership. Early in his first term, Treasury
Secretary Lloyd Bentson warned Clinton that his presentation of so many
issues to the American public was diverting attention away from what he was
trying to accomplish (as rptd. in Drew 166). Early scholarly assessments of
the Clinton presidency replayed a similar theme. Phillip Henderson argues,
“Often devoid of ordered argument or reasoned analysis, the [. . .] Clinton-
era speeches are heavily weighted in the direction of ‘laundry lists’ rather than
conveying an underlying sense of conviction or direction” (227). Fred
Greenstein offers a more charitable interpretation, but nevertheless agrees
that Clinton’s public stance was problematic. He notes, “No American presi-
dent has exceeded Clinton in his grasp of policy specifics, especially in the
domestic sphere, but his was a mastery that did not translate into a clearly
defined point of view” (187). For many, Clinton lacked an encompassing
theme that provided coherence to his policy agenda.
While even a cursory reading of Clinton’s speeches confirms that he
publicly advocated many different policies, the conclusion that he lacked an
overarching rhetorical perspective is incorrect. From the day Clinton
accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination for president in 1992, he
adopted the prophetic tradition to frame his rhetorical vision for America’s
future. Grounded in a religious heritage familiar to many Americans, the
approach presented a moral framework for the conduct of society. The
rhetorical frame presented terrorism as a crime against God, the community’s
rejection of it as a test of the faithful, and the government’s response as a
divine calling.
Traditionally, the scene common to prophetic discourse involves periods
of societal upheaval. Prophetic figures, while emerging as historical staples
during the last two centuries, appear more frequently during times of crisis
(Witherington 404). Gerhard von Rad, having analyzed the common charac-
teristics shared by prophets across the centuries, explains why: “The place at
which [prophets] raise their voices is a place of supreme crisis, indeed almost
a place of death, in so far as the men of this period of crisis were no longer
reached by the saving force of the old appointments, and were promised life
only as they turned to what was to come. All the prophets shared a common
conviction that they stood exactly at that turning point of history which was
crucial for the existence of God’s people” (265). At such moments of crisis,
the people are numb and in a state of denial about the transition that lies
ahead. Much of the prophet’s task is to encourage people to acknowledge the
loss of the old order and the structures that have been created to support it.
In contrast to the people who are reluctant to move forward, the prophet
experiences no ambiguity about future political events and strongly advocates
acceptance of the new order (Rad 265; Brueggemann 69).
Clinton’s terrorist narrative depicted the international scene at the end
of the twentieth century to be such a critical turning point in American his-
tory. It portrayed the Cold War as the old order that was no longer relevant
for America’s future. Clinton warned of the risks attendant to the dissolution
of the Soviet Union, a threat that had functioned as the unifying rationale for
foreign policy priorities for half a century. He insisted the nation had to
resist complacency and isolationism and immediately confront the new
emergent threats of the twenty-first century. Speaking to the United
Nations, Clinton surmised, “For as we all know now so painfully, the end of
the Cold War did not bring us to the millennium of peace. And, indeed it
simply removed the lid from many cauldrons of ethnic, religious, and territo-
rial animosity” (Public Papers 1993 2:1616). Clinton portrayed inaction as a
mistake the US could not afford.
In his public discourse, Clinton replaced the superpower competition of
the old order with a new era of globalization. For him, the move toward
globalization fundamentally altered the rules of international engagement.
Clinton explained that previously accepted distinctions were no longer
applicable in the conduct of international affairs. He explained,
“Interdependence among nations has grown so deep that literally it is now
meaningless to speak of a sharp dividing line between foreign and domestic
policy” (Public Papers 1995 2:1568). He reasoned that pointed divisions
between economic and national security were equally outmoded, with the
result that “The true measure of our security includes not only physical
safety, but economic well-being as well” (US Dept. of State Dispatch 1996:
402). Clinton portrayed globalization as a time when old divisions had to
give way to new opportunities for coming together.
While committed to the acceptance of the new order, Clinton warned
that globalization was also fraught with danger. Kenneth Burke recognizes
that implicit in any notion of order is motive, which, when recast as a scenic
element, contains the possibility of bad acts (Rhetoric of Religion 192). For
Clinton, the positive attributes of the new global scene were precisely the
elements that made society vulnerable. He explained, “[T]he very forces that
have unlocked so much potential for progress—new technologies, borders
more open to ideas and services and goods and money and travelers, instant
global communications, and instant access to unlimited amounts of impor-
tant information all across the world—these very forces have also made it
easier for forces of destruction to endanger the lives in all countries” (Public
Papers 1996 1:602). Clinton warned of the dangers of failing to embrace the
world’s changes in his acceptance of the 1992 Democratic Party presidential
nomination: “Where there is no vision, the people will perish” (Vital Speeches
1992: 644). For Clinton, the future of both the nation and the members of
the international community depended on confronting the new and more
dangerous threats spawned by the end of the Cold War.
Danger in the conventional prophetic tradition is not a simple concept;
it emerges in two forms. The first kind of danger is a temporary fall from
grace, as in the case of an individual who fails to faithfully obey the dictates
of the prophet’s covenant. With proper atonement those that fall out of
weakness can be re-created in God’s image. The second kind of danger is for
one’s fall to involve a deliberate commitment to a countercovenant. These
individuals disobey God’s will by enrolling “in the ranks of a rival force”
(Burke, Rhetoric of Religion 195). In Burke’s words, “It would be a difference
between being ‘weak in virtue,’ and being ‘strong in sin’” (194).
For Clinton, the terrorists and their supportive rogue states were
members of the countercovenant. Coupled with organized criminals and
drug traffickers, terrorists formed an “unholy axis” (Public Papers 1997
2:1206) that threatened the future of humanity. Clinton’s alliance of
threats functioned in direct opposition to the Holy Trinity. Rather than
strive for the Trinity’s perfect communion through love, terrorists and their
counterparts functioned as the “enemies of peace” (Public Papers 1994
2:1311) and “forces of hatred and intolerance” (Public Papers 1995 2:1596).
Their violence was “rooted in people’s desire to hurt other people because
they’re different from them” (Public Papers 1996 2:1750). Their actions
were fueled by a “curse of hatred based on race and religion and ethnicity
that is sweeping the world” (1107). Antithetical to the creative power of
the divine, terrorists acted as “forces of destruction” (Public Papers 1996
1:603), “the dark underside of disintegration” (641), and “21st century
predators” (Public Papers 1997 2:1206). Terrorists’ unyielding commitment
to the countercovenant rendered their redemptive potential negligible in
Clinton’s public approach.
Reminiscent of Dante’s three-headed dog, the devil figure in Clinton’s
narrative was a composite of three separate, but interrelated, threats to the
sacred order. The unholy trinity was not a simple composite of the evils
within the alliance; the merger was generative of a more threatening, more
perfect devil figure. Clinton illuminated the interactive, dangerous impact of
the alliance when he stated, “Groups that once operated in one country or
region or engaged in one kind of criminal activity have become global and
diversified: drug traffickers barter machine guns, terrorists sell counterfeit
bills, organized criminals smuggle nuclear materials” (US Dept. of State
Dispatch 1997: 177). The result was an ultimate devil figure that merged the
evil of various hostile forces to the nation. Clinton maintained that the asso-
ciation elevated terrorism into “the most significant security challenge of the
21st century to the people of the United States and to civilized people every-
where” (Public Papers 1996 2:1211). The new existence of a more dangerous
threat established the need for the international community to come together
in the interests of global survival.
Bin Laden functioned as a prototype of Clinton’s trilogy of evil, because
he personally embodied the threat possible when terrorists, organized crimi-
nals, and drug traffickers worked in tandem. Clinton labeled bin Laden “the
preeminent organizer and financier of international terrorism in the world
today” (1996 II, 1460). Administration sources notified members of the press
that bin Laden used narcotics trafficking to pay the Taliban for sanctuary
(Risen A6).3 Bin Laden’s alleged coconspirators provided the links to orga-
nized crime by claiming that he had attempted to pay $1.5 million on the
black market for uranium to build a nuclear bomb (as rptd. in Weiser A1).
Administration sources also maintained that bin Laden personified the
destructive and emerging potential of cyberterrorists, given his access to a $3
trillion-a-year telecommunication industry that far exceeded the communica-
tion technological capabilities of the United States (Hayden). In short, bin
Laden relied on all the new methods that Clinton outlined in his depiction
of the new terrorists of the twenty-first century.
Privately, the administration suspected that bin Laden and his al Qaeda
organization were responsible for the embassy bombings in Tanzania and
Kenya, the bombing of the USS Cole, the World Trade Center bombing, the
attack on Khobar Towers, the bombing of Aden hotels designed to kill
troops headed to Somalia, the downing of Blackhawk helicopters carrying
military personnel to the humanitarian mission in Somalia, the bombing in
Riyadh, an assassination attempt on George H. W. Bush, and bombing plots
for Manila and the Philippines (Clarke, Memo to Rice 3). Publicly, CIA
Director George J. Tenet labeled bin Laden “the most immediate and seri-
ous” terrorist threat to the United States (as rptd. in Pincus and Loeb A16).
Accordingly, bin Laden’s name appeared on the FBI’s Most Wanted list
with a reward of $5 million for evidence leading to his capture.
Within the conventions of the prophetic tradition, the hope of defeating
evil rests with God’s chosen servants. Such individuals function as agents of
the divine, and are obligated to reassert the divine principles to the people
(Zulick 137). The covenant functions as a treaty between God and the
people that commits its followers to a certain set of standard behaviors (A.
Phillips 219). It reasserts the virtuous path for the fallen and serves as a ready
reminder of God’s presence (Darsey 18). The covenant reaffirms knowledge
already known to the audience (20).
In the administration’s narrative, Clinton complied with the obligation

to rearticulate God’s principles for the public. He called for the public to
embrace a “new covenant” (Vital Speeches 1992: 644), one that required citi-
zens to “renew our faith in ourselves and each other, and restore our sense of
unity and community” (645). Transcending the historically recurrent use of
religion in presidential inaugural addresses (Fairbanks 230), Clinton never
relinquished his prophetic role throughout his presidency. During his
farewell address, he predicted that he would “never hold a position higher or
a covenant more sacred than that of President of the United States” (Vital
Speeches 2001: 229).
Clinton presented rejection of terrorism as a sacred principle that all
peoples and nations must recognize. He elevated opposition to terrorism into
a moral imperative. He pronounced, “It is also true that we believe that ter-
rorism everywhere is wrong, that terrorism in the Middle East is wrong, that
people blowing up our Federal building in Oklahoma City is wrong, and
people taking over a hospital [. . .] and killing innocent civilians is wrong, and
has to be resisted strongly” (Public Papers 1995 2:903). He publicly conceived
of state sponsors of terrorism in equally moralistic and unequivocal terms:
“You cannot do business with countries that practice commerce with you by
day while funding or protecting the terrorists who kill you and your innocent
civilians by night. That is wrong. I hope and expect that before long our
allies will come around to accepting this fundamental truth” (Public Papers
1996 2:1258). For Clinton, violent actions qualified both terrorists and their
supporters as embodiments of evil.
Clinton positioned those who vowed to oppose terrorists within the
same moral framework. He maintained, “It is right for us to continue to
reach out to other countries. It is right for us to support peace and freedom
and to try to expand our own prosperity by expanding that of others. It is
right for us to be partners with other countries, even when we’re tired and we
want to lay our burdens down, because it’s the only way to fight terrorism,
the only way to fight drug dealing, the only way to fight organized crime; it
is right to do that. So you get to decide about that, which road will you walk
in the future” (Public Papers 1996 1:705). Clinton presented many of his nar-
rative’s central themes as commandments for the faithful within the interna-
tional community. His call to never bargain or negotiate with terrorists was
uncompromising. His demand that all nations have zero tolerance for terror-
ists was unyielding. His plea for nations not to be intimidated by terrorist
tactics was essential for those who embraced the covenant. His directive that
all nations refuse sanctuary to terrorists was a return to when sanctuaries
were gathering places for prophets and pilgrims, not for the fallen (Rad 31).
A common scholarly complaint about Clinton’s presidential rhetoric has
been that it was uncompromising. One author criticizes Clinton’s public
strategy, for example, by claiming that it was “often carefully crafted to pre-
empt dialogue, negotiation and compromise” (Henderson 235). When con-
sidered through the lens of the prophetic tradition, such certitude about
God’s word is expected. As a manifestation of God’s will, the covenant is not
debatable; it is absolute truth (Darsey 21). Evil is condemned and permitted
no exoneration (Cragg 110). James Darsey reminds us, “[T]he prophet
announces both the charges and the verdict of God or nature against the
transgressors of the law” (24). For those who fail to live by the sacred tenets
of the covenant, punishment is a necessary precursor to any hope of redemp-
tion. For those who adhere steadfastly to a countercovenant, punishment is
necessary to reveal the wrath of God’s will (118).
As the prophetic persona in the narrative, Clinton assumed the role of
accuser and judge in the battle against terrorism. Publicly, he recognized the
necessity of punishing both the terrorists and those who supported them. He
claimed his administration had captured and convicted more terrorists than
any of his predecessors had. He imposed more economic sanctions than any
previous president. He demonstrated his willingness to attack foreign states
that failed to abide the covenant by employing both covert and overt military
force. Covertly, he spent more than $120 million in aborted CIA efforts to
overthrow Saddam Hussein (Hyland 173). Overtly, he ordered twenty cruise
missiles fired at Iraqi intelligence headquarters in Baghdad in response to
Iraq’s planned assassination of George Bush during his trip to Kuwait in
April 1993. In a joint military initiative with Britain, he ordered four hun-
dred other cruise missiles dropped in Iraq to destroy its chemical, biological,
and nuclear lab sites (Clinton, My Life 833). He sent sixty-six cruise missiles
into Afghanistan and the Sudan in response to the US Embassy attacks in
Kenya and Tanzania. Clinton insisted he would punish terrorism without
regard to his own personal or political cost; the duty to avenge God’s will had
to take precedence.
Clinton did not engage in a public debate about his decision to punish
the transgressors of the covenant. His decision to bomb the Sudan and
Afghanistan was illustrative. He insisted he had “compelling evidence”
(Public Papers, 1998 2:1461) and he invited public acceptance of that assess-
ment on faith. He pronounced the guilt of the two foreign nations, even in
the face of privately expressed doubts by his attorney general, members of the
CIA, and members of the Justice Department (Henderson 243;
Hersh,“Missiles of August” 37). He proclaimed Afghanistan “contained key
elements of the bin Laden network’s infrastructure and [had] served as a
training camp for literally thousands of terrorists from around the globe”
(Public Papers, 1998 2:1461). He announced that the Sudanese factory “was
involved in the production of chemical weapons” (ibid.). Sudanese officials
subsequently protested that the Shifa Pharmaceutical Industries had only
been engaged in a benign commercial venture and demanded a UN investi-

gation. Despite taking what a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies described as a “shellacking for the attack on al-Shifa”
(Benjamin), Clinton officials refused to publicly debate the issue, to describe
their evidence in detail, or to explain how it was obtained (Myers A1, A6).
While the 9/11 Commission determined in 2004 that “No independent evi-
dence has emerged to corroborate the CIA’s assessment” (National
Commission, Final Report 118), Clinton defended his decision to bomb
Sudan in his memoirs by pointing to the testimony of a witness in a terrorist
trial held in NYC who had said that “bin Laden had a chemical weapons
operation in Khartoum” (My Life 805).
By periodically punishing those committed to the countercovenant,
Clinton fulfilled his prophetic obligation, even if terrorism remained an ongo-
ing problem. Elimination of the threat in prophetic discourse is not necessary
for society to be redeemed. Kenneth Burke explains, “When we read of one
broken covenant after another, and see the sacrificial principle forever reaf-
firmed anew, narratively this succession may be interpreted as movement
towards a fulfillment, though from the standpoint of the tautological cycle
they ‘go on endlessly’ implicating one another” (Rhetoric of Religion 217).
Clinton did not insist that as God’s messenger, he could eliminate the threat
to the sacred order. Instead, he forecasted, “This will be a long, ongoing
struggle between freedom and fanaticism, between the rule of law and terror-
ism” (Public Papers, 1998 2:1461). For Clinton, the fight against terrorism
would be unending, but the commitment to fight against the evil whenever
and wherever it occurred was redemptive for God’s followers.
Within the conventions of the prophetic tradition, the Almighty suffers
when the people fail to accept God’s message and, instead, embrace a coun-
tercovenant. Convention holds that as God’s agent, the prophet must
demonstrate God’s suffering to his people through self-sacrifice.
Overpowered by God’s will, the prophet accepts the role reluctantly (Darsey
80). The nature of the prophet’s sacrifice must be substantial in order to
demonstrate the magnitude of the people’s breach of faith. Prophets fre-
quently assume the roles of martyrs within their societies as they enact their
radical self-sacrifice (32). As a result, themes of duty, sacrifice, and martyr-
dom pervade prophetic discourse.
As God’s vehicle within the narrative, Clinton endured self-sacrifice. In
the first moments after he received the Democratic presidential nomination,
Clinton revealed his personal history of experiencing and accepting self-sac-
rifice. He remembered meeting John F. Kennedy, who taught him the
importance of responding to calls for sacrifice. Clinton maintained that the
lesson had been a familiar one for him because of his childhood. He had
never known his father. He had accepted the need for his mother to leave
him with grandparents when he was only three years old so she could find
work. Clinton’s emphasis on his personal history should not be surprising,
for as Kenneth Cragg reminds us, “[W]here prophets originate bears strongly
on what they become. Their antecedents are significant for their destiny”
(21). For Clinton, the call to sacrifice had been internalized from early child-
hood; it prepared him for what he would later endure as God’s messenger to
the people.
Clinton’s publicly described sacrifice in relation to terrorists transcended
the personal. It extended to his role as the head of the body politic. As the
leader of the United States and the free world, Clinton embodied the world’s
suffering in the fight against terrorism. Such suffering, he argued, was the
cost of standing up against the threats to the sacred order. As Clinton
explained, “America is and will remain a target of terrorists precisely because
we are leaders; because we act to advance peace, democracy, and basic human
values; because we’re the most open society on Earth; and because, as we
have shown yet again, we take an uncompromising stand against terrorism”
(Public Papers, 1998 2:1461). Clinton identified himself explicitly with
American martyrs (i.e., the family members of Americans slain by terrorists
and the survivors of terrorism) at the signing of the Antiterrorism and
Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. As the bill became law, he announced,
“I sign my name to this bill in your names” (Public Papers, 1996 1:630).
Consistent with the expectations of prophetic discourse, he assumed the
burden of the sacrifice for all Americans who had encountered the evil of ter-
rorism.
Clinton encouraged the public to share in and accept the required sacri-
fice. Like him, the public was to remain steadfast in their commitment to
carry out their sacred duty. Clinton acknowledged that in the fight against
terrorism, the “responsibility is great, and I know it weighs heavily on many
Americans. But we should embrace this responsibility because at this point in
time no one else can do what we can do to advance peace and freedom and
democracy. [. . .]” (Public Papers, 1996 2:1258). He insisted the nation must
honor its martyrs by continuing the struggle against terrorism. Speaking after
the Oklahoma City bombing, he encouraged the people to remain resolute in
their opposition to terrorism: “So let us honor those who lost their lives by
resolving to hold fast against the forces of violence and division, by never
allowing them to shake our resolve or break our spirit, to frighten us into sac-
rificing our sacred freedoms or surrendering a drop of precious American lib-
erty. Rather we must guard against them, speak against them, and fight
against them” (Public Papers, 1996 1:629). Sacrifice was the nation’s duty if
the sacred order was to prevail.
Conventionally, prophets are always cognizant of the distance that exists
between God and the people, a situation they synecdochically represent
through their own separateness. Kenneth Cragg reminds us that such dis-
tance leaves the prophet vulnerable to derision: “A hostile society impales its
righteous mentors, holds its seers up to scorn, imprisons them in its long
contempt, makes them the butt of its impenitent glee. It frustrates their lib-
erties and maligns their ministry, recruiting public clamour to their tribula-
tion and contriving ridicule to their discredit” (103). Prophets accept
isolation and scorn as part of the sacrifice they must endure when assuming
the responsibility of spreading God’s word.
In the terrorism arena, separateness between presidents and the people is
an institutional phenomenon. From the day presidents assume the office,
inevitible distance emerges between the leader and the people. One is
charged with protecting the people; the other to be the recipient of that pro-
tection. The leader directs the nation; the people follow. When presidential
action turns to terrorism specifically, the leader faces enhanced seclusion.
Presidents are distant in matters of foreign policy because of what they know,
paralleling in some ways the distance between an omnipotent God and his
followers. The nation’s leaders limit what they share with the public in hopes
of responding to the terrorist threat most effectively. At times, presidents
undergo ridicule because they are unwilling to share what they know with
the public.
Willing to accept derision and mockery, Clinton reserved the right to
act alone, if necessary, in the battle against terrorism. Acknowledging his
own isolation, Clinton insisted that should terrorists need to be punished, he
would act alone if necessary to meet his obligation. He stated, “Even though
we’re working more closely with our allies than ever and there is more agree-
ment on what needs to be done than ever, we do not always agree. Where we
don’t agree, the U.S. cannot and will not refuse to do what we believe is
right” (Public Papers, 1996 2:1258). Accordingly, Clinton authorized five
separate intelligence orders for covert operations to destroy al Qaeda
(Woodward, Plan of Attack 12). One of his Presidential Decision Directives
(PDD-39) authorized both offensive and defensive actions to “reduce terror-
ist capabilities” and to “reduce vulnerabilities at home and abroad” (as rptd.
in Clarke, Against All Enemies 92). A Clinton Memorandum of Notification
gave sanction to the CIA and members of Afghani tribes working with the
United States to kill or capture bin Laden (National Commission, Final
Report 132).4 Those unwilling to accept the true nature of the emerging order
would not deter Clinton even in the face of domestic or international dissent.
Clinton not only isolated himself from the American public and the
members of the international community; he also distanced himself from
the US Congress. Clinton publicly berated Congress for failing to respond
immediately and forcefully to his call for a strong stand against terrorism.
He accused them of acting too slow (Public Papers, 1995 1:1745), of listen-
ing to “a few people with extreme views” (Public Papers, 1996 2:1909), and
of using “the old politics of diversion and delay” (Public Papers, 1995 1:689).
After the House of Representatives failed to adopt his 1996 antiterrorism
legislation in full, Clinton went so far as to portray the chamber’s members
as the servants of terrorism. Insisting the House had abrogated its responsi-
bilities, he argued,
The House also voted to let terrorists like Hamas continue to raise
money in America by stripping the Justice Department’s authority
to designate organizations as terrorists and thereby stop them from
raising funds in the United States. The House voted against allow-
ing us to deport foreigners who support terrorist activities more
quickly, and it voted to cripple our ability to use high-tech surveil-
lance to keep up with stealthy and fast-moving terrorists. At the
same time the bill went easy on terrorists, it got tough on law
enforcement officials. The House stripped a provision that would
have helped protect police officers from cop-killer bullets. And it
ordered a commission to study not the terrorists but the Federal
law enforcement officials who put their lives on the line to fight
terrorism. (Public Papers, 1996 1:463–64)
Clinton portrayed the conflict with terrorists as a battle between good and
evil. Congress could either help him acquire the tools he needed to defeat
terrorists or they could become the pawns, if not the co-conspirators, of
those who have rejected the covenant.
Through the process of sacrifice, the prophet conventionally offers hope
for salvation. Society gains the opportunity to reconsider itself and its evil
actions by observing the suffering of the prophet. Those who become self-
aware and recognize the error of their ways find redemption. Prophets ulti-
mately maintain that God is merciful and offers hope of salvation for those
who vindicate the covenant (Cragg 110).
The potential for hope and salvation was a recurrent theme in Clinton’s
public statements. The Clinton camp first highlighted the message in the
campaign film it presented at the 1992 Democratic National Convention.
The film’s theme was Clinton as the Man from Hope, a reference to his
birthplace in Arkansas. In his acceptance speech at the 1992 convention,
Clinton reinforced the message by pledging that his new covenant offered
the prospect of an optimistic future. Borrowing directly from the scriptures,
he predicted, “[O]ur eyes have not yet seen, nor our ears heard nor our minds
imagined what we can build” (Vital Speeches 1992: 645). Drawing from the
his Southern Baptist upbringing, Clinton offered to lead the nation to a
better future. He encouraged his followers through a reference to the biblical
story of Moses: “Guided by the ancient vision of a promised land, let us set
our sights upon a land of new promise” (Public Papers, 1997 1:43). The
future need not be bleak if the people sought redemption.
A common prophetic strategy for instilling hope in the people is the use
of the rebirth archetype (Darsey 29). For Christians, such archetypes recall
the optimistic story of Christ’s resurrection. For all members of the public
regardless of religious affiliation, the archetype links to the natural progres-
sion of the seasons. As James Hoban Jr. explains, “The hope engendered in
the coming of the new momentarily quiets fears of obliteration; thus human-
ity responds to the season of birth—the spring—that gives promise of
growth even as it foreshadows winter” (281). As the people prepare to leave
the comfort and security of the established order, the birth of the new is
filled with promise.
Publicly remembering his own experience, Clinton evoked the archetype
of rebirth to demonstrate the redemptive possibilities available to the people.
He recalled that, the “future entered my life the night our daughter Chelsea
was born. As I stood in the delivery room, I was overcome with the thought
that God had given me a blessing my own father never knew: the chance to
hold my child in my arms” (Vital Speeches 1992: 645). From the example of
his past, Clinton demonstrated his acceptance of the sacrifices necessary to
properly raise his child, a responsibility his own father had abandoned.
Clinton acknowledged his own duty, thereby redeeming the sins of his father
and instilling a sense of hope for the future. Transforming the personal into
the public, Clinton then encouraged the American people to accept the sac-
rifices that would be necessary to ensure the future of all of the nation’s chil-
dren. He explicitly called on the audience to accept his new covenant in order
that every child could achieve according to his or her God-given abilities
(ibid.). Like Clinton, the American people had the opportunity for an opti-
mistic future if they accepted the principles of the covenant.
In the Clinton narrative, God’s potential followers included the member
states of the international community, the US Congress, and the American
public. During the process of purification, Clinton called upon each of these
groups to abandon their prior compromises between good and evil and
become obedient servants of God’s will. He insisted that each had to sacrifice
in the name of the new covenant and each had to give itself over completely
to the prophet’s guidance.
The sacrifices required of members of the international community were
multifaceted. Clinton called on all foreign nations to condemn terrorism
wherever it occurred and to deny safe havens to those who had committed
acts of terrorism, even when such actions increased their own short-term vul-
nerability to terrorism. He also demanded that foreign nations risk their own
economic futures by blocking oil exports and denying computer technology
to the state sponsors of terrorism. Finally, he insisted they overcome worries
about state sovereignty and join him in bringing banks and financial systems
into conformity with international statutes against money laundering, in
reducing or outlawing chemical, biological, and nuclear arsenals, in commit-
ting to the Extradition and Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties, and in joining
the International Clearinghouse of Evidence on Terrorism (Public Papers,
1996 2:1258; Public Papers, 1995 2:1654–57). Offering assurances of salva-
tion to those nations that complied, he announced, “We will help people of
all faiths, in all parts of the world, who want to live free of fear and violence.
We will persist, and we will prevail” (Public Papers, 1998 2:1462).
Clinton was equally, if not more, demanding on the members of the US
Congress. He insisted Congress act to help prevent terrorist acts by prohibit-
ing fund-raising for terrorist groups within the United States, by funding
high-tech inspection machines at airports, and by funding the implementa-
tion of the national plan to protect the nation’s infrastructure. He called on
Congress to enhance the investigative tools available to law enforcement by
making terrorism a federal crime, by legalizing the use of chemical markers,
by using multipoint wiretaps to investigate terrorists, and by increasing the
budgets of the FBI and CIA. He demanded they strengthen the prosecutor-
ial means available in the fight against terrorism by cutting back the number
and time delay of appeals of individuals found guilty of terrorism, by passing
sanctions against state sponsors of terrorism, and by allowing the deportation
of foreigners suspected of engaging in terrorist activity. Finally, he insisted
Congress improve the safety of those potential victims of terrorism (i.e., by
upgrading the public health systems, by stockpiling medicines necessary to
respond to a biological or chemical attack, by investing in the research and
development of biotechnology, by banning the use of cop-killer bullets, and
by permitting the limited use of the military in the civilian sector). Viewed
through a nonprophetic lens, such a lengthy set of recommendations might
be rightly labeled a laundry list; seen as divine guidance, however, such pro-
posals were simply the burdensome sacrifices required for salvation.
For the American public, Clinton’s call to sacrifice was not calculated in
monetary or political costs; it came at the expense of certain freedoms and
cherished liberties. Clinton reminded the public, “[W]e accepted a minor
infringement on our freedom, I guess, when the airport metal detectors were
put up, but they went a long way to stop airplane hijackings and the explo-
sion of planes and the murdering of innocent people” (Public Papers, 1995
1:575). He asked the public to accept an expansion of the federal wiretap
authority, to allow the use of military forces within the domestic borders of
the United States, and to accept restrictions on their second amendment
rights such as forgoing certain types of weapons and tracing others belonging
to terrorists (Public Papers, 1996 1:630–32). He encouraged the public to
accept sacrifices of liberty in the name of ensuring the very survival of the
emerging order. As Clinton offered, “We will prevail again if, and only if,
our people support the mission” (Public Papers, 1995 2:1798).
To be an effective spokesperson of God’s message and be able to con-
vince the people sacrifices are necessary for salvation, a prophet must be
charismatic. The prophet must be able to attract a substantial following to
offer a realistic hope for the people. Weber defines charisma in the context of
the prophetic tradition as “a certain quality of an individual personality by
virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed
with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or
qualities. These as such are not accessible to the ordinary person, but are
regarded as of divine origin or as exemplary, and on the basis of them the
individual is treated as a leader” (as qtd. in Eldridge 229). Without a charis-
matic persona, the prophet cannot credibly carry out the sacred duties,
whether the role of punishing those who adhere to a countercovenant or call-
ing for sacrifices from the faithful.
A body of evidence suggests that members of the international commu-
nity, the US Congress, and the American public did regard Clinton as a
leader in the fight against terrorism at the time of his presidency. In the
international arena, Clinton made demonstrable progress in creating struc-
tures for battling terrorism during his tenure. He enlisted a record number of
foreign nations to enter into mutual legal assistance treaties with the United
States (twenty-one in force and another nineteen signed). During the
Clinton years, mutual legal assistance treaties were signed or put into force
with Argentina, Morocco, Spain, Panama, Jamaica, the Philippines, the
United Kingdom, Hungary, South Korea, Antigua and Barbuba, Australia,
Austria, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Hong Kong, St. Lucia,
Luxembourg, Poland, the Organization of American States, Trinidad,
Greece, Cyprus, Egypt, France, Nigeria, Romania, Russian Federation of
States, South Africa, Ukraine, and Bermuda. Executive agreements serving
as precursors to mutual legal assistance treaties were signed with the Cayman
Islands, the British Virgin Islands, Montserrat, Anguilla, Turks and Caicos,
Haiti, and Nigeria. Extradition treaties were also signed with Belize,
Paraguay, South Africa, and Sri Lanka (J. P. Rubin, “US and Greece”). The
resulting international cooperation helped identify terrorist perpetrators in
the bombings of Pan Am 103, the World Trade Center, the US embassies in
Tanzania and Kenya, and the USS Cole.
The US Congress also complied with many of Clinton’s moves to
strengthen the nation’s ability to fight terrorism. Members of Congress
passed Clinton’s FY 2000 request for $10 billion to combat terrorism, a
threefold increase in the resources previously allocated to the problem (Mann
63–64). They also passed significant legislation that made it easier for law
enforcement officials to investigate and prosecute terrorists. Prominent
among these was the passage of the Counter-terrorism and Effective Death
Penalty Act of 1996. The act restricted federal habeas reconsideration of
legal and factual issues ruled by state courts in most instances, expanded the
restitution available to victims of terrorism, and regulated the fund-raising
for organizations associated with terrorist actions. It barred alien terrorists
from entering the United States and expedited the deportation of those
already in the United States. Finally, it increased restrictions on the posses-
sion and use of materials with the potential to cause catastrophic damage and
limited the purchase of plastic explosives to those with implanted, preexplo-
sion detection devices.
A second significant congressional action against terrorism was the
Senate’s ratification of the Chemical Weapons Convention in the spring of
1997. The convention banned the production, acquisition, stockpiling, trans-
fer, and use of chemical weapons. A scholarly assessment of the agreement
called it “one of the most ambitious treaties in the history of arms control”
(Schweitzer and Dorsch 99). Passing over opposition of some in the chemi-
cal industry, the convention identified a lengthy list of chemicals routinely
used in commerce as having military applications. It subjected the manufac-
turers of these chemicals to international accounting requirements and inter-
national inspections. Nonsignatories were banned from importing the
chemicals on the control lists from any nations that signed the treaty.
As Clinton left office, the majority of the American public considered
him to be a strong leader. The last public approval ratings of his handling of
the presidency distinguished him among former presidents in modern times.
As the Gallup News Service reported, “Clinton’s average approval rating for
his last quarter in office is almost 61%— the highest final quarter rating any
president has received in the past half century” (D. W. Moore). By more than
a two-to-one margin, Americans expected Clinton to go down in history as
an outstanding or above average president (ibid.). In the foreign policy arena,
Clinton’s approval ratings surged during the course of his presidency.
Entering office with low expectations for his ability to handle foreign affairs,
Clinton emerged as a distinguished leader on the international scene. In a
1994 Gallup poll, “Americans rated Clinton a poor leader on foreign policy,
trailing President[s] Kennedy, Nixon, Truman, Eisenhower, Reagan, George
Bush, and Carter. But by 1998, the quadrennial survey rank[ed] Clinton as
the best foreign policy president since World War II” (Wright A1).
Despite the public’s support for his leadership, Clinton rocked his popu-
lar legacy by his involvement in the repeated scandals involving women
(Jennifer Flowers, Monica Lewinsky, and Katherine Wiley) and money
(Whitewater land deals, presidential library expenses, White House gifts,
and the presidential pardon of Louis Rich). An early January 2001 Gallup
poll, for example, found just forty-one percent of Americans approved of
Clinton “as a person,” and only thirty-nine percent considered him “honest
and trustworthy” (D. W. Moore).
Clinton’s reckless personal behavior, however, did not disqualify him as
a charismatic leader of the people. Within the prophetic tradition, prophets
conventionally do not calculate the means of their own self-preservation. As
Darsey explains, “Failure of the person of the prophet is, almost by defini-
tion, necessary to his success as God’s servant. Personal success is self-serving
and vitiates the purity of the divine motive” (32). Willing to forgo concerns
for personal well-being, prophets attend to their more important obligation
of leading God’s followers in the ways of the covenant.
The prophetic tradition, with its emphasis on public obligation and per-
sonal failure, helps explain the seeming paradox of the Clinton legacy. Media
editorials in the months following the Clinton presidency opined, “Clinton is
unprecedented in the way respect for the public man has deflected disdain for
the private one” (Schulman M1), “He’s a larger than life figure [. . .] but he’s
also got some very real flaws” (Miga 5), and “Clinton steps off center stage
[. . .] as one of the most controversial yet most popular figures in modern
U.S. history” (“Clinton Exit”). The seeming discord between Clinton’s
public success and his private failure are characteristic for one whose narra-
tive calling is to the divine.
Clinton’s standing as an effective leader in the foreign policy arena has
been scrutinized in the aftermath of the 2001 attacks on the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon. Various media outlets reported that Clinton
passed on three opportunities to seize bin Laden. Others have criticized him
for not striking Kandahar when he had information bin Laden was located
there (“Clinton Defends Decision Not to Strike”; J. F. Harris A15).
Denouncing such claims as “fables” and “urban legends,” Clarke concluded
that Clinton “approved every snatch that he was asked to review” (Against All
Enemies 142–49).
The 9/11 Commission’s Report details the administration’s internal deci-
sion-making calculus of each of its opportunities for capturing or killing bin
Laden according to US intelligence. Reasons identified for failing to capital-
ize included risks of operational expense, collateral damage, mission failure,
possible mosque damage, deaths to tribal allies, public opposition to a per-
ceived assassination attempt, a possible coup in Pakistan, and the low proba-
bility of public support for a use of military ground forces in Afghanistan
(National Commission, Final Report 114, 131, 136–37). The report ulti-
mately concludes, “Since we believe that both President Clinton and
President Bush were genuinely concerned about the danger posed by al
Qaeda, approaches involving more direct intervention against the sanctuary
in Afghanistan apparently must have seemed—it they were considered at
all—to be disproportionate to the threat” (349). Given that al Qaeda had
killed fewer than fifty Americans prior to the attacks of 9/11 (340), the
chances of garnering public support for a military intervention were slim.
In the end, Clinton’s pronouncements about the terrorists of the twenty-
first century turned out in many ways to be prophetic. Bin Laden and his
associates did use weapons of mass destruction as their method of choice,
they did choose the United States as the location of their attack, and they
worked within an internationally connected organizational structure to
orchestrate their acts of violence. While aware of the new risk posed by ter-
rorism, Clinton never implemented a response strategy to bin Laden that
would produce lasting security for the United States. By October 2001, a
USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll reported that three of four Americans
responded that Clinton had not done enough as president to capture or kill
bin Laden (Page, “Why Clinton Failed to Stop Bin Laden”). While the
prophetic vision had been telling, the continuation of bin Laden’s activities
would be devastating for America.
During Clinton’s tenure as president, the persuasive power of the prophetic

tradition was not reserved for Clinton himself. Bin Laden also employed
prophetic conventions in his public communication strategy to reach Muslim
audiences. The 9/11 Commission Report concluded, “Bin Ladin saw himself as
called ‘to follow in the footsteps of the Messenger and to communicate his
message to all nations’” (National Commission, Final Report 48). In February
1998, bin Laden, on behalf of al Qaeda, issued a joint fatwa with Ayman al
Zawahiri, leader of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, under the united name of
World Islamic Front. The fatwa included the following statements which
outlined the principles of bin Laden’s covenant:
The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies—civilian and mil-
itary—is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any
country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-
Aqsa Mosque [in Jerusalem] and the Holy Mosque [in Mecca]
from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the
lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim. [. . . ]
We—with God’s help—call on every Muslim who believes in God
and wishes to be rewarded to comply with God’s order to kill the
Americans and plunder their money whenever and wherever they
find it. We also call on Muslim ulema, leaders, youths, and soldiers
to launch the raid on Satan’s US troops and the devil’s supporters
allying with them, and to displace those who are behind them so
that they may learn a lesson. (Bodansky 226–27)
The fatwa not only established the religious foundation for violent acts
against the United States, but also contributed to the clash of Muslim and
Western civilizations by confining those who would receive God’s rewards to
members of the Muslim culture.
A recent book by a retired twenty-year veteran of the CIA, Michael
Scheuer, under the author name “Anonymous,” explains that with the fatwa
and other statements vilifying the United States, bin Laden had the goal of
inciting all Muslims to join in an insurgent war against America and its allies
(Imperial Hubris 216). According to Scheuer, bin Laden was and continues
to be an effective leader of the movement because of attributes consistant
with the previously discussed prophetic tradition. They included the credibil-
ity he had gained from his willingness to forfeit his personal wealth to the
cause, his unique communication skills within the Muslim community, and
his insistence that his followers join the defensive fatwa “not because he
ordered them to, but because God has ordered them to do so in what He
revealed in the Koran” (7). The former CIA operative details a myriad of
ways that US actions around the world positioned bin Laden to make effec-
tive religious appeals to the Muslim community (11–13). Scholars in the
Middle East have supported bin Laden’s rationale for a united Muslim
response including the use of weapons of mass destruction, given estimates
that US actions have resulted in more than ten million Muslim deaths
worldwide (156).
Clinton’s public response to bin Laden’s prophetic appeals was multifac-
eted. In large measure, he chose to avoid mentioning his adversary’s name.
Clinton explained his strategy to the 9/11 Commission when he stated he
“intended to avoid enhancing Bin Ladin’s stature by giving him unnecessary
publicity” (National Commission, Final Report 174). Instead, Clinton
focused on the broader collective of threats to the nation. He pronounced,
“We’re vulnerable to the organized forces of intolerance and destruction; ter-
rorism; ethnic, religious and regional rivalries; the spread of organized crime
and weapons of mass destruction and drug trafficking. Just as surely as fas-
cism and communism, these forces also threaten freedom and democracy,
peace and prosperity” (Public Papers, 1995 2:1784). Evoking Reagan’s ideo-
logical strategy of depicting terrorism, Clinton maintained that the new
enemy alliance threatened the American culture.
When he did mention bin Laden, Clinton characterized him as a false
prophet in both word and deed. Clinton dismissed bin Laden’s call for jihad
against the United States as divinely inspired. Instead, he insisted, “[N]o
religion condones the murder of innocent men, women, and children”
(Public Papers, 1998 2:1461). Clinton maintained that terrorists, like bin
Laden, used a “twisting of their religious teachings into justifications of
inhumane, indeed ungodly acts” (1465). The administration’s narrative
depicted the members of bin Laden’s organization as “fanatics and killers

who wrap murder in the cloak of righteousness; and in so doing, profane the
great religion in whose name they claim to act” (1461). Bin Laden came to
represent all those who would intentionally break from the ranks of the
divine to embrace a countercovenant.
For Clinton, the path to the divine was not reserved exclusively for
members of American culture. He held out the potential for salvation to all
peoples regardless of their national, cultural, or religious origins. The test for
the faithful involved the abandonment of any linkage between terrorism and
American ideology per se as a relic of past, outmoded thinking. If the
promise of a global community was to emerge, old divisions simply had to
give way.
Nevertheless, Clinton insisted that the historical lessons contained in
past cultural conflicts should not be forgotten. He encouraged members of
the public and the international community to recall the past correlations
between particular ideological predilections and the use of terrorism to reap
rewards. He argued, “History teaches us that democracies are less likely to go
to war, less likely to traffic in terrorism and more likely to stand against the
forces of hatred and destruction, more likely to become good partners in
diplomacy and trade. So promoting democracy and defending human rights
is good for the world and good for America” (Public Papers, 1995 2:1598).
For Clinton, Communists and Fascists presumptively embraced terrorism,
while peoples committed to democratic principles did not. Ideological con-
flict did not have to constantly repeat itself for society to know and recall
those tendencies.
Having acknowledged the lessons of the past, Clinton maintained that
modern-day international terrorism had become a nonideological topic.
Countering his earlier echoing of Reagan’s rhetorical approach to terrorists,
Clinton became emphatic in his dismissal of ideological interpretations of
terrorist violence. He said that “Terrorism is not a political issue; this is not a
partisan issue, this is not an ideological issue” (Public Papers, 1996 1:552).
Having framed terrorism as an evil that threatens the sacred order, he
attempted to transcend narrow interpretations of the term that might impli-
cate a particular culture as the sole source of terrorism. In Clinton’s evolving
worldview, terrorism was not limited to a specific state, ethnic group, or
tribe. It was a countercovenant that threatened all of God’s people, regardless
of their cultural affiliation.
Clinton maintained that it would be a mistake to tag a particular cul-
ture as terrorist without providing the opportunity for redemption. In par-
ticular, he cautioned against conflating terrorism with Islam. He predicted,
“[I]f we could bring peace to the Middle East, it might revolutionize the
range of options we have with the Muslims all over the world and give us
the opportunity to beat back the forces of radicalism and terrorism that
unfairly have been identified with Islam by so many people” (Public Papers,
1996 2:1796). Offering a similar message domestically, Clinton attempted to
forestall public condemnation of all domestic militia members after the
Oklahoma City bombing. Clinton admonished the public: “Just as I cau-
tioned the American people earlier not to stereotype any people from other
countries of different ethnic groups as being potentially responsible for this, I
don’t want to castigate or categorize any groups here in America and accuse
them of doing something that we don’t have any evidence that they have
done (Public Papers, 1995 1:577). Clinton rejected the use of the terrorism
label as a term of denigration for particular cultures.
Clinton advocated evaluating cultures according to whether they sup-
ported or condemned terrorism. Drawing on the example of the Muslim
faith, he argued, “[W]hat the United States wants to do is to stand up
against terrorism and against destructive fundamentalism, and to stand with
the people of Islam who wish to be full members of the world community,
according to the rules that all civilized people should follow” (Public Papers,
1994 2:1056). Regardless of an individual’s culture of origin or livelihood,
people who acted in accordance with the new covenant could look forward to
the hope promised through salvation. Actions, rather than membership in
particular cultures, became the operative principle for judging the faithful.
By adopting the prophetic tradition, Clinton elevated terrorism into a
crime against God’s will. As unrepentant sinners, terrorists bore the full
responsibility for the suffering of society. Their guilt was to be accepted on
faith and as an absolute truth. Their punishment, no matter how severe, was
necessary to demonstrate the strength of God’s wrath. By elevating the fight
against terrorism to the status of a divinely inspired act whether or not the
nation was at war, Clinton prepared the American audience for his successor
to employ an expansive set of prerogatives in response to terrorism.
7
America under Attack:

George W. Bush and Noncitizen Actors
O n September 11, 2001, nineteen suicide bombers wielding box cutters

and knives hijacked four transcontinental flights. The result was the
most tragic episode of terrorism in American history. Two of the planes
rammed into the World Trade Center in New York City. The first hit at
8:48 a.m.; the second struck twenty minutes later. The attacks caused the
two towers to collapse and a third building to fall ten hours later. The third
plane, en route from Washington, DC to Los Angeles, hit the Pentagon at
9:40 a.m. The final plane, a flight hijacked en route from Newark to San
Francisco, crashed outside Pittsburgh. The resulting death toll exceeded
three thousand.
Within a few days of the attacks, the US government blamed Osama bin
Laden and his al Qaeda associates for the events of September 11. The exec-
utive branch had been privy to a substantial body of intelligence during the
spring and summer months of 2001 that warned al Qaeda was planning to
attack US interests (National Commission, Final Report 254–77). To help
build the public case against al Qaeda, CIA officials leaked the existence of
year-old intercepts that recorded bin Laden boasting about his plans to
commit Hiroshima against the United States (Risen and Engelberg A1).
The Defense Department released a videotape, purportedly filmed
November 9, 2002, showing bin Laden laughing about how the planes that
flew into the World Trade Center had done far more damage than he had
imagined they would (Bumiller A1; “Osama bin Laden Videotape”). Bin
Laden publicly took responsibility for the attacks in a videotape shown on
Al-Jazeera four days prior to the 2004 US elections. The Justice Department
indicted the nineteen hijackers and Zacarias Moussaoui for conspiring with
Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda to carry out the September 11 attacks.
Moussaoui eventually pled guilty to conspiring with the 9/11 hijackers. He
publicly declared that bin Laden had chosen him to fly an airliner into the
White House in a planned second wave of attacks.
155
In response, the Bush administration adopted a multipronged strategy.

The first phase sought to eliminate the threat from al Qaeda and its support-
ers. The United States led a worldwide effort to freeze the financial assets of
more than sixty organizations with alleged links to al Qaeda. It pressured
Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the UAE (the only three countries to have rec-
ognized the Taliban as the official government of Afghanistan) into breaking
off diplomatic relations. It supported members of the Northern Alliance with
US ground and air forces in a military operation designed to capture or kill
bin Laden and the al Qaeda leadership. When the Taliban refused to uncon-
ditionally surrender bin Laden and his terrorist collaborators operating on
Afghan soil, the Bush administration added the removal of the Taliban gov-
ernment to its objectives for the first phase. US and British forces began a
military campaign designed to topple the Taliban regime and eliminate al
Qaeda’s sanctuary on October 8, 2001. Two months later the remaining
members of the Taliban surrendered their last stronghold, Kandahar, and
fled into the desert. More than three years after the fall of the Taliban, many
members of al Qaeda have been captured or killed; bin Laden and key mem-
bers of al Qaeda, however, do remain at large.
Phase two of the administration’s approach involved the prevention of
terrorists and their supporters from threatening the United States and the
global community with weapons of mass destruction. Bush identified Iran,
Iraq, and North Korea as states poised to use weapons of mass destruction to
threaten peace and security around the globe. US diplomatic initiatives tar-
geted Iran and North Korea in an effort to contain their nuclear weapons
development. The administration placed its primary focus on Iraq, citing the
failure of Saddam Hussein to account for all of his chemical and biological
agents in accordance with UN resolution 1441. Internally, Deputy Secretary
of Defense Paul Wolfowitz built the case against Iraq by focusing on
Saddam’s praise for the 9/11 attacks, his historical record of supporting ter-
rorists, and the possibility that Iraq had been involved in the first World
Trade Center bombing (National Commission, Final Report 336). Having
begun the planning for the military operation in Iraq on September 13, 2001
(Fallows 3), Bush initiated the military campaign to remove Saddam Hussein
and his regime on March 20, 2003. Six weeks later Bush publicly declared
victory with the phrase, “Major combat operations in Iraq have ended”
(White House 1 May 2003: 1).1
At the time of Bush’s announcement, US forces had suffered 138 casual-
ties. Since that time, more than 1600 servicemen and women have lost their
lives as the US occupation of Iraq continues. Accurate assessments of Iraqi
casualties are more difficult to determine. On the one year anniversary of
Bush’s victory announcement, estimates of Iraqi casualties based on media
stories placed the figure at between nine and eleven thousand (Ewens 2).
America under Attack 157
Preliminary reports from hospitals, morgues, mosques, and homes during

the same time period approximated the figure to be between five and ten
thousand (Ford, “Surveys Pointing to High Civilian Death Toll” 1). A
household survey estimate designed and conducted by researchers at Johns
Hopkins University, Columbia University, and the Al-Mustansiriya
University in Baghdad reported that in the eighteen months after the start
of combat operations in Iraq, one hundred thousand Iraqis (mainly women
and children) had died (E. Ross 1). More certain is the fact that US forces
have captured Saddam Hussein, as well as many other prominent figures in
the Baathist regime.
Whether the Bush team’s strategy for countering international terrorism
has been effective remains an open question. For the most part, early assess-
ments have indicated that both the quantity and the deadliness of terrorist
attacks have increased since the attacks of September 11. The Congressional
Research Service, responding to a request by a member of the House
Committee for Governmental Reform, concluded that al Qaeda had com-
mitted only one attack in the thirty months prior to September 11, 2001, but
had promulgated ten acts in the subsequent thirty months (Cronin 4). In
May 2004, the International Institute of Strategic Studies announced that
while the coalition efforts had resulted in the killing or capture of two thou-
sand al Qaeda members and half of its leadership, the war on terror had
aided al Qaeda recruitment efforts to the point that eighteen thousand mili-
tants were prepared to attack the United States and its closest European
allies (Majendie 1). An article written for the Spectator concluded, “The trou-
ble is that every time a seemingly ‘essential’ al Qaeda leader has been
arrested, he has been replaced with no effect at all on the organization”
(Anand 16). After tallying the effectiveness of the Bush administration’s
global war on terror, Michael Scherer has written, “At a minimum, it is true
that the U.S.-led coalition has failed to eliminate al Qaeda’s presence from
even one country where it was established on 11 September 2001” (Imperial
Hubris 71).
The most positive account of the administration’s success emerged in
the State Department’s annual study of international terrorism. The first
release of the Patterns of Global Terrorism 2003 report touted a drop in inter-
national terrorism attacks to “the lowest annual total [. . .] since 1969” (US
Dept. of State 2004, as cited in Waxman 1). The ranking minority member
of the Committee on Government Reform, Henry Waxman, did not accept
the authenticity of the figures. In a May 17, 2004 letter to Secretary of State
Colin Powell, he argued that manipulating the data “may serve the
Administration’s political interests, but [. . .] calls into serious doubt the
integrity of the report.” He emphasized the thirty-five percent increase in
significant terrorist attacks in 2003, a figure bringing incidents that resulted
(or potentially resulted) in the loss of life or serious injury to persons or prop-
erty to a twenty-year high. Members of the State Department subsequently
admitted that their first tally of the 2003 incidents had omitted terrorist inci-
dents occurring after November 11. They also explained that other data
management problems encountered by the newly formed Terrorist Threat
Integration Center had compounded the mistaken figures (Perl 7). The
revised Patterns of Global Terrorism 2003 acknowledged that acts of interna-
tional terrorism had shown an increase from 198 in 2002 to 208 in 2003.
The number of people killed from acts of terrorism dropped by 100 from
2002, while the total wounded worldwide grew by 1,633 from the previous
year (as rptd. in Schweid 1).
One week after the September 11, 2001 attacks, the United States
underwent a second wave of terrorist violence. Letters, postmarked
September 18 and mailed from Trenton, New Jersey, carried deadly anthrax
spores to New York, Florida, and Washington, DC. The sender addressed
the letters to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, Senator Patrick Leahy
of Vermont, Tom Brokaw of the National Broadcasting Corporation, and a
reporter from a Florida tabloid. While none of the targets developed anthrax
poisoning, the letters did infect fourteen other people. Five of those infected
died by the end of 2001.
The party or parties responsible for sending the letters remain elusive.
Despite the government’s assignment of as many as one-quarter of its FBI
agents to the case, official spokespersons have insisted they cannot determine
whether the anthrax spores were of domestic or foreign origin (Verrengia).
Administration officials have acknowledged that the anthrax in the letters
was derived from a domestically produced Ames strain “used in American
biological weapons research and in vaccine testing” (ibid.). However, the dis-
tribution of similar strains of anthrax around the globe heightened the diffi-
culty of discovering the identity of those responsible. Government officials
have publicly speculated that terrorists in Afghanistan, as well as the former
Soviet Union and Iraq, may have been to blame. Japanese war veterans have
testified in courts overseas that they produced large quantities of anthrax at a
unit base in Hubin in the early 1940s, a claim officially denied by the
Japanese government. More recently, US officials have publicly named Dr.
Steven Hatfill a suspect because of his work on a secret project involving the
detection and disarmament of biological weapons by Special Operations
units. Hatfill maintains his innocence and has sued several of those who have
accused him of wrongdoing. The investigation continues (Broad, Johnston,
and Miller A1).
Since September 11, the leadership’s public campaign against terrorism
has focused primarily on those associated with the World Trade Center and
Pentagon attacks, with less emphasis on the cases of bioterrorism. As the
next section will argue, executive branch officials have characterized the
attacks of 9/11 as a matter of public sphere deliberation, while designating
the anthrax attacks as more appropriately the concern of technical experts.2
LABELING THE CRISIS
Within hours of the attacks of September 11, George W. Bush repeatedly

employed the terrorist label to depict the events in New York and
Washington, DC. Even before his aides briefed him on the attack on the
Pentagon, Bush called the two airplanes crashing into the World Trade
Center “an apparent terrorist attack on our country” (FDCH Transcripts 11
Sept. 2001: 2). Later that same day, he dropped the hedge. In a nationally
televised address, he labeled the attacks “a series of deliberate and deadly ter-
rorist acts” (1). Dismissing any notion that the incidents were airline acci-
dents, Bush held that the events of 9/11 were an unprecedented, catastrophic
act of terrorism that constituted an act of war against the United States.
Borrowing a terrorism labeling strategy prominent in the Clinton years,
the Bush administration maintained that the terrorism threat it faced posed a
unique challenge in the nation’s history. On the face of it, such an approach
resonated. Since the birth of the nation, terrorists had never achieved a mag-
nitude of success comparable to that of the 9/11 hijackers. They had never
hit the headquarters of the world’s military superpower. They had never
accomplished the murder of thousands of US civilians on America’s home
soil. They had never been so threatening that they prevented the commander
in chief from returning to the White House over a sustained period.
The Bush administration offered four rationales to support the threat’s
distinctive nature in its public campaign. First, it stressed the tendency of
the current terrorists to hide. Powell explained, “This is different. [. . .] This
enemy is not looking to be found. The enemy is hidden” (FDCH Transcripts
14 Sept. 2001: 4). Bush agreed, arguing, “The American people are used to
a conflict where there was a beachhead or a desert to cross or known mili-
tary targets. That may occur. But right now, we’re facing people who hit
and run. They hide in caves” (FDCH Transcripts 16 Sept. 2001: 4). On the
international scene, Bush presented the same perspective, urging world
leaders to understand that “unlike previous wars, this enemy likes to hide”
(FDCH Transcripts 13 Sept 2001: 4). The difficulty in locating the enemy
prompted the expectation that a US victory in the war on terrorism would
not come quickly.
The choice of hiding as a strategic calculation of US enemies, however,
was far from new. American Indians were the first to hide and ambush
unsuspecting US soldiers (Drinnon 53). John Underhill, the only surviving
eyewitness to the Pequot War, remembered that the settlers burned many
houses and much corn, but failed to kill most of the Indians because of their
obscurity (ibid., 36). A more recent example involves the Viet Cong during
the Vietnam War. The Viet Cong conducted campaigns of terrorism against
the citizenry in secret. They participated in campaigns of kidnapping and
murder by night. They hid those who were directing, supplying, and sup-
porting their efforts. Two decades later during Reagan’s tenure, Islamic fun-
damentalists hid throughout Lebanon and other countries in the Middle
East as they held American hostages captive for years. In sum, the decision
to hide from superior US military forces has been a recurrent posture of the
nation’s enemies, and one (given the examples presented here) that has pro-
duced a chilling record of success.
The second reason offered by administration officials for why the enemy
was new involved their use of unconventional weapons. Director of
Homeland Security Tom Ridge claimed, “We’re under attack from a differ-
ent kind of enemy who is using different kinds of weapons. Any weapons
designed to fear, and weapons designed to panic and disrupt” (FDCH
Transcripts 26 Oct. 2001: 5). He elaborated on the types of new weapons
when he stated, “We never thought a 747 could be turned into a missile, but
someone who took an instrument that’s part of who we are and what we do
everyday—an airplane—turned it into a weapon. Somebody took an enve-
lope and turned it into a weapon” (FDCH Transcripts 25 Oct. 2001: 9). The
Bush camp’s rhetoric featured the perverted use of conveniences in the global
economy to distinguish its new threat.
The administration’s claim notwithstanding, weapons designed to instill
fear have been a mainstay in the history of terrorism. French revolutionaries
during the Reign of Terror used the guillotine; Hitler used the gas chamber.
The Aum Schrinko cult used sarin gas, and US white supremacists planned
to introduce cyanide into the New York and District of Columbia water sup-
plies. The exploitation of modes of transportation has also been a common
tactic of terrorists. The hijacking of airplanes was so common during the
Nixon administration that the federal government enacted the Sky Marshall
program. Suicide truck bombers attacked the Marine barracks in Lebanon,
and terrorists in small boats blew a hole in the side of the USS Cole. Finally,
mail bombs were certainly not new, as abortion clinics throughout the nation
can readily attest.
The 9/11 Commission explored the question of whether the nation’s
leadership should have known that airliners could have been transformed
into lethal missiles. Citing numerous incidents occurring during the Clinton
years, they were critical of the possibility that members of the administration
did not imagine the 9/11 scenario. The report recalled the numerous
instances of related intelligence available to the nation’s leadership,
Threat reports also mentioned the possibility of using an aircraft

filled with explosives. The most prominent of these mentioned a
possible plot to fly the explosives-laden aircraft into a U.S. city.
This report, circulated in September 1998, originated from a
source who had walked into an American consulate in East Asia.
In August of that same year, the intelligence community had
received information that a group of Libyans hoped to crash a
plane into the World Trade Center. In neither case could the
information be corroborated. In addition, an Algerian group
hijacked an airliner in 1994, most likely intended to blow it up over
Paris, but possibly to crash it into the Eiffel Tower. In 1994, a pri-
vate airplane had crashed onto the south lawn of the White House.
In early 1995, Abdul Hakim Murad—Ramzi Youself’s accomplice
in the Manila airlines bombing plot—told Philippine authorities
that he and Yousef had discussed flying a plane into CIA head-
quarters. (National Commission, Final Report 345)
Given that the Bush administration retained key terrorism personnel from
the Clinton years who were aware of these warnings, the failure to conceive
of a suicide hijacking operation is suspect.
Further undermining the administration’s claim that it could not have
anticipated the use of an airliner as a missile were 52 intelligence reports
received by the Federal Aviation Administration. These reports contained
warnings about Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, and the potential use of domes-
tic airliners for suicide bombings. On February 10, 2005, Representatives
Henry A. Waxman and Carolyn B. Maloney wrote to the Chair of the
House Committee on Government Reform, Tom Davis, to request congres-
sional hearings into “whether the administration had misused the classifica-
tion process to withhold, for political reasons, official 9/11 staff findings
detailing how federal aviation officials received multiple intelligence reports
warning of airline hijackings and suicide attacks before September 11” (1).
The use of commercial airlines by terrorists to attack highly valued, symbolic
targets was a known risk for key figures in the nation’s leadership.
The third reason posited for the new threat was that the enemy was now
a group of nonstate actors. Bush announced the shift in the terrorists’ iden-
tity when he explained, “ [W]e’re adjusting our thinking to the new type of
enemy. These are terrorists that have no borders” (FDCH Transcripts 17
Sept. 2001: 3). Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld maintained that the
new role of nonstate actors required a rethinking of war strategy. He
noted, “The United States is, as the president said, in a war. It is, however, a
very different type of war; it is not a war of cruise missiles. It’s not a war
where the enemy has armies, navies, air forces, capitals,—high value targets”
(Federal News Service 16 Nov. 2001: 1). The Bush camp insisted that a non-
state nature of the enemy necessitated a shift from the nation’s conventional
strategies of deterrence and containment.
Like the other rationales, the administration’s claim that nonstate actors
were something new was also suspect. Frequently, terrorists have been indi-
viduals acting on their own (i.e., Eric Rudolph and Theodore Kosczynski),
groups functioning outside state apparatuses (i.e., Black September Organi-
zation, Red Brigades, Islamic Jihad), or foreign entities lacking official recog-
nition of their state status (i.e., Communist China when it kidnapped Angus
Ward prior to recognition as the People’s Republic of China). With Clinton
having claimed nonstate actor status as a new characteristic of the terrorist
threat in the early 1990s, Bush’s repetition of the same point during his
administration lacked authenticity.
The Bush team’s final explanation of why terrorists constituted a new
threat related to the level of barbarity the enemy would use in carrying out its
attacks. Bush encapsulated the sentiment of those appalled by the horror of
9/11: “We’re facing a new kind of enemy—somebody so barbaric that they
would fly airplanes into [a] building full of innocent people” (FDCH
Transcripts 16 Sept. 2001: 3). The intentional attacks on such a large number
of civilian men, women, and children were unprecedented, according to the
Bush administration’s public campaign.
The magnitude of the 9/11 terrorists’ success within the borders of the
United States was indeed unmatched in the nation’s history. Nevertheless,
barbarism in terrorist warfare was not new. The American Indian, the first
group to be labeled terrorist by a US administration, not only slit throats, but
scalped men, women, and children to instill terror in the remaining colonial-
ists. Timothy McVeigh knowingly attacked a day care center populated with
small children. Hitler and his “Nazi terrorists”3 were perhaps the standard
bearer of the barbaric category, with their calculated murder of more than six
million Jews, as well as Soviets, Poles, the sick and mentally ill, priests and
nuns, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, artists, intellectuals, and major
political figures. Barbarity has been the mainstay of terrorism, due to its abil-
ity to produce fear in a larger audience.
Despite the questionable credibility of the Bush administration’s claims
that terrorism was new, the labeling strategy served an important function.
Like the claims of his presidential predecessors, Bush’s insistence that the
nation confronted a new enemy provided the needed rationale for altering
the nation’s response options. The 9/11 Commission Report detailed the prob-
lem the Bush administration faced: “As presently configured, the national
security institutions of the U.S. government are still the institutions con-
structed to win the Cold War. The United States confronts a very different
world today. Instead of facing a few very dangerous adversaries, the United
States confronts a number of less visible challenges that surpass the bound-
aries of traditional nation-states and call for quick, imaginative and agile
responses” (National Commission, Final Report 399). Stopping short of con-
cluding that such factors were new under the Bush administration, the com-
mission nevertheless made the case that the nation needed to change to
respond to threats more effectively.
The enemy’s characteristics (i.e., being barbaric, unconventional, and
difficult to locate) were not new, but they nevertheless posed a challenge for
the administration. Vice President Dick Cheney, convinced of the compara-
tive ease of confronting states rather than nonstate actors, argued behind the
scenes that the goals of US policy should be broadened to include state spon-
sors of terrorism (Woodward, Bush at War 43). Publicly, Bush agreed, main-
taining he would “make no distinction between the terrorists who committed
these acts and those who harbor them” (FDCH Transcripts 11 Sept. 2001: 2).
Public statements from the administration’s key national security spokesper-
sons from September to December 2001 expounded on the new standard for
qualifying as a terrorist actor. The new definition now encompassed any
nation, group, entity, or individual that harbored, housed, supported, facili-
tated, financed, succored, tolerated, or conducted business with terrorists.4
The administration’s revised interpretation of what constituted an
offending state did not require the nation to participate in an act of terrorism
directly. In the early aftermath of September 11, Cheney introduced the
phrase “terrorist-supported state” (Federal News Service 15 Nov. 2001: 4) to
depict states that had a symbiotic relationship with terrorists operating
within their borders. At hearings before the House International Relations
Committee, Powell used the example of Afghanistan to explicate how the
government would judge the behavior of foreign regimes: “The president
made it clear from the very beginning that if the Taliban regime did not turn
over Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda organization resident in
Afghanistan, that they had essentially designated themselves a terrorist
regime. They did not. And so they have to pay the consequences, and the
Taliban government must now go, because they are part and parcel to al-
Qaeda” (Federal News Service 24 Oct. 2001: 7). Failure to abide by the
expressed demands of the United States with respect to suspected terrorists
became a sufficient condition for foreign regimes to find themselves tagged
as terrorists.
Bush demonstrated the approach’s expansive possibilities in his 2002
State of the Union address. Without offering any current linkage with terror-
ists, Bush used the existence of North Korea’s nuclear program, its attempts
to seek concessions from the United States, and the oppressive nature of its
regime to justify its inclusion in the “axis of evil” (Suskind 187). By the end of
major combat operations in Iraq, the standard for what qualified as a terrorist
state expanded farther. States no longer had to actually possess weapons of

mass destruction to fall within the parameters of the terrorist coalition. Bush
announced, “Any outlaw regime that has ties to terrorist groups and seeks or
possesses weapons of mass destruction is a great danger to the civilized
world—and will be confronted” (White House 1 May 2003: 3, emphasis
mine). The evidentiary standard for qualifying as a terrorist state became less
rigorous as the United States had difficulty proving that Iraq met a more
stringent benchmark.
The dilution of the standard was troubling for members of Congress
charged with the oversight of many of the administration’s actions in Iraq and
Afghanistan. Bob Graham, the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence
Committee, became dismayed that the administration had elevated Iraq into a
critical front in the war on terror despite its lack of connection to the events of
9/11, its lack of involvement in harboring the terrorists who were, and its
inability to have militarily usable weapons of mass destruction for five years
(Woodward, Plan of Attack 193–94). Graham concluded, “Now, we’re defin-
ing a terrorist state as those states which might have the ability to provide
weapons of mass destruction, even it they themselves are not engaged in ter-
rorist activities or providing sanctuary” (qtd. in ibid., 194). The relaxed
benchmarks for terrorist states, coupled with ready application of the terrorist
label to a variety of nonstate actors, made the Bush administration’s approach
the most expansive terrorist labeling strategy in the history of the nation.
Publicly, the Bush administration handled the case of the anthrax letters
in a dramatically different way. Officials were far more reluctant to label the
anthrax letters acts of terrorism, as the example of Robert Stevens, the first
victim of the anthrax poisoning in 2001, demonstrates. His doctors con-
cluded that in all likelihood, Stevens became infected with inhalation anthrax
on September 19 (Parker and Sternberg). For the remainder of September
and into the middle of October, administration spokespersons avoided using
the terrorism label to depict the cause of Steven’s death. Instead, Acting US
Attorney Guy Lewis cautiously reported, “We have not made any premature
conclusions” (qtd. in “Third Person Shows Exposure”). After a second
Florida resident tested positive for inhalation anthrax, Attorney General
John Ashcroft encouraged the public to wait for the conclusions of the med-
ical experts before giving in to concerns about bioterrorism. Ashcroft
announced, “We are relying on the Centers for Disease Control and health
authorities to provide expertise which we do not have. And, very frankly, we
are unable to make a conclusive statement about the nature of this as either
an attack or an occurrence, absent more definitive laboratory and other inves-
tigative returns” (Federal News Service 8 Oct. 2001: 2). Experts, not the gov-
ernment or the public at large, would make the determination of whether the
anthrax letters constituted acts of terrorism.
Not until the week of October 16, when Barbara Rosenberg of the
Federation of American Scientists, the biowarfare convention specialist Jan
van Aken, and the ex-UN inspector Richard Spertzel concluded that the
strain of anthrax was homegrown, did the administration shift its public
strategy. Bush, Ashcroft, and FBI Director Robert Mueller each dubbed
anyone (past or present) sending anthrax through the mail a terrorist
(Ashcroft, Federal News Service 16 Oct. 2001: 1; Mueller, FDCH Transcripts
18 Oct. 2001: 5; G. W. Bush, FDCH Transcripts 20 Oct. 2001: 1). Gone
were broader concerns about those who might aid, abet, finance, or other-
wise tolerate terrorists in their midst. The government immediately limited
the scope of responsibility for the letters to a single person. Ashcroft
announced, “[T]he FBI has determined that they believe all four of the
anthrax letters have come from a single individual [. . .] it’s an individual
accustomed to working with toxic and dangerous chemistry. It’s an individual
who has certain technical skills and capabilities, and a variety of other things”
(Federal News Service 26 Nov. 2001: 4). By treating the anthrax terrorist as a
loner unconnected to a broader international network of terrorist actors, the
administration deflected fears of an international bioterrorism assault.
While the administration limited those responsible for the anthrax let-
ters, it was expansive in its approach to those allegedly engaged in anthrax
hoaxes. Mueller dramatically illustrated the widespread nature of the prob-
lem by placing his agency’s workload in a historical perspective: “Now, in an
average year the FBI handles approximately 250 assessments and responses
involving chemical or biological agents or other weapons of mass destruction.
Over the past 18 days alone, we’ve handled more than 3,300, including 2,500
involving suspected anthrax threats alone” (FDCH Transcripts 18 Oct. 2001:
5). Bush officials justified severe punishment for any perpetrator of such
hoaxes as a necessary step to stop substantial waste of the government’s finite
resources for fighting bioterrorism. Diverting attention away from the
unsolved cases of the actual anthrax letters, the administration’s strategy refo-
cused public attention on a problem it could more readily solve (i.e., hoaxes).
Taken as a whole, the administration employed a two-pronged strategy
for handling the terrorist threats of September 2001. In the case of the
attacks of September 11, officials reflected and even fueled public fears by
employing the terrorist label without hesitation and by broadening the label’s
usage to all individuals, groups, or states associated with anyone who perpe-
trated acts of terrorism. In the case of the anthrax letters, officials attempted
to contain the public’s reaction by initially refusing to confirm the terrorist
nature of the act and then by diverting public attention to more solvable
problems. Consistently, the administration framed the attacks of September
11 as the dominant issue of public deliberation, while allowing the anthrax
attacks to recede into the technical sphere of medical expertise. Within such
a context, it is perhaps unsurprising that the attacks of September 11 became

the focus of the administration’s terrorist narrative.
THE TERRORIST NARRATIVE
Like his Republican predecessors, Bush employed the rubric of the Cold
War narrative as the basic framework for the story his administration told
about terrorism. Once again, spokespersons in the executive branch retrofit-
ted the narrative to accommodate the exigencies of terrorists’ newfound
effectiveness. Despite the reinvention of the public strategy, the fundamental
tenets of the conventional Cold War narrative reemerged and provided
rhetorical continuity for members of Bush’s political base.
Bush officials described the scene they encountered upon assuming
office to be that of a fragile place grown complacent with previous victories.
Since the demise of the Soviet Union, Bush’s top aides lamented that
America and the world community had let their guards down against emerg-
ing threats. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld insisted, “Since the end of
the Cold War, there’s been a relaxation of tension [. . .]—it’s had a lot of
effects. It’s led to proliferation. It’s led to the movement towards asymmetri-
cal threats, as opposed to more conventional threats. One of the other effects
has been it has had an effect on how people handle classified information”
(Federal News Service 12 Sept. 2001: 1). Official spokespersons portrayed
weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, and breached security as the unfor-
tunate byproducts of a world overly satisfied with its former victories. They
pointed to the United Nations as a representative example of complacency,
citing the organization’s failure to force Iraq’s compliance with its security
mandates for twelve years.
Richard Clarke, Bush’s head of counterterrorism, argued that it was the
Bush camp, not its predecessors, who were complacent in the face of the ter-
rorist threat. Clarke maintained that during the Clinton/Bush transition,
“the Bush appointees distrusted anything invented by the Clinton adminis-
tration and anything of a multilateral nature. [. . .] The new Bush focus in
early 2001 was on confronting China, withdrawing from multilateral obliga-
tions, and spending much more money on an antimissile defense system—
not on looking into al Qaeda’s financial network” (Against All Enemies 196).
In Clarke’s view the administration’s misplaced priorities removed the
focused attention needed to prevent the looming terrorist attacks planned
against the United States.5
The Bush narrative held that the 9/11 scene jolted America out of its
misguided comfort garnered from the Cold War victory. Ashcroft
announced that the nation was now “awakened to danger” (Federal News
Service 8 Nov. 2001: 1). For Bush, 9/11 was a key historical moment that
changed the nation’s defense strategy. On the one-year anniversary of 9/11
events, he reasoned, “There is a line in our time, and in every time, between
those who believe all men are created equal, and those who believe that some
men and women and children are expendable in the pursuit of power. There
is a line in our time, and in every time, between the defenders of human lib-
erty and those who seek to master the minds and souls of others. Our gener-
ation has now heard history’s call, and we will answer it” (G. W. Bush, White
House 11 Sept. 2002: 1). The attacks on the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon emerged as the starting point for the Bush narrative.
The choice of 9/11 as the beginning point for the terrorism story had
several advantages for the Bush administration. First, the strategy allowed
the administration to claim that all of its subsequent actions were defensive,
rather than offensive. Bush explained why in a speech to the FBI Academy:
“As we wage this war abroad, we must remember where it began, here on our
homeland. In this new kind of war, the enemy’s objective is to strike us on
our own territory and make our people live in fear. This danger places all of
you, every person here and the people you work with, on the frontlines of the
war on terror” (FDCH Transcripts 15 Sept. 2003: 3). Lacking public consen-
sus on the strategy of preemptive war, the administration’s resurrected a
claim of self-defense grounded in the 9/11 attacks on the homeland.
The administration broadly applied the self-defense doctrine by includ-
ing the entire international community in its depiction of the scene.
According to the Bush narrative, the attacks on the Pentagon and the World
Trade Center had demonstrated that all countries around the globe were
fragile due to their potential vulnerability to terrorism. Oceans could no
longer protect nations from terrorist violence. Bush presented the precarious
state of the global community in repeated statements like the one he made
before the Australian parliament: “No country can live peacefully in a world
that the terrorists would make for us. And no people are immune from the
sudden violence that can come to an office building or an airplane or a night-
club or a city bus” (White House 27 Oct. 2003: 1–2). While some nations had
not yet experienced the devastation of a terrorist attack, the possibility that
terrorists could strike anywhere rendered every nation qualified to assert a
legitimate claim of self-defense.
A second benefit of the narrative’s starting point was its refocus of public
attention away from the government’s handling of threat assessment prior to
the 9/11 attacks. Not until 2004, when the 9/11 Commission began public
hearings, did the American electorate concentrate in a focused way on why
the FBI, CIA, and White House had failed to prevent the catastrophic
results. Even when damaging revelations did become public (i.e., the FBI
field memo warning of improper conduct by enrollees in the nation’s flight
schools, the Justice Department’s choice not to increase counterterrorism

funding in the high threat period, and the reports of al Qaeda sleeper cells
within US borders), the various congressional committees and bipartisan
commissions discussed such breakdowns within the context of post-Cold
War complacency under both the Bush and Clinton administrations.
Finally, using 9/11 as the beginning point of the narrative bolstered the
case for the American public to accept expanded powers for the commander
in chief. Bush compared the events of 9/11 to two key historical moments
when the United States had been under attack: the War of 1812 and Pearl
Harbor (FDCH Transcripts 15 Nov. 2001: 2). In these earlier wars, the com-
mander in chief had assumed broadened powers to defend the nation. By
treating 9/11 as a similarly crucial historical moment, rather than as a cul-
mination of a multiyear war with al Qaeda, the Bush administration pre-
pared the public to accept an immediate expansion of presidential powers
and prerogatives.
Reinforcing the need for broadened powers, the administration used
9/11 to demonstrate that terrorists were both willing and able to use weapons
of mass destruction. As Cheney declared before the Veterans of Foreign
Wars, “Nine-eleven and its aftermath awakened this nation to danger, to the
true ambitions of the global terror network, and to the reality that weapons
of mass destruction are being sought by determined enemies who would not
hesitate to use them against us” (“Full Text” 2). The administration’s use of
9/11 reconfigured conventional understandings of weapons of mass destruc-
tion (i.e., chemical, biological, nuclear, and radiological weapons) into any
act of violence that could potentially result in a high loss of life. Protecting
the nation’s security in the context of a more broadly defined notion of
WMD justified less restrained thinking about response options.
Having emphasized a fragile setting, the Bush administration presented
an enemy poised to capitalize on that vulnerability. Remaining consistent
with the constraints of the Cold War narrative while doing so, however,
posed a challenge. How could the administration make a convincing case
that the world’s terrorists in 2001, like their Communist predecessors, had a
goal of worldwide conquest? While few would dispute that al Qaeda had
demonstrated its destructive power by committing spectacular acts within
American borders, the conclusion that such acts were designed to accomplish
a world takeover were more tenuous.
The Bush narrative implied the terrorists’ ambitions by emphasizing the
global dispersal of the al Qaeda network. US spokespersons reiterated that al
Qaeda members moved frequently through more than sixty countries world-
wide and that they lacked any stable homeland. According to top administra-
tion officials, terrorists had “no borders” (G. W. Bush, FDCH Transcripts 17
Sept. 2001: 3) and had “no geography” (Powell, FDCH Transcripts 27 Sept.
2001: 2). To emphasize the wide-ranging reach of terrorist organizations,

the administration catalogued attacks occurring around the globe. When
speaking to the American Legion, for example, Bush mentioned attacks in
Bali, Mombasa, Riyadh, Baghdad, and Jerusalem (FDCH Transcripts 1 Sept.
2003: 2). Before the United Nations, he repeated his earlier list but added
Casablanca and Jakarta (FDCH Transcripts 29 Sept. 2003: 1). Terrorists’ lack
of focus in any one region or state created the impression that their objectives
were broader than those of conflicts between traditional nation-states.
The administration emphasized the terrorists’ previous seizure of sover-
eign governments to underscore their ambitious global objectives.
Spokespersons focused on the experience of the Taliban government as a
warning, announcing that bin Laden and al Qaeda had come “for one single
purpose; to invade that country, be a foreign presence, a hostile presence in
Afghanistan so they could conduct terrorist activities around the world”
(Powell, FDCH Transcripts 18 Oct. 2001: 4). In the administration’s public
account, however, terrorists wanted more than Afghanistan. Terrorism, for
Bush, was more generally “a threat to established governments” (FDCH
Transcripts 19 Oct. 2001: 2) and “an enemy of all law, all liberty, all morality,
all religion” (FDCH Transcripts 11 Oct. 2001: 3-4). Free nations were partic-
ularly vulnerable. Bush pronounced, “[Terrorists] hate freedom. They hate
free nations” (FDCH Transcripts 24 Nov. 2003: 2). The Bush narrative main-
tained that terrorists intended to destroy any nation that valued freedom or
supported the existing world order.
While Bush’s approach generally evoked the conventions of the Cold
War enemy characterization, a key distinction emerged. In the Bush por-
trayal, the goal of the terrorists was realizing global destruction, rather than
achieving world conquest. While the administration built the public case that
al Qaeda had designs on replacing democratic governments with Islamic
regimes, such reasoning was not readily applicable to its other front in the
war on terror, namely, Iraq. Saddam Hussein’s secular leadership, when con-
sidered within the context of the international collective of terrorist regimes,
undercut the claim that all terrorists had a united enemy goal of expanding
Islamic regimes.
By highlighting the cooperative terrorist ventures between al Qaeda and
Iraq, the Bush team had a public strategy that could resolve the disparate
intentions of those encompassed under the terrorist label. Senior officials
made public statements touting the linkage between Saddam Hussein and al
Qaeda after receiving a briefing by an unofficial Pentagon intelligence cell on
September 16, 2002 (Coman 2). Spokespersons emphasized the centralized
training of the terrorist operatives in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Rumsfeld
characterized the Afghani training camps as an environment that nurtured
multiple acts of global violence when he noted, “[W]hile the Afghani people
live in poverty the terrorist oppressors spend millions of dollars training

people and sending them all over the globe to kill people (Federal New Service
13 Nov. 2001: 2). Bush claimed the Iraqi government was similarly engaging
in the training and harboring of the world’s most dangerous terrorists: “Iraq
is a part of the war on terror. Iraq is a country that has got terrorist ties. It’s a
country with wealth. It’s a country that trains terrorists, a country that could
arm terrorists” (Federal News Service 6 Mar. 2003: 3). As the United States
prepared for war against Iraq, the public apparently accepted that terrorists in
Afghanistan and Iraq constituted an integrated international collective. A
majority responded to pollsters stating they believed that Saddam Hussein
was “personally involved in the September 11 terror attacks” (as rptd. in K.
Phillips 311).
The characterization of a united global terrorist effort with designs to
destroy all free nations exaggerated the conclusions available from US intelli-
gence. Particularly questionable was the claim that members of al Qaeda and
Iraq were working in tandem to defeat the United States and its allies. After
examining intelligence relevant to the issue, the Staff Report of the 9/11
Commission concluded, “Bin Ladin is said to have requested space to estab-
lish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq
apparently never responded. There have been reports that contacts between
Iraq and al Qaeda also occurred after Bin Ladin had returned to
Afghanistan, but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative rela-
tionship. Two senior Bin Ladin associates have adamantly denied that any
ties existed between al Qaeda and Iraq. We have no credible evidence that
Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States” (National
Commission, “9/11 Commission Staff Statement No. 15” 6). After Bush
himself publicly critiqued the conclusion of the staff report as mistaken, the
commission requested and examined additional intelligence the administra-
tion believed supported the linkage. In its final report, the commission did
not waiver from the staff’s earlier finding. They found no “collaborative oper-
ational relationship” (66) and no evidence indicating “that Iraq cooperated
with al Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United
States” (ibid.).
The administration’s case for Saddam Hussein’s global ambitions, how-
ever, was not limited to his ties to a broader international terrorist network.
Reverting to the public claims of the first Bush administration, the current
Bush team reiterated that the Iraqi leader had goals of usurping control over
key oil reserves in the Middle East. Cheney laid out Hussein’s global inten-
tions: “What [Saddam] wants is time and more time to husband his
resources, to invest in the ongoing chemical and biological weapons program,
and to gain possession of nuclear arms. [. . .] Armed with an arsenal of these
weapons of terror, and seated atop ten percent of the world’s oil reserves,
Saddam Hussein could then be expected to seek domination of the entire

Middle East, take control of a great portion of the world’s energy supplies,
directly threaten America’s friends throughout the region, and subject the
United States or any other nation to nuclear blackmail” (“Full Text” 4). In
the administration’s narrative, Saddam Hussein would only be satisfied when
he became a dominant player in world politics. Recall of the 1990 invasion of
Kuwait helped underscore the Iraqi leader’s aggressive ambitions.
Establishing that Cold War Communists and modern-day terrorists
used comparable means to achieve their objectives was more straight forward.
The September 11 attacks dramatically illustrated the barbarism of al Qaeda.
While the Pentagon was arguably a military target, the inhabitants of the
World Trade Center and the passengers of the four airplanes were civilians.
Bush called the terrorists who committed the 9/11 attacks “evil-doers”
(FDCH Transcripts 17 Sept. 2001: 2) and “barbaric people” (3). He labeled
the Taliban in Afghanistan “one of the most repressive regimes in the history
of mankind” (Federal News Service 13 Nov. 2001: 4) and referred to Saddam
Hussein as a “homicidal dictator” (White House 7 Oct. 2002: 2). In the Bush
narrative, the terrorist enemy was an unimaginable evil dispersed throughout
the international community.
Spokespersons dramatized the barbarism by recalling specific atrocities
committed by the Afghan and Iraqi governments. Bush, in particular,
focused on the horrors experienced by women and children. He revealed that
in Afghanistan, “Women are executed in Kabul’s soccer stadium. They can
be beaten for wearing socks that are too thin” (Federal News Service 10 Oct.
2001: 3). In Iraq, the depicted depravity of the foreign leader was even more
extreme. Bush cataloged that on Saddam Hussein’s orders, “opponents have
been decapitated, wives and mothers of political opponents have been sys-
tematically raped as a method of intimidation, and political prisoners have
been forced to watch their own children being tortured” (White House 7 Oct.
2002: 5). Repeated mentions of Saddam’s prior uses of chemical weapons in
Iraq and Iran further reinforced the claim that the Iraqi leader lacked regard
for innocent civilians.
Like the Communists before them, the terrorists in the Bush narrative
subjugated the people residing in their communities. Spokespersons claimed
that both Iraq and Afghanistan had denied rights of self-determination to
their citizens. Focusing on the dictatorial nature of the Taliban regime and
the tyrannical leadership of Saddam Hussein, the narrative maintained that
the citizens of those two nations had no hope for free elections without out-
side intervention. Bush defined the general nature of the enemy in the war
on terror when he noted, “The terrorists rely on the death of innocent people
to create the conditions of fear that, therefore, will cause people to lose their
will” (FDCH Transcripts 3 Nov. 2003: 8). The characterization recalled a
theme prominent in Vietnam War era: the absence of individual liberty led
to a loss of hope that, in turn, produced more terrorists.
Bush echoed the final enemy characteristic in the Cold War narrative by
depicting all terrorists as untrustworthy. Bush was most blunt and unequivo-
cal about the Iraqi regime’s willingness to lie. In the buildup to the US-Iraq
military operations, he declared, “These are not the actions of a regime that
is disarming. These are the actions of a regime engaged in a willful charade.
These are the actions of a regime that systematically and deliberately is defy-
ing the world” (FDCH Transcripts Nov. 2003:1). Claiming to have no incli-
nation to trust the leaderships of either Iraq or Afghanistan, Bush dismissed
claims by both governments that they had taken the necessary actions to
rejoin the civilized international community.
Ultimately, the Bush administration’s own trustworthiness fell into
question with regard to Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Despite a year-
long search by US weapons inspectors in the aftermath of major combat
operations, no biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons were found.6 The
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence determined that the administra-
tion’s intelligence assessments regarding Iraqi WMD were flawed. In July
2004, the committee determined that the CIA had misled members of the
administration by exaggerating the Iraqi threat. The committee’s report con-
cluded, “The major key judgments in the National Intelligence Estimate,
particularly that Iraq ‘is reconstituting its nuclear program,’ ‘has chemical and
biological weapons,’ was developing an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)
‘probably intended to deliver biological warfare agents,’ and that ‘all key
aspects—research & development (R&D), production, and weaponization—
of Iraq’s offensive biological weapons (BW) program are active and that most
elements are larger and more advanced than they were before the Gulf War,’
either overstated, or were not supported by, the underlying intelligence
reporting provided to the Committee” (Select Committee 32). The commit-
tee cited the CIA’s failure to communicate its own uncertainty to policy
makers, a culture of group-think, a tendency to base assessments on prior
judgments without appropriate acknowledgment of their own uncertainties,
inadequate supervision, weaknesses in human intelligence, and the agency’s
abuse of its position relative to other US intelligence agencies as the reasons
for the flawed results (34–44).
Over time, evidence began to accumulate suggesting that Bush and his
primary spokespersons on Iraq may have known that their public statements
about the WMD program were exaggerated. Bush’s former head of counter-
terrorism revealed that the administration knew its evidence of Iraq’s chemi-
cal and biological capability was dated as it built the case for military
intervention (Clarke, Against All Enemies 266–67). Bush’s former treasury
secretary unveiled that the administration had knowingly employed startling
public exaggerations of intelligence to relate the story of Iraq’s weapons of

mass destruction program in late August 2002 (as rept. in Suskind 324–25).
The secret notes of a British prime minister’s meeting held July 23, 2002
reported on recent talks between the United States and a senior British intel-
ligence official related to Iraq. The notes read, “There was a perceptive shift
in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitible. Bush wanted Saddam,
through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD.
But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.” (Rycroft,
as qtd. in Manning 1) Evidence from key figures in the administration and
those working for key US allies confirmed that the US leadership was
manipulating intelligence to build the case that war with Iraq was justified.
Recent information related to the inner workings of the Bush adminis-
tration raises more questions about the veracity of public statements made
by official spokespersons. Internal debates regarding the credibility of infor-
mants charging the existence of mobile biology labs, the expressed doubts of
CIA and Air Force intelligence related to the biologically armed unmanned
aerial vehicles, and the call by the staff of the National Security Council for
new intelligence to bolster the claim that Hussein had chemical, biological,
and nuclear weapons only days before Bush’s State of the Union address
reinforced charges that the administration was misinforming the public
(Pincus 1–3). Facing public charges from the International Atomic Energy
Association that the administration had knowingly used falsified intelli-
gence information in the public case for Iraq’s WMD program, the Bush
administration retracted the following statement from Bush’s State of the
Union address: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein
recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa” (Federal News
Service 28 Jan. 2003).
A report compiled by the Minority Staff of the US House of
Representatives Committee on Government Reform attempted to summa-
rize the totality of misinformation espoused by Bush official spokespersons.
It concluded, “In 125 separate appearances, [President Bush, Vice President
Cheney, Secretary Rumsfeld, Secretary Powell, and National Security
Advisor Rice] made 11 misleading statements about the urgency of Iraq’s
threat, 81 misleading statements about Iraq’s nuclear activities, 84 misleading
statements about Iraq’s chemical and biological capabilities, and 61 mislead-
ing statements about Iraq’s relationship with al Qaeda” (Special
Investigations Division 30). With substantial media attention devoted to the
credibility of the statements, the Bush administration’s questionable accuracy
blurred the conventional distinctions between the enemy and hero character
of the Cold War narrative.
Returning once again to the foundations of the Cold War narrative, the
Bush approach featured the US as the hero character needed to repel the
dangerous enemy. As before, America had a responsibility to defend freedom

and liberty around the globe. Bush defined his war on terrorism by saying,
“This is a fight for freedom” (FDCH Transcripts 17 Sept. 2001: 4). He
evoked the long-standing role of America in encouraging and preserving lib-
erty in the international community, calling the United States the “defender
of liberty all over the world” (Federal News Service 15 Oct. 2001: 1). In line
with America’s historic mission, governmental spokespersons repeatedly
promised rights of self-determination for the peoples of both Afghanistan
and Iraq.
The administration’s strategy for achieving the spread of freedom, how-
ever, was at odds with conventional portrayals of the Cold War narrative.
Bush’s publicly announced plan of regime change arguably did not constitute
a right of self-determination for the citizens of Iraq or Afghanistan. Instead,
the approach was vulnerable to the charge it was simply external interference
by the United States into the internal affairs of two foreign states. The Bush
approach expanded the conventional mission of the Cold War narrative to a
proactive mode of spreading, rather than defending, freedom and liberty
around the globe. Bush’s strategy hearkened back to the campaign for the
promotion of worldwide democracy that Woodrow Wilson had undertaken
after World War I. Bush explicated why such extremes were needed in the
cause of global freedom and liberty. In remarks delivered before the National
Endowment of Democracy, he insisted,
There are, however, essential principles common to every success-
ful society in every culture. Successful societies limit the power of
the state and the power of the military, so that governments
respond to the will of the people and not the will of the elite.
Successful societies protect freedom with the consistent and impar-
tial rule of law, instead of selectively applying the law to punish
political opponents. Successful societies allow room for healthy
civic institutions, for political parties and labor unions and inde-
pendent newspapers and broadcast media. Successful societies
guarantee religious liberty, the right to serve and honor God with-
out fear of persecution. Successful societies privatize their
economies and secure the rights of property. They prohibit and
punish official corruption and invest in the health and education of
their people. They recognize the rights of women. And instead of
directing hatred and resentment against others, successful societies
appeal to the hopes of their own people. (FDCH Transcripts 6 Nov.
2003: 6)
Since neither the Taliban nor the regime of Saddam Hussein met Bush’s
standards for a successful society, they had to be removed.
Like his Cold War predecessors, Bush depicted America’s mission to be

a divine calling. Maintaining that the events of 9/11 had prompted reexami-
nation by the entire American citizenry, Bush concluded, “Our deepest
national conviction is that every life is precious, because every life is the gift
of a Creator who intended us to live in liberty and equality” (White House 11
Sept. 2002: 1). Bush reserved the religious sanction for only those that
fought on the side of the United States in the war on terror. He announced,
“The course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome certain. Freedom
and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God
is not neutral between them” (FDCH Transcripts 20 Sept 2001: 9). Bush bor-
rowed from the teachings of Book of Revelation, Isaiah, Job, Jeremiah, and
Matthew to announce the US attack on Afghanistan (Lincoln 30–32). At
the end of major combat operations in Iraq, he quoted the prophet Isaiah:
“To the captives, ‘come out,’—and to those in the darkness, ‘be free’” (White
House 1 May 2003: 3). Devoted to the side of the divine, Bush remained
publicly confident the coalition would prevail.
The Bush administration’s implementation of the hero’s divine mission
reengaged the long-standing debate over whether crime or war constituted
the most appropriate metaphor for the nation’s terrorism strategy. War,
rather that criminal prosecution, became the chief means the Bush camp
publicly espoused as the appropriate response to terrorism. Speaking before a
joint inquiry of the Senate and House intelligence committees, Deputy
National Security Advisor Steve Hadley announced that the administration
had made sweeping changes in US terrorism policy that diminished an
emphasis on crime. The shift occurred on September 10, 2001, after the
administration had completed a senior-level review of the nation’s approach
to al Qaeda (National Commission, Final Report 214). Hadley announced
that the nation had to “move beyond the policy of containment, criminal
prosecution, and limited retaliation for specific attacks, toward attempting to
‘roll back’ Al Qaeda” (Pincus and Milbank 1). The new goal was to eliminate
groups with a global reach that had the ability to conduct terrorist attacks
against the United States. The shrinking weight of the crime metaphor in
the nation’s terrorism response had implications for both law enforcement
and the nation’s security apparatuses.
In the legal arena, the new stance weakened many long-standing rights
of alleged terrorists. At home, security concerns trumped conventional due
process rights of defendants, as institutionalized in the Patriot Act. The gov-
ernment held captive those suspected of being in collusion with terrorists, of
having information about terrorists, and of contemplating future terrorist
acts. Within the mantra of “get terrorists off the street before they can harm
more Americans” (Ashcroft, Federal News Service 8 Nov. 2001: 2), the US
government detained hundreds of potential suspects for months without
affording them the right to a preliminary judicial hearing and without notifi-
cation of the charges to be lodged against them.
The Bush administration was more stringent when prioritizing security
concerns over traditional legal safeguards for suspected foreign terrorists.
Bush established military tribunals for foreigners suspected of terrorism that
fell well short of the legal protections afforded by civilian courts. John
Ashcroft explained the rationale for the shift: “[F]oreign terrorists do not
deserve the protections of the American Constitution, particularly when
there could be very serious and important reasons related to not bringing
them back to the United States for justice” (Federal New Service 14 Nov.
2001: 6). Foreign captives held at Guantanamo Bay were imprisoned for
more than three years with no charges filed against them. Each faced the
prospect of a US military jury with the power to impose punishments, up to
and including the death penalty.
The administration classified alleged al Qaeda members captured in
Afghanistan as “unlawful combatants” or “battlefield detainees” to highlight
their non-prisoner of war status in a different type of war. The move gar-
nered the public wrath of the International Committee of the Red Cross
(ICRC) because it opened the possibility that the government would not
extend legal and human rights protections normally afforded to prisoners of
war (Ford, “Fate of ‘Detainees’ ” 1). A March 2003 report by Pentagon
lawyers assessing the interrogation rules employed at Guantanamo Bay
demonstrated that the ICRC’s concerns were warranted. It concluded, “It is
the position of the U.S. Government that none of the provisions of the
Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War of
August 12, 1949 [. . .] apply to al Qaida detainees because, inter alia, al Qaida
is not a High Contracting Party to the Convention” (Working Group
Report 4). The same report concluded, “[T]he Torture Statute does not
apply to the conduct of U.S. personnel at GTMO” (7). The Pentagon
report, as well as other documents released by the US government, left no
doubt that conventional interpretations of the rules of warfare had changed.
A major challenge to the administration’s approach presented itself with
the capture of the American Taliban fighter John Walker Lindh. Northern
Alliance forces holding Lindh discovered his nationality in the aftermath of a
prison riot in Mazar-e-Sharif, an action that resulted in the first combat-
related American death in Afghanistan military maneuvers. After the US
government received notification of the capture, Cheney floated a public
interpretation that would have denied Lindh his domestic status, rendering
him nothing more than a foreign terrorist. He told NBC’s Meet the Press, “I
certainly consider him to have been a traitor to our country” (as qtd. in
“Walker Talking”). Perhaps cognizant of the political fallout likely to accom-
pany the stripping of an American citizen’s civil rights, Cheney was quick to
add, “But you know that’s not a decision, with respect to the legal act that
will be taken, that I’m going to be making” (ibid.).
The Lindh case tested the persuasive limits of the administration’s new
legal standards. While many members of the American public were willing
to accept forfeiture of the rights of foreign terrorists, application of the con-
cept to American citizens was more controversial. A Newsweek poll taken
shortly after Lindh’s capture reported forty-one percent of Americans
believed he should be charged with treason and put on trial for fighting with
the enemy. Another forty-two percent said he should be tried only if there
was specific evidence of him fighting against Americans (Soloway et al. 30).
With the country divided on the proper approach to take, the administration
proceeded cautiously.
The administration was noticeably reluctant to label Lindh a terrorist.
Initially, Bush called him a “poor fellow” who “has been misled.” (as qtd. in
Soloway et al. 36). Over time, the administration drew a sharp public dis-
tinction between the rights afforded to Lindh and those reserved for other
captured foreigners alleged to be terrorists. Wolfowitz insisted, “One thing
for sure is we want to make sure as an American citizen that he is treated
fairly and in proper judicial manner” (ibid.). Behind the scenes the adminis-
tration implemented a somewhat different approach. Lindh was tied naked
to a stretcher during questioning, he was not advised of his rights, and his
request for access to a lawyer and to immediate medical attention went
unheeded for a lengthy period of time. A US Army intelligence officer
reported that he had received advice from the secretary of defense’s counsel
to “take the gloves off” (Buncombe and Penketh 1) when questioning Lindh.
The results of the interrogation were cabled back to Washington every hour
(ibid.). Lindh eventually pled guilty to reduced charges in exchange for a
sentence of twenty years and an agreement to drop claims that US personnel
had tortured him.
The administration’s new efforts to prioritize security needs over
detainees’ rights became public in an even more negative way in early 2003.
On January 13, 2003, Joseph Darby, a military policeman at Abu Ghraib,
turned over a CD of photographs to support his allegations of wrongdoing to
the US Army’s Investigation Division. The photos, as well as subsequent
investigations, revealed that military police and interrogators had used stress
and duress techniques, acts of sexual humiliation, induced anxiety from
threatening attack dogs, sleep deprivation, isolation for more than thirty
days, exposure to temperature extremes, death threats, and deadly physical
blows in various prisons and other CIA-monitored security locations. An
army investigation headed by General Paul J. Kern announced that from
Sepember 20 to December 13, 2003, fifty-four military intelligence, military
police, medical soldiers, and contractors “had some degree of culpability in
the abuse” (Garamone 1). By 2005, at least 28 foreign detainees had died
while being held in US custody.
The subsequent international firestorm resulted in the ICRC concluding
that the actions were “tantamount to torture” (as rptd. in Barry, Hirsh, and
Isikoff 3). US military lawyers known as JAGs at Guantanamo objected to
the interrogation techniques, but Pentagon officials ignored their requests for
a changed policy (Meek 1). The Bush administration maintained that the
government had never supported the use of torture either in Iraq or
Guantanamo Bay. Members of the press, various human rights organiza-
tions, and investigating congressional committees disagreed, positing that
the administration’s new rendering of interrogation techniques constituted a
violation of the Geneva Conventions, as well as other laws related to torture
and inhumane treatment where the United States was a signatory.
The administration’s legal memoranda released during the related con-
gressional investigations reveal that the elevation of the war frame for fight-
ing terrorism redefined interpretations of how traditional war crimes should
be handled. The Pentagon’s legal opinion, for example, narrowed the stan-
dard for torture to cases where the person suffered prolonged mental harm
(such as PTSD or chronic depression), where the person was subject to a
threat of imminent death (not a vague reference to what might happen
remote in time), or when the use of drugs penetrated “to the core of an indi-
vidual’s ability to perceive the world around him, substantially interfering
with his cognitive abilities or fundamentally alter his personality” (Working
Group Report 15). Besides redefining conventional, international under-
standings of torture, the legal opinion authorized the commander in chief to
use torture when necessary to protect the nation’s security (20–24).
Spokespersons for the Bush administration have insisted that they nar-
rowly applied their reinterpretation of the Geneva Conventions to members
of al Qaeda and other nonstate actors in the war on terrorism. Nevertheless,
members of the military accused of conducting torture in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib
prison have defended their actions as being in accordance with the new
administration guidelines. Paul Bergrin, the defense lawyer for Staff Sgt.
Javal S. Davis, told his military court, “One of the last words my client heard
before being deployed was the president of the United States saying this is a
war on terrorism and the Geneva Conventions do not apply” (as qtd. in
Kaplow A3). The Kern investigation confirmed that abuse occurred because
of confusion about the law and policy of the United States, but concluded
that no direct complicity in the abuse happened above the level of the
brigade (as rptd. in Garamone 1). The administration publicly retracted
much of its new latitude for interrogation procedures in the week prior to the
confirmation hearings of Anthony Gonzalez to become US Attorney
General. As the author of the memos justifying more extreme interrogation
practices, Gonzalez nevertheless underwent intense public scrutiny of his

willingness to condone the torture of terror suspects.
While the Bush narrative narrowed conventional interpretations of the
rights of the accused, it substantially broadened the president’s war-fighting
prerogatives. Federal spending for defense, homeland security, and interna-
tional affairs rose by more than fifty percent from FY 2001 to FY 2004
(National Commission, Final Report 361). More dramatic, however, was a
public shift in how the nation would engage the terrorist enemy. The admin-
istration defended the need for preemptive war against alleged terrorist actors.
Donald Rumsfeld explained the reasoning behind the shift from defensive to
offensive war fighting: “The reality is that a terrorist can attack at any time in
any place using any technique, and it is physically impossible for a free people
to defend in every place at every time against every technique. Now what does
that mean? It means [. . .] that we have to take this battle, this war to the ter-
rorists, where they are. And the best defense is an effective offense in this
case, and that means they have to be rooted out” (FDCH Transcripts 16 Sept.
2001: 3). The administration’s use of preemptive war in Iraq constituted an
incremental, but important, step from the nation’s previous covert preemptive
military actions against terrorists. Now the public doctrine of preemptive war
placed all state and nonstate actors on alert that the United States would be
the aggressor in its quest to quell all potential terrorist activities.
As the administration engaged in an unprecedented expansion of com-
mander-in-chief powers, it relied on the America’s historical narratives to
publicly justify its response to terrorism. In particular, the Bush administra-
tion resurrected strategies of the nation’s founders struggling to defeat the
American Indians (Winkler 85–105). In the early years of the new republic,
the nation’s leadership considered the conquest of barbaric savages a neces-
sary step toward a superior, civilized culture (Onuf 23–33). To achieve the
goal, Thomas Jefferson initially demanded assimilation or expulsion of the
tribal residents. Jefferson, writing to William Henry Harrison in 1803, made
the strategy explicit: “[The Indians] will in time either incorporate with us as
citizens of the United States, or remove beyond the Mississippi. [. . .] Should
any tribe be foolhardy enough to take up the hatchet at any time, the seizing
the whole country of that tribe, and driving them across the Mississippi, as
the only condition of peace, would be an example to others, and a further-
ance of our final consolidation” (as qtd. in Prucha 23). Jefferson’s forced
choice of assimilation or removal became insufficient over time for achieving
the nation’s objectives. As the US secretary of the interior argued in 1851,
“The policy of removal [. . .] must necessarily be abandoned; and the only
alternatives left are to civilize or exterminate them” (as qtd. in Wilson 289).
The combination of assimilation, removal, and extermination emerged as the
means for handling the nation’s Indians.
The Bush administration’s public approach to the war on terrorism bor-

rowed from each of these three strategies. Initially, the administration
offered the option of assimilation. Foreign governments previously associated
with terrorist groups received the chance to change their behavior and join
the other members of civilized society. Powell spoke of the benefits foreign
states would receive for accepting the US offer of amnesty when he stated,
“We have designated those [who harbor and aid terrorism] as sponsors of
terrorism [. . .] it is not in their interest to continue acting in this way,
because they will risk further isolation and increasing pressure if they partici-
pate in such activities. And hopefully the message will get through and
they’ll start to change past patterns of behavior” (Federal News Service 21 Sept
2001: 3). Bush used multiple public forums to present the Taliban with the
choice of assimilation, an option he conceptualized as turning over bin
Laden and the other top lieutenants of al Qaeda. He similarly offered
Saddam Hussein the opportunity to fully comply with the UN resolutions
imposed after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. The choice was straightforward:
either for or against the US war on terrorism.
For those who failed to recognize the value of assimilation, the option of
removal awaited them. The task of the United States, as Rumsfeld defined it,
was “to root out the global terrorist networks—not just in Afghanistan but
wherever they are—and to ensure that they cannot threaten the American
people or our way of life” (Federal News Service 1 Nov. 2001: 2).
Administration officials relied on a number of euphemisms to demonstrate
their commitment to removing the terrorists. Among the oft-repeated
phrases reminiscent of the colonial period were “rooting them out,” “draining
the swamp,” “smoking them out,” and “getting them running.” Governments
who chose to support terrorists faced a similar fate of removal. American
interests, according to Rumsfeld, were “to help the people of [Afghanistan]
get rid of the foreign invaders who have come in and taken over a major
chunk of their country” (Federal News Service 12 Oct. 2001: 6). The same
strategy appeared in the president’s justification for the war with Iraq. Bush
offered Saddam Hussein the opportunity to leave Iraq in exile as he
announced, “[R]egime change in Iraq is the only certain means of removing
a great danger to our nation” (White House 7 Oct 2002: 4). Rendered illegiti-
mate by their support for terrorism in the administration’s narrative, the gov-
ernments of Iraq and Afghanistan had to yield the lands they occupied to
others willing to assimilate into the civilized world community.
As before in the nation’s history, removal alone did not qualify as a suf-
ficient strategy for the defeat of terrorism. When asked by a reporter “Do
you want bin Laden dead?” Bush’s recalled an old poster from the American
West: “Wanted, Dead or Alive” (FDCH Transcripts 17 Nov. 2001: 2). While
the single remark does not constitute proof by itself that the administration
considered extermination, the inference was far from isolated in official dis-
course. Consider Rumsfeld’s insistence that the United States would have a
“long and sustained campaign to liquidate terrorist networks [. . .]” (Federal
News Service 18 Oct. 2001: 1; emphasis mine), or Bush’s stated belief that
“the only way to defeat terrorism as a threat to our way of life is to stop it,
eliminate it and destroy it where it grows” (FDCH Transcripts 20 Sept. 2001:
6; emphasis mine). US allies in the region, most notably the Afghani minis-
ter for frontier and tribal affairs, announced that Eastern Afghanistan would
undergo an “Al-Qaeda cleansing” campaign (Smucker 1). Even Bush’s infa-
mous antithesis that the United States should bring justice to the terrorists or
bring the terrorists to justice suggested a form of vigilantism that threatened
the continued existence of the American nemesis.
The Bush administration publicly denied that their use of the early
republic’s rhetorical strategy meant that they intended to reinvent America’s
manifest destiny doctrine. In Afghanistan, Rumsfeld insisted, “The United
States covets no one else’s land—certainly not Afghanistan. We’re there to
do a job. We’re there to root out the terrorists and the terrorist networks and
to see that the Taliban government who invited them in and has been har-
boring terrorists is gone. And that is our interest, period” (Federal News
Service 27 Nov. 2001). After the capture of Saddam Hussein, Bush offered a
similar message to the Iraqi people: “The goals of our coalition are the same
as your goals: Sovereignty for your country; dignity for your great culture;
and for every Iraqi citizen, the opportunity for a better life” (FDCH
Transcripts 22 Dec. 2003: 1). By June 30, 2004, the administration trans-
ferred sovereignty of Iraq back to its people and garnered support for a UN
resolution recognizing the new Iraqi government. While the transfer
strengthened the case that America did not plan to maintain autonomy over
the Middle Eastern nation, public criticism at home and abroad continued to
highlight the role of the ongoing military occupation of Iraq, the substantial
US influence on Iraq’s new constitution, and America’s corporate involve-
ment in the reconstruction of Iraq’s economy.
In sum, the Bush administration’s public communication strategy in the
war on terrorism reconstituted the Cold War narrative to recall the approach
of the early republic’s leaders. Just as Thomas Jefferson publicly advocated
the eventual assimilation, removal, and extermination of the American
Indians from their lands, so the Bush narrative promised a similar fate for
individuals, groups, or states that attempted to thwart American interests by
using terrorism at home or abroad. Rhetorically relieved of the responsibility
of bad acts through the promise of a superior civilization, the leadership
acted ideologically in the name of what is right, good, and moral.
Having aroused pain and danger, the most powerful of human passions, the
events of September 11 readied American audiences for expanded interpreta-
tions of threats to their cultural existence. In response, Bush displayed no
reluctance in framing the conflict between terrorists and the United States as
ideological warfare. He insisted, “Terrorists [. . . do] have a common ideol-
ogy, and that is, they hate freedom and they hate freedom-loving people.
And they particularly hate America at this moment” (FDCH Transcripts 19
Sept. 2001: 3). For Bush, terrorists did not oppose particular US foreign
policy initiatives that he could change to eliminate the threat; they contested
the fundamental defining characteristics of American culture.
The Bush administration’s ideological depiction of terrorism was not
limited to actual perpetrators of such acts. Ashcroft grouped terrorists with
the nations that supported them into a monolithic ideological opponent. He
surmised, “[Terrorist] organizations operate across borders to advance their
ideological agendas. They benefit from the shelter and the protection of
like-minded regimes” (FDCH Transcripts 24 Sept. 2001: 2). Within such a
framework, any individual, group, or entity the government dubbed a “ter-
rorist” functioned as a cultural threat to the United States.
The 9/11 Commission agreed that the terrorist threat the United States
faced had become an ideologically driven enemy. Quoting from Mehdi
Mozaffari in its final report, the commission explained the nature of the new
threat: “Islamic terrorism is an immediate derivative of Islamism. This term
distinguishes itself from Islamic by the fact that the latter refers to a religion
and culture in existence over a millennium, whereas the first is a
political/religious phenomenon linked to the great events of the 20th cen-
tury. Furthermore, Islamists define themselves as ‘Islamiyyoun/Islamists’ pre-
cisely to differentiate themselves from ‘Muslimun/Muslims.’ [. . .] Islamism is
defined as an Islamic military, anti-democratic movement, bearing a holistic
vision of Islam whose final aim is the caliphate’” (National Commission,
Final Report 562). As a minority strain in the Muslim community, Islamism
posed a threat to all non-Islamic nations.
The Bush administration, like the 9/11 Commission, downplayed criti-
cisms that the ideological approach constituted a clash of civilizations. Bush
reminded his audiences of US words and actions in support of moderate
Muslims around the world. Recalling “the American tradition of tolerance
and religious liberty” (FDCH Transcripts 24 Nov. 2001: 1), Bush maintained
that the United States was not attacking the Muslim faith or the Afghani
people. Offering a story he claimed demonstrated the “true nature of
America” (FDCH Transcripts 11 Oct. 2001: 2), Bush spoke of Christian and
Jewish women going shopping with Muslim women afraid to go outside
alone (3). Spokespersons recalled prior conflicts, such as Bosnia or the 1979
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, to demonstrate the historical willingness of
the United States to come to the aid of its Muslim neighbors. They also
repeatedly referenced airdrops of food to the Afghani refugees and the
American commitment to rebuilding Afghanistan and Iraq. From the Bush
administration’s perspective, the alliance with America, not the Muslim fun-
damentalists, held the best hope for the future of moderate Arabs. Similar to
the claim by the 9/11 Commission Report that the United States was caught
up in a “clash within a civilization” (National Commission, Final Report 363),
Bush maintained that the actual conflict prompting acts of terrorism was
being fought between the various elements of Muslim societies.
The Bush administration’s related public diplomacy strategy in the
Middle East, however, suffered setbacks due to various official statements
that reinforced the clash of civilizations hypothesis. Bush himself was the
first to contribute to the fray when on September 16, 2001, he announced,
“This crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while” (as qtd. in Ford,
“Europe Cringes” 1). His reference to crusades hearkened back to the reli-
gious wars between Muslims and Christians that erupted during the Middle
Ages. Seeking to contain the damage from his public remarks, Bush
appeared the next day in an Islamic Center and praised the shared humani-
tarian values of all faiths.
Public comments by Major General William Boykin before Christian
fundamentalist churches bolstered the case that the war on terror was a clash
of civilizations. The Los Angeles Times initially reported one incident where
Boykin, a top intelligence official at the Defense Department involved in the
decisions related to detainee interrogations at Iraqi prisons, was speaking to
Baptists in Florida in 2003. In his address Boykin relayed an account where
in victory he had faced a Muslim warlord in Somalia who announced that
Allah would protect him. Boykin responded by boasting, “I knew my God
was bigger than his” (as qtd. in Cooper 1). In June 2003, he spoke again, this
time at the Good Shepherd Community Church in Oregon. Boykin told the
congregation, “Islamic terrorists hate the U.S. because we’re a Christian
nation, because our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christian [. . .] and
the enemy is a guy named Satan” (as qtd. in “General Says” 1). Boykin’s
decision to dress in his US military uniform while making such comments
fueled speculation that his views represented those of the administration.
The Bush camp moved quickly to disassociate itself publicly from
Boykin’s incendiary statements. Bush announced that Boykin’s view “doesn’t
reflect my point of view or the point of view of my administration” (as qtd. in
G. Taylor). Despite the efforts at disassociation, the American Muslim
Association (AMA) denounced Bush for not rebuking others who had pub-
licly reinforced the conflict between the two religions (i.e., Franklin Graham,
Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, John Ashcroft, and Daniel Pipes). Imperial
Hubris presents a litany of such statements made by the other speakers
denounced by the AMA: “When Pat Robertson says ‘Adolph Hitler is bad,
but what the Muslims do to the Jews is worse’; the Reverend Jerry Falwell
refers to the Prophet as a ‘terrorist’; Jimmy Swaggart prays that ‘God blesses
those who bless Israel and damns those who damn it’; and the Reverend
Franklin Graham calls Islam a ‘wicked religion’ and says Christianity and
Islam are ‘different as lightness and darkness,’ Muslims believe that ‘[n]ever
has Islam faced such a frantic campaign of insult for centuries’” (3). Recent
polls conducted in the Middle East reveal widespread sentiment consistent
with the concerns of the AMA. Consolidating the results of available public
opinion data, Anderson and Stansfield conclude, “[T]he vast majority of
Arabs still prefer to believe that 9/11 was a self-inflicted wound designed to
justify a ‘crusade’ against the Muslim world” (189).
Compounding the administration’s clash with the Muslim world were the
public words of Osama bin Laden. Capitalizing on media coverage in the Arab
world on Al Jazeera, bin Laden borrowed heavily from the administration’s
own narrative frame for the conflict. Specifically, he evoked the settings,
characterizations, and themes of the ideologically based Cold War narrative
to call Muslims to war against the United States. He echoed the American
rendition by depicting a scene grown fragile from complacency. After US
and British air strikes began in Afghanistan, Al Jazeera aired a video that
featured bin Laden saying, “Our nation (the Islamic world) has been tasting
this humiliation and degradation for more than 80 years. Its sons are killed,
its blood is shed, its sanctuaries are attacked, and no-one hears and no-one
heeds” (Associated Press, “Text of Osama bin Ladin’s Statement”). The ref-
erence in bin Laden’s words was to the suffering of the Palestinians caused as
a result of the establishment of Israel by Allied Forces at the end of World
War II. In the same speech, he cataloged the ongoing suffering of the
Japanese after the dropping of the A-bomb, of the Iraqis after the Persian
Gulf War, and of the Afghanis after the Clinton administration air strikes.
In earlier statements bin Laden raised the Qana massacre in Lebanon and
the withholding of arms to the Muslims of Bosnia-Herzegovina as examples
of where the United States and its allies had caused the suffering of Muslims
with no meaningful response (bin Laden, “Osama bin Ladin v. Edicts”).
The enemy in the bin Laden narrative was the United States. Consistent
with the Cold War narrative, the goal of the enemy character was world con-
quest, only this time the reference was to the defeat of the Islamic world. Bin
Laden emphasized the imperial intention of the United States, describing
America’s goals as “to annihilate Islam above anything else, because they are
fully convinced that their plan in our country, on its various axes particularly
the economic, intellectual and military, cannot be implemented as long as
Islam exists and controls the region, because the Muslims indeed possess the
faith, the will and the capability to fight against their plans and to repulse
their oppression eye for an eye” (bin Laden, “Prepared Text” 2). Bin Laden
cast US envoy Paul Bremer’s decision not to accept Islam as the religion of
Iraq in the post-Saddam period as proof of America’s ultimate objectives. He
reasoned, “[I]t shows the extent of their hidden hatred for the religion. It
also shows that the struggle is a religious and an ideological one, and that the
clash is one of civilizations. They are keen to destroy the Islamic identity in
the entire Islamic world—and this is their real stand regarding us” (ibid.).
For bin Laden, America’s imperial motives placed Muslims around the world
at risk.
The enemy’s methods as depicted in bin Laden’s narrative were also
consistent with those of the Cold War narrative. He emphasized the enslave-
ment of the Muslim people as America’s first step toward realizing its ulti-
mate goal of conquest. Bin Laden claimed that the intention of the United
States was to strip Muslims of their rights of self-determination:
“[Americans] have come out in force with their men and have turned even
the countries that belong to Islam to this treachery, and they want to wag
their tail at God, to fight Islam, to suppress people in the name of terrorism”
(Associated Press, “Text of Osama bin Laden’s Statement”). Further, he
denounced America’s claim to accept all religions as a means “to suck the
treasures of the peoples, to enslave them and to Americanize them into the
axes the way they wish” (bin Laden, “Prepared Text” 2). Bin Laden insisted
that US designs were to strip the Islamic people of their religious choice, and
by extension, their choice of government.
Bin Laden used the US transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqi people to
bolster his case that the enemy sought to enslave Muslims. He encouraged
the Iraqi people not to be fooled by the hypocrisy of the United States. He
argued, “[T]he so-called transfer of power to the Iraqis is an obvious ploy
intended to sedate the people and to aborting [sic] the armed resistance” (bin
Laden, “Prepared Text” 3). Bin Laden’s word choice not only reinforced the
characterization of the enemy as dictatorial, but also recalled the Cold War’s
characterization of the enemy as untrustworthy.
In bin Laden’s narrative, America had a historical record of barbaric
behavior as it pursued its quest to achieve dominance over the Islamic world.
He remembered Japanese civilians who had died or suffered because of the
US decision to drop the atomic bomb, Iraqi children that were starving and
killed because of US policies, and his “the brothers and sisters” who suffered
in Palestine and Lebanon, to name but a few (bin Laden, “Remarks via
Videotape” 1). He even justified the attacks on the World Trade Center and
the Pentagon by recalling acts of US barbarity. Bin Laden pronounced that
the people in those buildings had “supported the murder against the victims.
So God has given them back what they deserve” (ibid.). Whether directly
involved in the implementation of US foreign policy or indirectly supportive
of the governments involved, all US citizens qualified for bin Laden’s charac-
terization as members of a barbaric regime.
Bin Laden claimed the role of hero character for Muslims within his
rendition of the narrative. Like the hero who conquered Communism
during the Cold War, he cast his own behavior and that of his colleagues as
constituting a religious mission. As early as August 23, 1996, bin Laden
issued “The Declaration of Jihad on the Americans Occupying the Country
of the Two Sacred Places,” a call for all Muslims as part of their religious
duty to attack US military targets. In the aftermath of the September 11
attacks, Bin Laden renewed his earlier call for jihad. He insisted, “Every
Muslim has to rush to make his religion victorious” (Associated Press,
“Text of Osama bin Laden’s Statement”). An al Qaeda lieutenant appear-
ing by the side of bin Laden on a videotaped statement reiterated the same
theme: “[J]ihad for the sake of God today is an obligation on every Muslim
in this land if he has no excuse” (Associated Press, “Text of al Qaida
Statement”). Bin Laden indicated that jihad would continue until America
abandoned its presence in Saudi Arabia, the homeland to the holy places of
Mecca and Medina.
Confident in his pursuit of Allah’s goals, bin Laden predicted ultimate
victory for the Muslim forces. He again relied on history to bolster his case
that the divine cause of the Muslims would prevail. He remembered, “The
killing of the Russians was after their invasion of Afghanistan and Chechnya;
the killing of Europeans was after their invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan;
and the killing of Americans on the day of New York was after their support
of the Jews in Palestine and their invasion of the Arabian Peninsula. Also,
killing them in Somalia was after their invasion of it in Operation Rescue
Hope. We made them leave without hope, praise be to God” (bin Laden,
“Remarks Addressing European Nations” 3). Bin Laden promised that with
the faith and perseverance of all Muslims in the cause of jihad, there would
be an optimistic outcome for the believers of Allah.
The Bush administration responded to bin Laden’s narrative by refusing
to yield the moral high ground, including divine providence, to Islamic fun-
damentalists. Borrowing a rhetorical strategy from the Clinton administra-
tion, the Bush camp depicted bin Laden and his followers as false prophets
that were blaspheming the Muslim religion. Rumsfeld argued that terrorists
are believers “not in the theology of God, but the theology of the self and in
the whispered words of temptation, ‘ye shall be as gods’” (FDCH Transcripts
11 Oct. 2001: 2). Powell added that terrorists, by nature, were antithetical to
religious faith. He surmised, “It is terrorism that is directed against people. It
represents no faith, no religion. It is evil. It is murderous [. . .] and that’s why
the word terrorist is the right noun to apply to people like Osama bin Laden”
(FDCH Transcripts 26 Oct. 2001: 5). To gain credibility on the issue, the
administration pointed to the statement by fifty-six Islamic nations denounc-
ing the September 11th attacks and declaring that the incidents had violated
the principles of Islam (Bush, FDCH Transcripts 11 Oct. 2001: 2). In the
administration’s public stance, Osama bin Laden served as the very antithesis
of the fundamental tenets of all religious faiths.
The administration offered various examples of how Islamic fundamen-
talists, represented by bin Laden and the Taliban, had distorted the teach-
ings of religion. Bush decried the lack of religious freedom in Afghanistan,
maintaining, “They destroy great monuments of human culture and religious
faith. They execute people who convert to other religions. They steal food
from starving people” (Federal New Service 9 Nov. 2001: 1). Rumsfeld
stressed the Taliban’s lack of humanitarian, if not Christian, values by
reminding his audiences that they had killed hundreds of Afghanis when
they took over the country initially, that they were cruel to the Afghanis
during their reign, and that they had executed Afghani citizens who were
trying to leave the country (Federal News Service 13 Nov. 2001: 2; Federal
News Service 19 Nov. 2001: 2). The Taliban emerged as the Bush adminis-
tration’s representative anecdote for what various states could expect should
they be duped by the Muslim fundamentalists’ claim that they acted in the
name of Allah.
In sum, the Bush administration simultaneously denounced bin Laden’s
ideological framing of the conflict, while defending its own. Not wanting to
go to war with the Muslim community as a whole, the administration
framed its opponents as Islamic fundamentalists bent on the destruction of
the United States and its way of life. Denying religious authority to the
enemy while simultaneously assuming it for the American cause, the govern-
ment’s spokespersons strived to build the case for civilized and free cultures
around the globe.
8
Terrorism and American Culture
A cts of terrorist violence are communication phenomena. Terrorist attacks

symbolically represent far more than the actual bombing, kidnapping, or
other form of brutal assault. Terrorism is designed both to instill alarm in its
victims and to create broader anxiety in those that fear they will be next. In a
global era of instantaneous media communications, even a small-scale act of
terrorist violence can have a dramatic, far-reaching impact on the public.
To simply view terrorism as an instance of verbal or nonverbal symbol-
ism, however, ignores a primary communicative function of the term.
Terrorism functions as a linguistic marker of American culture. The term’s
meaning guides appropriate beliefs and behaviors of those belonging to the
collective. Terrorism demarcates the unacceptable, as it embodies the evil,
barbaric, unholy, and destructive impulses of society. Central to the commu-
nity’s shared sense of belonging is the need to cleanse society of those who
have gone astray.
Terrorism’s potency as a resilient term of cultural definition helps
explain why many consider it the most pejorative term in the English lan-
guage. Presidents have applied the term to many of the nation’s most signifi-
cant challenges (i.e., the birth of the republic, World War II, Vietnam, and
September 11th, to name but a few). The meaning of terrorism has both
shaped and been shaped by those experiences. The terrorism label, thus,
functions today as a deeply rooted term of enmity that carries associations
with key foundational moments of American culture.
Like all terms of political allegiance, terrorism’s meaning is amorphous.
The term’s adaptability has allowed it to encompass a wide range of threats
emerging both at home and abroad. When Thomas Jefferson called on the
early republic to respond forcefully to acts of terror by the American Indians,
he could not have conceived that the label would someday apply to the use of
biological, chemical or nuclear weapons against civilian populations. Given
the past expansions of the term’s meaning and its future potential for even
broader interpretations, few acts of enmity against US interests are immune
from possible inclusion in the war on terror.
189
With the potential to encompass a diverse set of threats, the terror-

ist label emerges as a unifying term of cultural discourse. Terrorism’s
flexible meaning allows it to have resonance with a wide range of indi-
viduals who otherwise hold diverse perspectives in the political arena.
Those who denounce acts of violence by Palestinians against the state of
Israel, those who worry about the growing power of domestic militia
groups, those concerned about drugs flowing into America, and those
who oppose the hacking of business information systems can all unite in
the fight against terrorism.
Recognizing the power of the terrorism label, recent presidents have
substantially increased the amount of their public discourse on the topic.
While the nation’s leaders in the first half of the twentieth century rarely
mentioned terrorism, some contemporary leaders have discussed it in upward
of a thousand public statements during their tenures in office. The leader-
ship’s increased focus on terrorism has elevated the importance of the term of
enmity both at home and on the world stage.
Within the growing corpus of political speeches about terrorism, presi-
dents have repeatedly insisted they faced new terrorist threats. Carter,
Reagan, Clinton, and George W. Bush each announced that the terrorists
operating during their administrations were somehow unique and unprece-
dented. By publicly reinventing the terrorist threat, presidents have presented
a renewed framework for designating appropriate beliefs and behaviors for
those desiring in-group status or alliance with American culture. Foreign
leaders wishing to avoid their own inclusion within the US parameters of the
terrorist label have altered their behavior in line with the new expectations
(e.g., by policing their spheres of influence, accepting anti–money laundering
statutes, and establishing dual jurisdiction over individuals committing ter-
rorist acts against US citizens abroad.). Some college students who once con-
sidered computer hacking nothing more than an intriguing way to pass their
time now restrict their hobby to avoid the label of cyberterrorist. In hind-
sight, even members of the national media have criticized their own reluc-
tance to question the existence of the administrations’ new terrorist threats,
as the recent self-analyses of reporting in the run-up to the war with Iraq has
illustrated (Steinberg A14).
As presidents and their administrations have redefined the nation’s ene-
mies, they have also created opportunities for the development of new public
expectations regarding appropriate leadership. New enemies call for new
response strategies, if not new leadership altogether. The current Bush
administration has justified the largest increase in defense spending since
World War II and the largest reorganization of the federal government since
Harry Truman, all in the name of a necessary response to a new terrorist
threat. In short, terrorism not only defines American identity; it provides
Terrorism and American Culture 191
opportunities for reconstituting the role of the executive branch in the gover-
nance of the nation.
Tracing the expansion and contractions of terrorism’s meaning becomes
a critical first step in determining how presidents have reconstituted expecta-
tions for America’s identity and governance. The nation’s leadership could
not possibly concentrate public attention on every incident of international
terrorism. With between two and seven hundred attacks occurring each year
from 1970 to 2003 (see figure 8.1), the chief executives have necessarily
focused on subsets of the entire terrorism problem in their public dialog.
Their choices are revealing both in the aspects of the total problem they have
chosen to feature and in the portions they have de-emphasized. Specifically,
presidents have been selective in their descriptions of the agents, acts, agen-
cies, scenes, and purposes of terrorism.
Figure 8.1. Annual Average Number of International Terrorist Incidents by Decade
543
600
500 405
382
400 299
300
200
100
0
1970s 1980s 1990s 2000–2003
Source: U.S. Dept of State, “Intl. Terrorism Incidents, 1968–1979;” U.S. Dept. of State, “Intl.
Terrorism Incidents, 1980–1990;” U.S. Dept of State, “Intl. Terrorism Incidents, 1990–1999;
and U.S. Dept. of State, Patterns 2003.
Close examination of how the administrations have highlighted partic-

ular terrorist agents exposes a dramatic difference between domestic and
foreign terrorists. When speaking about domestic terrorists who carry out
violent acts within the borders of the United States, presidents and their
surrogates have presented those responsible as individuals acting alone, not
as members of more dangerous collectives. Official spokespersons have
highlighted the individual identity of domestic terrorists by releasing the
names of even those suspected of being responsible for the attacks.
According to the public statements of the Clinton and current Bush admin-
istrations, Timothy McVeigh, Eric Rudolph, and the sender of the 2001
anthrax letters acted alone or with one other person as they planned and
carried out their violent activities.
The decision to present domestic terrorists as sole actors becomes more

evident in light of governmental actions taken to protect such a framing of
the enemy. Government prosecutors in the McVeigh trial argued vigorously
against defense counsel motions to allow their client to present evidence of
his connections to white supremacist groups, bin Laden and the al Qaeda
network, or Saddam Hussein and Iraq. FBI discussions of the Centennial
Park bomber shifted from early public mention of one sole actor (Richard
Jewell) to another (Eric Rudolph) as the manhunt continued. Justice
Department officials, despite their inability to arrest the sender of the 2001
anthrax letters for more than three years, have announced “their certainty”
that the perpetrator is a single individual (see chapter 6). Echoing the public
approach used to depict the Centennial Park bomber, executive branch
spokespersons in the anthrax case have adopted the stance of mentioning one
sole actor after another as their primary suspect.
Considered from the perspective that terrorism demarcates the bound-
aries of the culture, the leadership’s labeling strategy for domestic terrorism is
not surprising. Members of American society can agree that US citizens who
carry out terrorist acts are criminals who, after they have been tried and con-
victed of unacceptable conduct, deserve punishment. Domestic groups, how-
ever, function quite differently. Focusing on a particular collection of
Americans as culpable for terrorist act(s) has the potential to divide, rather
than unite, the culture. Richard Nixon’s off-the-cuff decision to label antiwar
protesters “terrorists” illustrates the tension such a perspective has with con-
stitutionally protected rights of free association. If Americans who speak out
against the government’s decision to go to war (or any of its other decisions)
qualify as terrorists, the ability to broker a harmonious community with
agreed-upon standards of appropriate belief and conduct is less certain.
By contrast, presidents routinely present foreign terrorists as members of
dangerous collectives that have ties to or the backing of foreign states. In the
Vietnam War, Johnson argued that the Viet Cong were collaborating with
the North Vietnamese and the Communist Chinese. In the final months of
the Iranian hostage crisis, Carter’s team maintained that the student perpe-
trators had the support of the Iranian government. Reagan focused on the
Soviet-backed insurgents in Central America, the Iran-backed terrorists in
Hezbollah, the Palestinian-backed Palestinian Liberation Front, and Libya-
backed terrorist acts in Europe. The current Bush administration held that
both the Taliban and the Iraqi government had a supporting, collaborative
relationship with al Qaeda. Presidents have rarely mentioned the names of
the individuals who carry out foreign acts of terrorism, with bin Laden and
some of his key associates in the post-9/11 period a notable exception. When
the leadership does disclose the identity of the perpetrators, it generally
releases the name of the group (e.g., al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Hamas).
Over time, presidents have shifted their depictions of how foreign states
have participated in acts of international terrorism. In some cases the leader-
ship has insisted that foreign states have served as sponsors of terrorism, by
their provision of safe havens, logistical support, or financial means to the
perpetrators of the violent acts. In others, the leaders of foreign nations
themselves have qualified as terrorists due to their previous actions against
their own people or against US allies abroad. The latter portrayal has partic-
ularly salient international ramifications due to its recent use as a public justi-
fication for removal of foreign governments by US forces.
The decision to publicly link international terrorists to foreign states has
clear-cut implications for the response options available to presidents.
Foreign state collaboration with terrorism adds diplomatic, economic, and
military approaches to the response arsenal. Absent such a linkage, the
potential for controversy arises. International outrage over Bill Clinton’s
decision to bomb the Shifa Pharmaceutical Plant and the Taliban training
camps exemplifies the shortcomings of exercising military responses to ter-
rorism without labeling the targeted foreign state as part of the terrorist
attack. While a sitting president would undoubtedly insist such attacks tar-
geted the terrorists and not the state, foreign governments could easily inter-
pret the measures as acts of war.
The communal, international nature of the threat also helps define the
actors who should respond. A fight against internationally orchestrated ter-
rorist groups invites a nonisolationist response strategy. With few exceptions,
active engagement and partnership within the new global community has
become the preferred method of eradicating terrorism. America joined with
South Vietnam to defeat the alliance of Communist China, North Vietnam,
and the Viet Cong; with the Contras to defeat the alliance of the Soviet
Union, Cuba, and the Sandinistas; with a broad coalition of both Arab and
non-Arab states against Iraq in the Persian Gulf War; and with the coalition
of the willing to defeat the al Qaeda network. As a previously discussed
Reagan era memo revealed (see chapter 5), a collective response in the inter-
national community makes US global intervention against terrorists easier
and absolves the nation of the burdensome responsibility if counterterrorism
actions fail.
Finally, the focus on foreign states as primary actors in international ter-
rorism serves to help unify the public in the fight against the enemy. Attacks
from foreign states pit state against state, with the assumption that all citi-
zens of those nations are under assault. Borrowing from the conventional
expectations of war rhetoric, presidents insist that a unified public is neces-
sary for the nation to prevail in the conflict.
Beyond a selective approach toward terrorist actors, presidents have also
been discerning about which terrorist acts they emphasize to promulgate their
views of proper conduct and belief within American culture. Prior to the end
of Reagan’s terms in office, a primary focus of executive branch discourse was
on hostage taking and kidnapping. Presidents in office from the Vietnam
War up until the mid-1980s warned the public repeatedly that terrorists used
Figure 8.2. Annual Average Number of Kidnappings by Decade
50
40
30
20
10
0
1970s 1980s 1990s
Source: U.S. Dept. of State, “Intl. Terrorism Incidents 1968–1979;” U.S. Dept. of State, “Intl.
Terrorism Incidents 1980–1990;” and U.S. Dept. of State, “Intl. Terrorism Incidents
1990–1999.” The chart does not include data from 2000–2003 due to the decision of the gov-
ernment to only report attacks against U.S. facilities and attacks in which the U.S. suffered casu-
alties.
extortion, kidnapping, coercion, and intimidation to achieve their ends. The

leadership’s focus corresponded with official State Department statistics
showing an annual average of thirty-five Americans held hostage in the
1970s and forty-two in the 1980s (see figure 8.2).
The back-to-back Iranian hostage crisis and Iran-Contra scandal, how-
ever, gave subsequent presidents pause. Despite the fact that the annual aver-
age of Americans held hostage still hovered at forty in the 1990s (see figure
8.2), George H. W. Bush was reticent to use the hostage label in any public
context, even after international media coverage revealed that Iraq was hold-
ing US citizens in Kuwait. Clinton went further, publicly redefining terror-
ism to exclude lingering crises and virtually omitting all public mention of
citizens kidnapped and held abroad. George W. Bush publicly mentioned
Americans held hostage, but normally reserved his comments for incidents
resulting in quick, heinous deaths (e.g., the 2004 spate of beheadings in
Iraq). Taken as a whole, the most recent presidents have chosen to focus
their public attention on terrorist methods that strike quickly, hold the
potential of mass casualties, and have obvious closure.
The change in how presidents have described terrorists’ acts has implica-
tions for American governance. Presidents’ depiction of the relative speed of
the terrorists in the 1990s functioned as a justification for a quickening of the
nation’s responses. The George H. W. Bush administration fought a ground
war in the 1991 Persian Gulf conflict in one hundred hours. The Clinton
administration signed laws that reduced the delay in appeals for convicted
terrorists and sped up the departure of foreigners suspected of terrorism. The
George W. Bush administration displayed limited patience with interna-
tional WMD inspectors and supported a preemptive war. As the nation’s
leadership has had to cope in a dangerous world filled with quick decisions
and rapid consequences, it has become less willing to entertain extended
diplomatic overtures or sustained economic sanctions.
The Presidents’ focus on speed has also had implications for interpreting
the separation of powers doctrine. A number of official spokespersons for
various administrations have argued they could respond to the nation’s
threats faster (and better) if the congress and the courts did not interfere.
They have maintained that assaults on US interests, whether against citizens
or property, happen in the moment, with the result that the nation can ill
afford the time of consultation characteristic of previous eras. The enemy’s
speed has affected not only decisions as to the branch of government that
should respond, but in what manner it should proceed.
Having narrowed public discussion of the agents and acts of terrorism,
the nation’s leadership has also been selective about agency (i.e., the means
used by terrorists to achieve their objectives). A key feature of terrorism is
that its perpetrators are selective in their choice of victims to maximize the
public impact of their acts. The various administrations have primarily por-
trayed the victims of terrorism to be civilians. The leadership’s examples of
the targets have included men, women, and children traveling aboard ships
(Achille Lauro), airplanes (Pan Am 103, TWA 847, KAL 007, and the 9/11
airliners), or trains (Tokyo subway station). Others have been at work at gov-
ernmental service positions within the civilian sector, such as at foreign
embassies (Iran, Lebanon, Tanzania, and Kenya) or in federal buildings
located within the borders of the United States (Alfred Murrah Building in
Oklahoma City). From time to time, the nation’s leadership has singled out
various targeted occupations such as village and hamlet officials, nuns and
clergymen, journalists, and academic professors and administrators. Taken
together, the civilians mentioned by presidents have been those critical to the
infrastructure of American society.
While the administrations in this study have generally emphasized civil-
ians as the terrorists’ victims, they have also presented military personnel as a
repeated category of injured party. The Johnson and Nixon administrations
recounted incidents where terrorists bombed American servicemen in the-
aters and restaurants. The Reagan administration recalled the deaths of mili-
tary servicemen visiting a Berlin discothèque and sleeping in their barracks in
Lebanon. The Clinton administration spoke of the bombing of military per-
sonnel aboard the USS Cole, as they docked to restock in Yemen. Finally, the
current Bush administration remembered members of the military who died

or were injured in the attack on the Pentagon. By stressing off-duty military
personnel or civilians working within the defense establishment, presidents
have underscored both the innocence of the victims and the necessary
involvement of the commander in chief in responding to terrorism.
A review of the victim categories used by the State Department’s
Patterns of Global Terrorism reveals that the choices of presidents were also
telling in what types of victims the leadership omitted. The State
Department breaks down its official statistics of targeted facilities into five
subcategories: diplomat, government, military, business, and other.
Presidents’ public discussion of the victims of terrorist attacks has incorpo-
rated each of the subdivisions with one exception: business. The omission
has distorted the actual targets of terrorism for the public. In every decade
covered in this study, businesses experienced a greater number of attacks
than the other types of officially cataloged facilities (see figure 8.3). Further,
the percentage of international terrorism incidents targeting business facili-
ties has grown rapidly with each passing decade (see figure 8.4). Despite the
rise in attacks against businesses, each of the presidents since the Vietnam
War has avoided repeated references to a spectacular or sustained terrorist
campaign against any American business overseas.
Figure 8.3. Annual Average Number of Facilities Struck by
International Terrorist Incidents
300
250
200 Business
Diplomat
150
Govt.
100 Military
50
0
1970s 1980s 1990s 2000–2003
Source: U.S. Dept. of State, “International Terrorism Incidents by Victim/Facility, 1969–1979;”
U.S. Dept. of State, “International Terrorism Incidents by Victim/Facility, 1980-1990;” U.S.
Dept. of State, “International Terrorism Incidents by Victim/Facility, 1990–1999;” and U.S. Dept.
of State, Patterns 2002–2003. The official category of “other” is not presented in this figure.
Presidents have heightened their opportunities for unifying the public in

the war on terrorism by deflecting attention away from businesses as targets.
Businesses operating overseas have historically prompted a number of public
controversies, such as substandard worker conditions, environmental con-
cerns, and tax revenue losses. The mention of terrorist attacks against partic-
ular businesses, consequently, has the potential to elicit a sympathetic
response from some Americans, to further galvanize the global environmen-

tal protection movement, or to heighten public concerns about growing
deficits. By treating terrorism as a random assault on innocents both at home
and abroad, the leadership has emphasized that it is protecting all Ameri-
cans— not the profit margins of a select few.
Figure 8.4. Percentage of International Terrorist Incidents

Targeting Business Facilities
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
1970s 1980s 1990s 2000–2003
Source: U.S. Dept. of State, “Intl. Terrorism Incidents, 1968–1979;” U.S. Dept. of State, “Intl.
Terrorism Incidents, 1980–1990;” U.S. Dept. of State, “Intl. Terrorism Incidents, 1990–1999;”
and U.S. Dept. of State, Patterns 2000–2003.
The scene mentioned in presidents’ featured terrorist attacks also dif-

fers substantially from actual events. Most frequently, presidents have
highlighted terrorism attacks happening in the Middle East (e.g., the US
Embassy in Tehran in 1979–80, the US Embassy and military barracks in
Lebanon in 1983, TWA 847, Achille Lauro, American hostages held
throughout the 1980s, Kuwait, and the USS Cole) or those perpetrated by
Middle Eastern agents outside of the region (the Berlin discothèque, Pan
Am 103, the World Trade Center in 1993, US embassies in Tanzania and
Kenya, and 9/11). Since the 1970s the bulk of actual terrorist incidents
involving the United States, however, have happened outside of the
Middle East; they have occurred in Latin America. From 1970 to 2003, a
rank ordering of the regions with the highest percentage of terrorist
attacks involving the United States reveals that the Middle East had fewer
incidents than Latin America, Europe, and Asia (see figure 8.5). The
focus on the Middle East in administration discourse has demonstrated
that strategic calculations are involved in the selection of particular acts of
terrorism for public focus. The nation’s need to secure competitive oil
supplies from the Middle East has rendered the region a focal point for
securing US interests, regardless of whether the region has been the true
hotbed of terrorism.
Figure 8.5. Percentage of International Terrorism Incidents Involving
the United States by Region: 1970–2003
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Latin America Europe Asia Middle East
Source: U.S. Dept. of State, “Intl. Terrorism Incidents, 1968–1979,” U.S. Dept. of State; “Intl.
Terrorism Incidents, 1980–1990;” U.S. Dept. of State, “Intl. Terrorism Incidents, 1990–1999;”
and U.S. Dept. of State, Patterns 2000–2003. The figures for 2000–2003 used in this calculation
include all international terrorism incidents, rather than only the incidents involving the U.S.
due to absence of more specific U.S. numbers in the official reports.
Finally, presidents since the Vietnam War have been selective about their
depictions of the purposes for the enemy’s violence. The nation’s leadership
has either refused to publicly discuss the motivations for terrorist violence
altogether or they have pronounced that the terrorists’ goals were to attack
foundational American values, such as freedom, democracy or liberty. Even
presidents publicly seeking to downplay the ideological nature of the terrorist
threat have focused on attacks targeting operations fundamental to the global
functioning of American society, such as U.S. embassies in Iran, Tanzania,
and Kenya.
The presidents’ public strategy of deflecting attention away from the ter-
rorists’ own stated causes for violence has functioned to unify the American
public in a number of ways. First, the approach has minimized questions
about how earlier U.S. actions might have contributed to such acts of vio-
lence. Carter’s decision to admit the Shah into the U.S. for medical treat-
ment, the shooting down of an Iranian airbus by the USS Vincennes during
the Reagan administration, and George H. W. Bush’s administration’s con-
versations with Saddam Hussein in the days immediately prior to Iraq’s inva-
sion of Kuwait have all been examples of when the presidents have been
motivated to deflect attention away from the terrorists’ stated causes, and in
the process, made a more compelling case for the American public to support
the nation’s fight against terrorists. Absent US culpability, the terrorists
alone have carried the burden of the nation’s retaliatory response.
Second, omitting the enemy’s declared purposes has served to dehuman-

ize the terrorists, rendering them more deserving of US punishment. During
the Reagan administration’s debriefing of the American passengers on TWA
847, aides discovered that some of the ex-hostages had developed a bond
with their captors and gained sympathy for the Shi’ite cause after listening to
the hijackers’ appeals over a two-week period (Memo, What the President Is
Likely to Hear). Perhaps fearing that a public reiteration of the enemy’s
motives might similarly sway public opinion on a wider scale, the presidents
have deflected attention from the terrorists’ own explanations for their vio-
lence. Instead, the leadership has insisted that all terrorists have been seeking
to undercut the fundamental values of America and the world community,
thereby making the case for a military response more palpable to the public.
Understood purely from the perspective of official US definitions,
instances of international terrorism have been motivated by political, not
economic objectives. When the State Department has cataloged acts of
international terrorism, they have done so according to the definition of ter-
rorism contained in Title 22 of the US Code, Section 2656f(d): “The term
terrorism means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated
against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents,
usually intended to influence an audience” [emphasis mine] (U.S. State
Dept., Patterns 2002). The State Department has relied upon this definition
that features politically motivated violence to track terrorism since 1983.
Despite the official classification, however, contemporary presidential
discourse has confounded the distinctions between the political and eco-
nomic objectives of the terrorists. Early on, the nation’s leadership subtly
merged the two. During the Vietnam War, Kennedy and Johnson argued
that terrorists attacked the economic infrastructures of South Vietnam to
undermine the ability of a fledgling democratic government to succeed. The
George H. W. Bush administration similarly maintained that Saddam
Hussein sought control over Kuwait’s economic resources to undermine the
economies of fledgling democracies around the globe. By the 1990s, how-
ever, presidents were more blunt about their conflation of the two goals.
Clinton insisted that a distinction between economic and national security
no longer existed. George W. Bush repeatedly emphasized the expansive
phrase “our way of life” to describe what the terrorists sought to disrupt. In
short, presidents functionally merged economic objectives within the context
of more conventional political goals, even as they avoided mention of
American businesses as the target of terrorism.
Gradually moving terrorist’s objectives into the global economic arena
contributed to the emerging definition of America’s cultural identity. As the
depictions of the goals of terrorism changed over time, so too did the role the
presidents envisioned for the United States within the broader international
community. When terrorists sought the downfall of emerging democratic

governments, presidents argued the United States represented the only
meaningful check on Communist aggression worldwide. When the enemy
wanted to undermine open societies, presidents maintained that the United
States functioned as the only meaningful check on totalitarian leadership
around the globe. When terrorists harbored economic objectives, US identity
changed once again, this time expanding into the role of protector of the
existing world economic order. Having depicted terrorists as threats to the
political and economic interests of an increasingly interdependent world, the
obligations of American leadership expanded in a corresponding fashion.
Engaged in a battle for the world’s economic future, recent presidents
have justified an expansion of executive powers into international financial
affairs. George H. W. Bush and Jimmy Carter seized the financial assets of
foreign nations to provide a reserve for settling claims in the aftermath of
hostilities. The Clinton administration pressured international banks to con-
form to anti–money laundering statutes and to open the banking records of
their international clients for US inspection. The current Bush administra-
tion seized the foreign assets of governments, groups, and individuals alleged
to have contributed money knowingly or unknowingly in support of terrorist
causes. Asserting privilege over new financial assets historically beyond their
reach, recent presidents have redefined the role of the United States in the
global marketplace.
In sum, presidents have generally concentrated their own labeling strate-
gies on enemy collectives who, without justifiable cause, have committed vio-
lence with great speed in attacking US political and economic values
primarily in the Middle East. In the process of defining a discrete subset of
the overall terrorism problem, presidents have invited the public, the
Congress, the courts, and the international community to respond accord-
ingly. Through reinvention of new terrorist threats in virtually each adminis-
tration, the nation’s leadership has broadened executive powers and has
redefined the identity of American culture both at home and abroad.
Presidents do not reconstitute American identity through use of the ter-
rorism label alone. They must either appropriate or develop a convincing
narrative framework to provide a coherent context for their interpretation of
the threat and America’s response. Taken as a whole, presidents have enacted
a critical distinction in their public approaches based upon political party
affiliation. As this book has illustrated, Democratic presidents (with the early
exception of Johnson) have relied upon narratives that feature crime as a
principal theme: crimes against humanity in Carter’s tragic drama and crimes
against God in Clinton’s prophetic tradition. Republican presidents, by con-
trast, have featured war as a prevailing theme, employing the Cold War nar-
rative as their fundamental framework.
In practice, leaders elected from both the Republican and Democratic

parties have employed the tools of law enforcement and the military to
respond to terrorism. Carter presented his case before the International
Court of Justice and employed the US military to enact a rescue mission.
Reagan sought extradition for those guilty of hijacking the Achille Lauro and
used the American military to bomb Libya. Clinton’s Justice Department
tried the case of the World Trade Center bombers and used the military to
carry out bombing raids on the Sudan, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The current
Bush administration brought an unprecedented number of terrorism cases to
the court system, while conducting military operations to remove both the
Taliban and the Iraqi regimes.
Increasingly, the wisdom of employing a terrorism policy that focuses
too heavily on crime or war has become a matter of public debate. The 9/11
Commission Report critiqued a heavy emphasis on the crime frame by arguing
that the law enforcement process “was meant, by its nature, to mark for the
public the events as finished—case solved, justice done. It was not designed
to ask if the events might be harbingers of worse to come. Nor did it allow
for aggregating and analyzing facts to see if they could provide clues to ter-
rorist tactics more generally—methods of entry and finance, and mode of
operation inside the United States” (National Commission, Final Report 73).
Others, working in the CIA, have argued that the domination of the law
enforcement mentality has only led to “strategically inconsequential tactical
victories” (Imperial Hubris 87). US Air Force pilots have recounted problems
with an alleged overemphasis on crime in the immediate aftermath of
September 11. The pilots reported that they had sighted senior al Qaeda and
Taliban members on ten occasions, but had been unable to fire due to legal-
istic delays caused by the requirements of the local American ambassadors
(Hersh, “Gray Zone” 1). Such appraisals have consistently presented a pri-
mary emphasis on crime as an insufficient, weak policy against terrorism.
Too strong a focus on war as a response to terrorism has also encoun-
tered criticism. Concerns about the civil rights of alleged terrorists who
remain in captivity without charges filed against them, the expense of the
war efforts, the possibility of government-endorsed torture in wartime, and
the loss of life by military personnel suffered at the hands of insurgents have
all emerged as prevalent arguments in the public debate. The potential for a
US war on terror to have subversive goals in resource-rich regions of the
world has also raised skepticism around the globe. Too much emphasis on
war, the critics have argued, has long-term consequences for the foundational
principles of American society and the nation’s credibility worldwide.
As the debate over how to fight terrorism raged in the 2004 political
campaign season, very little attention was focused on the statistical record of
the two parties in their actual handling of terrorist threats. On two key State
Department measures of terrorism, the Democratic presidents studied in this

book have outperformed their Republican counterparts. The first concerns
the number of international terrorist incidents involving the United States.
Under presidents elected from the Democratic Party, the annual average of
international terrorism attacks involving the United States has been 131,
while the annual average for presidents elected from the Republican Party
has been 158, a seventeen percent increase (see figures 8.6 and 8.7). The
second involves the annual number of deaths of American citizens from ter-
rorist acts. Under Democratic presidential leadership, the annual average
number of American deaths was 11; under Republican presidential leader-
ship, the annual average was 222 (see figure 8.8). Even when the high death
totals of 2001 are not considered, the average number of US deaths from ter-
rorism was more than four times higher under Republican presidents than
under their Democratic presidential counterparts (see figure 8.9).1 The per-
formance differential between Republican and Democratic presidents
becomes more pronounced with the inclusion of the 2004 figures reported by
congressional aides briefed by the State Department and intelligence officials
which showed a sharp jump (175 in 2003 to 650 in 2004) in significant
international terrorist attacks (as rptd. in Mohammed).
Figure 8.6. Annual Average Number of International Terrorism Incidents

Involving the United States by Presidency
250
197
200 167
161
150 115 126
100
50
0
Carter Reagan Bush Clinton Bush
Source: U.S. Dept. of State, “Intl. Terrorism Incidents Involving the US, 1968–1979;” U.S.
Dept. of State, “Intl. Terrorism Incidents, Involving the US, 1980–1990;” U.S. Dept. of State,
“Intl. Terrorism Incidents, Involving the US, 1990–1999;” U.S. Dept. of State, Patterns: Year in
Review 1997–2002; and U.S. Dept. of State, Patterns 2003.
The calculation of average annual incidents and American deaths from

terrorism ends at 2003, due to the decision by the Bush State Department to
stop publishing statistical data in its 2004 Patterns of Global Terrorism. Larry
Johnson, a former CIA analyst and state department terrorism expert, dis-
closed the administration’s decision and the fact that it came to be after ana-
lysts in the National Counterterroism Center concluded that more terrorist

attacks happened in 2004 than any year previously dating back to 1985.
Those figures do not include insurgent attacks on American forces in Iraq,
which, if added, would inflate the increase further (as rptd. in Landay A12).
In either case, however, Johnson’s 2004 figures would exaggerate the com-
parison of the historical records of the leaders from the two political parties,
but would not change the conclusion that Democratic presidents have less
incidents of international terrorism and less deaths to Americans from ter-
rorism than their Republican counterparts.
Figure 8.7. Annual Average Number of International Terrorism Incidents
by Presidential Party: 1976–2003
250
200
131 158
150
100
50
0
Democrats Republicans
Source: U.S. Dept. of State, “Intl. Terrorism Incidents Involving the US, 1968–1979;” U.S.
Dept. of State, “Intl. Terrorism Incidents, Involving the US, 1980–1990;” U.S. Dept. of State,
“Intl. Terrorism Incidents Involving the US, 1990–1999;” U.S. Dept. of State, Patterns: Year in
Review 1997–2002; and U.S. Dept. of State, Patterns 2003.
Despite the comparative statistical records in the fight against terrorism,

Republican presidents have enjoyed and continue to hold an edge in the
public’s perception of which party produces leaders best qualified to respond
to terrorism. A January 2004 poll conducted by the Pew Research Center
reported, “By 56%–19%, people who volunteer terrorism and homeland
defense as the biggest problem facing the country say the Republicans, not
the Democrats, are best able to address the issue” (Pew Research Center,
“Economy and Anti-Terrorism” 1–2). Such polls echo the findings of the
Roper Center for Public Opinion Research report released during the first
Bush administration. The report claimed that terrorism “would tend to help
Republicans—in the sense that it dominated the agenda and kept focus on
something that has been a Republican strength, and that appears to
strengthen a Republican president” (Roper Center 18).
The public narratives of the two parties help explain the apparent dis-
crepancy between the statistical record of presidential performance and the
public perceptions of leadership and terrorism. Arguably, the Democratic
presidents’ public focus on crime has politically undermined their image as

effective leaders against terrorism. Unlike in the war frame, in which the ulti-
mate decision-making authority rests clearly with the commander in chief, a
concentration on crime puts the final judgment within the purview of the
Supreme Court. Both Carter and Clinton assumed key roles within their ter-
rorist narratives, but neither the tragic hero nor the prophet have the stand-
ing of the commander in chief in a conflict with a dangerous external threat.
By choosing to publicly de-emphasize their roles as commander in chief,
Democratic presidents have left themselves vulnerable to charges they lack
the necessary strength to respond to terrorism effectively.
Figure 8.8. Annual Average Number of American Deaths from

Terrorism by Presidential Party: 1976–2003
250 222
200
150
100
50
11
Source: U.S. State Dept. “Casualties, 1968–1979;” U.S. State Dept. “Casualties, 1980–1990;”
U.S. State Dept. “Casualties, 1990–1999;” and U.S. State Dept. Patterns 2001–2003.
Figure 8.9. Annual Average Number of American Deaths from Terrorism

by Presidential Party: 1976–2003 (excluding 2001)
60
46
50
40
30
20 11
10
0
Source: U.S. State Dept. “Casualties, 1968–1979;” U.S. State Dept. “Casualties, 1980–1990;”
U.S. State Dept. “Casualties, 1990–1999;” and U.S. State Dept. Patterns 2001–2003.
A second challenge of the crime narrative involves religion. Increasingly,

religion has become a key factor in presidential politics. The National Survey
of Religion and Politics conducted at the University of Akron reported that
in the 2000 presidential election, respondents who went to church more than
once a week were more than twice as likely to vote for the Republican candi-
date (68–32%), while those who never attended were far more likely to vote
for the Democratic candidate (65–35%) (as rptd. in Page, “Churchgoing”). A
Pew Research Center nationwide survey conducted from August 5 to August
10, 2004, reported similarly, “While neither political party is seen as particu-
larly unfriendly to religion, somewhat more say the Republican Party is
friendly toward religion (52%) than the Democratic Party (40%)” (Pew
Research Center, “GOP the Religion-Friendly Party” 3). Recently, the reli-
gion gap topped even the gender gap as predictive in close presidential con-
tests (Page, “Churchgoing”).
Narratives that feature crime have no necessary, integral relationship
with religion. Crime focuses on questions of innocence versus guilt arbitrated
by judges; religion emphasizes questions of good versus evil adjudicated by
God. Carter and Clinton attempted to bridge the apparent gap by choosing
narratives that emphasized both crime and religion as central themes. Both
of their public approaches—tragic drama and the prophetic tradition—
stressed subjects recurrent in various strains of the Christian religion, namely,
guilt, suffering, sacrifice, isolation, and redemption. Nevertheless, clear con-
nections between religion, crime, and terrorism are not obvious.
The Cold War narrative, by contrast, has religious appeal built into its
conventional characterizations of the hero character. The United States, as a
divinely inspired entity, is responsible for defending freedom and democracy
from the forces of growing evil around the globe. The Cold War narrative’s
lack of specificity about the identity of the higher authority has appeal for
peoples of all faiths, assuming they are Americans or in sympathy with
America’s cause. As Burke has written, “Religion will be monistic in the
sense that, no matter how large a pantheon the various tribes imagine, all
their gods can be subsumed under the general head of the divine” (Rhetoric of
Religion 311). The Cold War narrative’s invocation of a vaguely defined reli-
gious mission has the potential for widespread public appeal.
Besides not articulating a clear relationship to religion or to the role of
commander in chief, crime narratives do not display a lasting coherence for
countering the terrorist threat. Both the Carter and Clinton narratives pre-
sented short-term time frames for how presidents could handle the terrorism
problem. The tragic hero had to experience spiritual (if not political) death
for the guilty society to transcend its shortcomings and find reaffirmation.
The prophet, while a more lasting figure than the tragic hero, still lacked the
ability to pass along his unique relationship with God to future leaders, be
they Democratic or Republican. Hence, the Democratic presidents’ uses of
crime narratives lacked an ongoing, credible role for their successors.
The Cold War narrative, by contrast, provides a rhetorical strategy that
permits continuity and coherence across various administrations. Regardless
of past successes or failures, the narrative portends that the United States has
an ongoing mission to defend freedom and democracy around the globe.
Since America has and continues to be the leader of the free world, past, pre-
sent and future presidents serve as the focal point for overseeing the success-
ful implementation of that mission. Inspired by the divine, the hero character
in the Cold War narrative inevitably prevails.
While the political advantages of using war narratives have eclipsed
those that feature crime, the choice of the Cold War narrative to discuss ter-
rorism has not been without consequence. Karlyn Kohrs Campbell and
Kathleen Hall Jamieson have studied the generic expectations of presidential
war rhetoric. One of the recurrent substantive elements of war discourse they
identify is strategic misrepresentation (188–24). After they acknowledge the
impossibility of portraying all truth within the limits of public messages more
generally, Campbell and Jamieson note, “Presidential war rhetoric evinces an
unusual tendency to misrepresent the events described therein in ways strate-
gically related to the president’s desire to stifle dissent and unify the nation
for immediate and sustained action” (118). Historical attempts to retrofit the
Cold War narrative to the threat from terrorism make such misrepresenta-
tions somewhat predictable. Members of the executive branch must gloss
actual distinctions between Communists and terrorists to remain consistent
with the Cold War narrative. The various renderings of the narrative
described in this book have unveiled a variety of enemy characteristics that
tend toward misrepresentation in presidential discourse focusing on the sub-
ject of terrorism.
One recurrent misrepresentation concerns the united nature of the ter-
rorist threat. Presidents need to depict terrorists as a connected worldwide
enemy if they are to be comparable to the Communists of the Cold War era.
Gingrich’s 1983 explicit advice that Reagan present terrorism as a single
homogenous threat to garner public support appears to have governed vari-
ous reconstitutions of the Cold War narrative. Reagan publicly exaggerated
both the Soviet’s role in terrorism during the first half of the 1980s and the
interconnections between his six state sponsors of terrorism in the second
half of the 1980s. The current Bush administration embellished known
meetings between Iraq and al Qaeda into evidence of a collaborative relation-
ship. The ongoing search for a simple public explanation for the diverse
range of violent actors around the globe results in repeated mischaracteriza-
tions of the nation’s threats.
A second predictable point of misrepresentation relates to the motiva-

tions of terrorist actors. The leadership’s need to establish the terrorists’
ambition of worldwide conquest to parallel the history of the Communist
nemesis has led to repeated public distortions. Reagan publicly narrowed the
terrorists’ motivational focus to an attack on open democracies worldwide,
while his own intelligence showed that nondemocratic regimes in the Middle
East were a frequent target of terrorism and the full range of the terrorists’
actual motivations were far more diverse. George H. W. Bush publicly wor-
ried about the world’s fledging democratic economies, while Saddam
Hussein was attacking one of the wealthiest nations in the Middle East
(Kuwait) and had another (Saudi Arabia) in his sights. George W. Bush
maintained that al Qaeda had global ambitions against all democratic nations
without mentioning that bin Laden’s own statements indicated that he
planned to attack any nation, Communist or democratic, that occupied
Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, or other holy lands of the Middle East.
A final recurrent element of character misrepresentation relates to the
means that terrorists employ to achieve their objectives. To rise to the level
previously established by Communists in the US Cold War narratives, ter-
rorists have to be barbaric. At times, the presidents in this study mischarac-
terized the barbarity of the terrorist threat. Both the incubator story under
the George H. W. Bush administration and the recent claims of an active
Iraqi chemical, biological, and nuclear program during the George W. Bush
administration have been examples of presidents relying on inaccurate
accounts of international events to justify the case for America to go to war.
While the Iraqi regime has routinely displayed its willingness to use barbaric
methods such as murder, rape, and torture against the citizens of both Iraq
and Kuwait, both internal and broadly circulated media polls during the
1991 Persian Gulf War showed that the American public was unwilling to
engage its military forces to correct foreign humanitarian crises alone.
Expanding the scope of the terrorists’ barbarity to American citizens or the
nation’s allies swayed public opinion to support a more forceful, military
response, even though it was not based in reality.
While the characterizations of the enemy in reconstituted Cold War
narratives can be particularly revealing about likely public distortions, the
other key components of the narrative are also important to examine from
an evolutionary perspective. Consider how the presidents’ depiction of the
scene of the Cold War narrative has changed since the Vietnam War. In
short, presidents have gradually expanded the scene needing American
attention. The theme of a fragile environment has remained constant, but
presidents have applied that scenic portrayal first to emerging democracies
(the Vietnam War), then to democracy as a whole (the Reagan era), then to
an ordered world (George H. W. Bush in 1991 Persian Gulf War), and,
finally, to any nation on earth (George W. Bush in the post-9/11 period).

The justification for US intervention concurrently expanded to anywhere on
the globe.
Shifts in how the presidents have depicted the mission of the hero char-
acter in their reenactments of the Cold War narrative have also been telling.
During the Vietnam War, the mission of the United States was to defend
one fragile democratic state and to guard other fledgling democracies from
being attacked in the future. During the Persian Gulf War, the mission
expanded from defense of democracies to defending the self-determination
rights of a monarchy that was central to US strategic interests. Finally, the
current Bush administration enlarged its missions from the defense of liberty
to the spreading of freedom and liberty to those currently living under dicta-
torships. Each of the instantiations of the nation’s mission referenced free-
dom and liberty as values worth pursuing, but taken together, they reveal an
incremental expansion of America’s interventionist role in global affairs.
The powerful persuasive force of the Cold War narrative suggests that
the public strategy is unlikely to disappear in the near future. Its flexible
application to a wide range of global violent conflicts in the post–Cold War
era offers a means by which presidents can retain a consistent vision for for-
eign policy. As some of the internal documents presented in this book make
clear, the nation’s leadership has both been aware of and willing to capitalize
upon the persuasive power of the Cold War narrative with domestic audi-
ences, even if that strategy entails misrepresenting the terrorist threat to the
public. Observing how that narrative changes over time, therefore, becomes
an important means for critically assessing presidential terrorism discourse.
In cases where future presidents present Communists and terrorists as mirror
images, the chance of strategic misrepresentation arises and should prompt
close scrutiny. In cases where the portrayal of the scene or the mission of the
hero character changes, critical examination of the implications for global
governance are warranted.
Once labels, like terrorism, become key purpose terms in central societal
narratives, the final evolutionary step for terms to become ideological mark-
ers of a culture is that they must perform as ideographs. At least since the
Vietnam War, US presidents have been aware of the ideological potential of
the terrorism label. Johnson discovered that stopping terrorism, not the ide-
ology of Communism or democracy, functioned as a unifying appeal for the
South Vietnamese citizenry. Having adopted an effective strategy of tagging
the North Vietnamese as terrorists to sway the Vietnamese elections in 1966,
Johnson demonstrated the potency of using terrorism as a cultural term.
The Reagan administration was the first to elevate terrorism into an
ideograph for American culture. The Iranian hostage crisis set the stage by
rendering terrorism an ordinary term of political discourse that had culturally
specific meanings. As the news media ran nightly counts of the days US
hostages remained in confinement, ordinary Americans denounced the
abhorrent tactics of terrorists, while many in the Middle East interpreted the
embassy seizure, not as an act of terrorism, but as a justified response to US
historical support for the shah. The Iranian hostage crisis also began the
process of unifying the public around normative, but ill-defined, goals.
Internal polling demonstrated that the public wanted the president to do
something to resolve the crisis, thereby opening an opportunity for expanded
presidential perogatives. However, Carter demurred, choosing instead to
adopt a non-ideological framing of the crisis.
A number of factors coalesced during the Reagan administration to
transform terrorism into an ideological marker of the culture. First, Reagan
faced a situation with the demise of the Soviet Union where a conventional
ideograph, “Communism,” would soon be losing its dominant appeal as a
unifying term for the public. Second, Reagan positioned terrorism as a
“replacement” ideograph by juxtaposing the term as a threat to America’s
positive ideographs, namely, democracy and freedom. Finally, the adminis-
tration was willing to implement response measures heretofore unheard of in
the nation’s arsenal against terrorism. Reagan and his aides tested the bound-
aries of what an American public fearful of attacks would accept in the fight
against terrorism.
By the mid-1980s, the American public had coalesced into a broadly uni-
fied collective backing Reagan’s responses to terrorism the Middle East. Polls
showed seventy percent of the public wanting the administration to give a
major effort to fighting terrorism, eighty percent approving the military escort
of the plane carrying the Achille Lauro hijackers, and seventy-one percent
approving the bombing of Libya (see chapter 4). Not only was the American
public united behind the normative goal of responding to terrorism, but they
also supported US response options that, in more normal circumstances,
would not have qualified as publicly acceptable. Many abroad denounced
Reagan’s choices as skyjacking, offensive war fighting, and violations of the
state sovereignty rights of members of the international community. The dis-
tinctive reactions of domestic and international audiences to Reagan’s
rhetoric and actions underscored the culture-bound meaning of the term.
Aware of the demonstrated ideological potency of the terrorism label for
American audiences, presidents since Reagan have adopted various
approaches for handling their public use of the term. Clinton, with his focus
on terrorism as a crime of individuals against their God, cast ideological con-
tests as relics of the past. The Republican presidents’ war narratives, by con-
trast, have generally highlighted an ideological interpretation of terrorism
conflicts, due, in part, to the Cold War narrative’s origins in the ideological
contest between democracy and Communism. As the two Bush administra-
tions have applied revised Cold War narratives to various iterations of the
terrorist threat, the meaning of the label has expanded. The current Bush
administration has been explicit about the ideological nature of terrorism.
Bush recently announced, “We actually misnamed the war on terror; it ought
to be the struggle against ideological extremists who do not believe in free
societies, who happen to use terror as a weapon to try to shake the confi-
dence of the free world.” (FDCH Transcipts, 6 Aug. 2004: 14).
Certain media pundits have likewise begun to suggest that crime, war,
and ideology are three different frames for analyzing the nation’s response to
terrorism. Relying heavily on the analysis described in the 9/11 Commission
Report, the columnist David Brooks has proffered, “We’re not in the middle
of a war on terror. [. . .] We’re not facing an axis of evil. Instead, we are in
the midst of an ideological conflict” (A13). Such reasoning has juxtaposed
ideology and war narratives as two distinct frameworks that invite unique
responses by the nation’s leadership. A review of the historical record of pres-
idential narratives related to terrorism, however, reveals that the two ideas
have been far from separate. Presidents relying on the ideologically-based
Cold War narratives since the Reagan administration have each engaged in
wars against foreign states utilizing terrorism as justification for military
action. Taken in the context of earlier arguments in this study, the attempt
to suggest that terrorism as ideology is something new would simply qualify
as another attempt to create an opening for a new definition of American
identity and governance.
The recent emergence of terrorism as an ideograph offers insights into
how negative markers of the culture gain their potency. Given that negative
ideographs are tags for unacceptable behaviors, such labels can initially func-
tion as companion terms for recognized competing ideologies. Repeated
presidential reference to Communist terrorists and Nazi terrorists in the 20th
century allowed the then innocuous term, “terrorism,” to become a recurrent
feature of American society’s most prominent ideological narratives.
When labels function as companion terms within a community’s dis-
course, their ideological function can be multifaceted. When Johnson
referred to “Communist terrorists” during the Vietnam War, the first term,
“Communist” had ideological appeal for one culture (the U.S.), while the
second term, “terrorist,” performed ideological work for another (South
Vietnam). In a different historical context, either one of the terms might
have had ideological appeal for both cultures. Finally, both terms might have
lacked ideological force altogether, leaving both “communist” and “terrorist”
as mere labels.
Once a label emerges on its own as a cultural marker, it has the potential
to transfer ideological significance to other labels. Terrorism, now an ideo-
graph for American culture, has most recently served as a companion term in
the phrase, “Muslim fundamentalist terrorists.” Reinforced through repeti-

tion by the nation’s leadership, the linguistic merger encourages the societal
narratives associated with the ideograph, “terrorism,” to be mapped on to the
nation’s experience with Muslim fundamentalists. Consequently, the popu-
lace may assume the existence of motives, means, and organizational struc-
ture of terrorist groups, as well as the appropriate US responses, without
proper debate about their actual applicability within the new context.
The choice to focus on Muslim fundamentalists as the emerging long-
term terrorist threat to America’s security has a number of important impli-
cations. First, it heightens the elusive nature of the enemy. Viewed
historically, the presidents have constructed linguistic mergers that include
negative ideographs to be descriptive of the totality of an opposing group
(i.e., the Communists during the Cold War and the Nazis during World
War II). In this new association, the targeted group of fundamentalists is a
subpopulation of the broader Muslim community. Such a rendering poses
confusion, not unlike that caused by the military strikes that the Clinton
administration used against non-state actors in the Sudan after the assaults
on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Just as dividing state from non-
state actors posed a challenge for Clinton at home and abroad, distinguishing
between members of the Muslim community who are fundamentalist and
those who are moderate is a daunting task. The resulting ambiguity provides
the leadership wide latitude in defining who constitutes the real threat, but
risks the possibility of a broader cultural war.
Second, the focus on Muslim fundamentalists as a looming terrorist
threat raises thorny questions about the activities of the fundamentalists who
observe other religions. Do all religious fundamentalists who have some con-
tact with the few of their members using violence to accomplish their objec-
tives open themselves to charges that the belong to terrorist groups? Eric
Rudolph, the Christian fundamentalist who bombing the 1996 Olmpic
Games, publicly announced that his actions were justified in protest to the US
government’s support for abortion rights. Future actors may have the charisma
to turn cultural clashes embedded within the terrorist ideograph inward on
American society itself. Further division, rather than unity, may result.
If the public accepts that the terrorist label applies only to a small sub-
population of misguided members of a fundamentalist group (albeit Muslim,
Christian, or other), challenges still remain to an ideological framing of the
terrorism problem. The narratives utilized to frame US conduct against for-
eign terrorists may create impractical expectations for the handling of home-
grown terrorists. Rudolph’s plea agreement, for example, was designed to
allow the retrieval of hidden explosives near population centers and minimize
the potential loss of life. Nevertheless, many members of the public, seeking
consistency with the prior terrorist narratives, complained that the govern-
ment had made concessions to a terrorist by its decision not to seek the death
penalty. Treating terrorist violence as an ongoing threat to the continued
existence of American culture raises the stakes for governmental accountabil-
ity in handling the terrorist problem.
The Department of Homeland Security has recently taken action that
appears to recognize the cultural ramifications of the terrorist ideograph. On
an internal list of the threats to the nation’s security drafted as apart of its
document entitled, “Integrated Planning Guidance, Fiscal years 2005–2011,”
the department specified the threats it saw to homeland. As specified, the
department “expects to contend primarily with adversaries such as al Qaeda
and other foreign entities affiliated with the Islamic Jihad movement, as well
as domestic radical Islamist groups” (Rood 1). Left off of the list entirely,
however, were right-wing domestic terrorists or terrorist groups that had a
history of bombings, bogus anthrax threats, and “plots to obtain and use con-
ventional, chemical, and nuclear weapons against civilians” (ibid). By not
emphasizing Christian fundamentalist groups engaged in violent methods
inside the United States, the department attempted to skirt the broader
potential applications of the Muslim fundamentalist terrorist merger.
Now that terrorism is functioning as an ideological marker of American
culture, its meaning will contract and expand over time. Given the term’s
current capacity to unify, if not polarize, the public, attention to those defin-
itional shifts remain an important, ongoing task. What continues to happen
in the name of terrorism will remain a question of central importance to how
America defines itself.
Notes
CHAPTER 1
1. See chapter 3 for details on correspondence between Zbigniew Brzezinski
and Jimmy Carter.
2. Reagan administration aides leaked that Moammar Qadhafi had such pro-
clivities.
3. See Hoffman and Carr 99–100 for another example.
4. The Hatch gaffe was arguably an orchestrated media event designed to jus-
tify less information-sharing from the executive branch of government. The bin
Laden organization had previously stopped using satellite phones in 1997 because it
became aware of US surveillance techniques (Bergen 229).
5. For a more extensive understanding of the ideograph, see Condit and
Lucaites; Delgado, “Chicano Movement Rhetoric” 446–54; Delgado, “Rhetoric of
Fidel Castro” 1–14; M. P. Moore 47–64; M. A. Martin 12–25; Parry-Giles 182–96;
Railsback 410–24; and Edwards and Winkler 289–310.
6. For the specifics of the polls, see chapter 3, 4, 5 and 6.
7. See chapter 3.
CHAPTER 5
1. For precise text of UN resolutions, see UN and the Persian Gulf Crisis
(n.d.).
2. For a more detailed description of exchange, see Hassan 50–51.
3. For more on the incubator story, see MacArthur 37–77.
4. For a more extensive discussion of US conciliatory policy, see Berman and
Jentleson 93–128; and Rubin 255–72.
213
214 Notes to Chapters 5, 6, and 7
5. See, for example, “RCC Approves ‘Merger’ Decision with Kuwait, 8 August
1990” 119–223.
6. For a more extensive analysis of the history of the conflict between
Christians and Muslims, see Lewis 2002.
7. For a discussion of these strategies, see Farmer and Helman.
CHAPTER 6
1. For other examples of terrorists’ chemical weapons, see Schweitzer and
Dorsch 93–99.
2. The largest number of attacks occurred in Western Europe (666), followed
by Latin America (594), the Middle East (299), Asia (193), Eurasia (131), Africa
(130), and the United States (15), as extrapolated from U.S. Dept. of State, Patterns
1999, 100–06.
3. According to the 9/11 Commission, such claims were false. As the report
noted, “[W]hile the drug trade was a source of income for the Taliban, it did not
serve the same purpose for al Qaeda, and there is no reliable evidence that Bin Ladin
was involved or made his money through drug trafficking” (National Commission,
Final Report 171).
4. The 9/11 Commission Report explains that the CIA misinterpreted Clinton’s
Memorandum of Notification to mean that they should capture, rather than actually
kill, bin Laden (National Commission, Final Report 132–33).
CHAPTER 7
1. As the speeches of George W. Bush and his key administration spokesper-
son have not yet been amassed into Public Papers, this chapter’s citations will refer-
ence various political transcript databases including: Federal Document Clearing House
Political Transcripts, Federal News Service, Presidential Documents Online, and White
House.
2. For more on public and technical spheres of argument, see Goodnight
214–27.
3. FDR and Truman, for example, publicly referred to the Hitler regime as
terrorist.
4. The seven spokespersons referred to were George W. Bush, Dick Cheney,
Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft, Condoleezza Rice, and Tom Ridge.
5. As the last chapter indicated, the 9/11 Commission concluded that Bush
was genuinely concerned about the threat posed by al Qaeda, but like Clinton, he
Notes to Chapters 7 and 8 215
failed to act in a sufficient and timely manner (Nat. Commission, Final Report 343).
Clarke would also admit to the commission that his advice, if taken, would not have
prevented the attacks of 9/11 (ibid. 348).
6. One rocket with sarin was discovered, but administration spokespersons did
not make public claims that the one weapon confirmed their original speculation
about Iraq’s arsenal.
CHAPTER 8
1. While the number of deaths in the events of September 11 have generally
been understood to be approximately 3,000, which includes non-US citizen fatalities
in the towers, the figures used in these calculations are those of the State
Department, which places the number of US deaths in 2001 at 1,440 (US Dept. of
State, Patterns: 1997–2002).
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Index
Abbas, Abu, 67–68, 93, 100 Aristotle, 46, 52, 54

Abu Ghraib, 177–78 Ashcroft, John, 164–67, 176, 182
Achille Lauro, 67–68, 87, 91–92, 100 Aspin, Les, 114
active defense measures, 93–94. See also assassination, 8–9, 17–18, 34–35, 68,
preemptive war 130–31. See also fatalities
Afghanistan, 14, 60–62, 130, 141, 163, Athens, 67
169, 171 Aum Shinrikyo, 128–29, 160
al Qaeda: Aziz, Tariq, 121
and Clinton era, 144, 150;
and George W. Bush era, 3, 150, Baghdad Radio, 121
155–56, 166, 168–70, 176; Bahrain, 119
and weapons of mass destruction, 2, Baker, James, 99, 102, 104, 109–10, 112
133; Barbary pirates, 71, 88, 89
barbarity of, 171–72; battlefield detainees, 176–78
evaluation of war on terror against, Beirut, 56–57
157; Belgium, 132
labeling strategy related to, 192; Bennett, Harold, 31
warnings about airliners as suicide Bentson, Lloyd, 136
bombers, 161 Bergrin, Paul, 178
Algeria, 161 Berri, Nabih, 83
Al-Megrahi, Abdel Basset, 69 bin Laden, Osama:
American Embassy in Bogota, 76 appropriation of Cold War narrative,
American Embassy in Riyadh, 101, 114 184–86;
American Indians, 159–60, 162, 179, appropriation of prophetic tradition,
189 151–52;
American Revolution, 74 culture-bound interpretations of, 15;
Amnesty International, 110 involvement in acts of terrorism, 129,
Anderson, Jack, 51–52 139, 155, 161;
anthrax, 2, 158, 164–65, 191 links to organized crime, terrorism,
Antiterrorism and Effective Death and drug trafficking, 139;
Penalty Act of 1996, 143 media focus on after 9/11, 6;
251
252 Index
pursuit of chemical weapons, 132; false claims about Iraqi WMD, 172–73;
reliance on untraceable communica- focus on hostage incidents with quick
tions, 5, 231n4; closure, 194;
US failure against, 201 plans for invasion of Iraq in 2001, 156;
Black September Organization, 162 portrayed bin Laden as false prophet,
Board of International Broadcasting, 62 186–87;
Boykin, William, 183 promised Iraqi sovereignty post–Sad-
Bremer, Paul, 185 dam, 181;
Brokaw, Tom, 158 religious framing of US terrorism
Brooks, David, 210 response, 175;
Brzezinski, Zbigniew, 41–42, 52, 58–60, secrecy of, 5, 202;
62 served as international standard-
Buckley, William, 73 bearer for terrorism response, 4;
Bundy, Bill, 34–35 suspects in 9/11 attacks, 3;
Burke, Kenneth, 3, 8, 137–38, 142 uniqueness of terrorist threat, 159–63,
Bush, George H. W.: 190;
collaborative relationship with Iraq, use of reconstituted Cold War narra-
107–11; tive, 166–81;
congressional briefing about hostages’ use of response strategies for Ameri-
plight, 110–11; can Indians, 180–81;
downplay of ideology, 121–24; use of terrorism label, 8, 159, 165
freezing of financial assets, 200; businesses, as victim of, 196–97
insistence on no-negotiations with
Iraq, 112; Campbell, David, 3
New World Order as fragile scene, Campbell, Karlyn Kohrs, 11, 206
105–6; Canada, 132
number of terrorist incidents, 127; Cannistraro, Vincent, 78, 80
pardon of Reagan officials, 103; Carter, Hodding, 38–39
perceptions of terrorism’s political Carter, Jimmy:
risks, 95; and Shah of Iran, 46–47;
personal connections with Kuwait, approval drop during hostage crisis,
103; 103;
use of terrorism label for Hussein, 8, comparison to Reagan on terrorism,
98–100, 104, 194; 63;
Vietnam War and Persian Gulf con- concern for oil dependency, 49;
flict, 116–18; focus on extremist groups with state
World War II and Persian Gulf con- influence, 8;
flict, 111–16 inconsistent labeling strategy of,
Bush, George W.: 38–39;
and war metaphor, 6, 11, 175–79; planned invasion to influence election,
broadened standards for state spon- 51;
sorship, 163–64; response to hostage crisis, 37–38, 200;
clash of civilizations, 182–83; Soviet Union and Iran, 59, 61;
defense spending, 190; status as ex-President, 63;
defines terrorists as attackers of free- strategies to avoid war with Islamic
dom, 2–3, 169, 173–74, 182; world, 57;
Index 253
uniqueness of embassy seizure, 190; deemphasized hostage taking,

use of Cold War narrative, 60–61; 130–31, 194;
use of crime metaphor; 41; defended secrecy, 5;
use of Nixon’s labeling strategies, 39; foreign terrorist organizations, 135;
use of tragic drama, 42–55; mutual legal assistance treaties, 148;
willingness to admit US error in 1953 non-ideological framing of terrorism,
CIA overthrow of Iran, 53–54 153–54;
Carter, Rosalynn, 43 responses to terrorism, 141–42, 144,
Casey, Bill, 73, 80, 83 193, 200;
casualties, 2, 34, 98, 156–57. See also terrorism incidents during tenure, 127;
fatalities uniqueness of terrorist threat, 130–36,
catharsis, 54 190;
Centennial Park bombing, 128, 191–92. use of prophetic narrative, 136–51
See also Olympic bombings Clinton, Chelsea, 146
Centers for Disease Control, 164 Cohen, William, 110–11
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA): Cold War narrative:
budget increases, 147; during Carter era, 60–61;
Contras’ murder manual, 72–73; during George H. W. Bush’s tenure,
105–18;
effort to overthrow Hussein, 141;
during George W. Bush’s tenure,
involvement in bombing targeting
166–81;
Sheik Fadlallah, 67, 73;
during Reagan era, 80–90;
links to Tehran embassy, 49, 56;
during the Vietnam War, 23–28;
on crime metaphor, 201;
enemy character portrayals in, 24;
on Iraq’s WMD, 173;
hero character portrayals in, 26–27,
on Soviet Union’s responsibility for
208;
terrorism, 79–80;
political advantages of, 204–6;
on Sudanese Pharmaceutical Plant, scenic portrayals in, 22–23, 207–8;
142; tendency for misrepresentations of
ordered to kill bin Laden, 144; terrorism, 206–7
overthrow of Iranian government, 46; Cold War, 22
Phoenix Project, 20 Colombia, 76, 94, 135
Charland, Maurice, 10 Communism, 17–22, 28–29, 35, 59–60
Charles, Sandra, 108 Condit, Celeste, 7, 9, 12
Chemical Weapons Convention, 149 Congress (house, senate), 2, 109–110,
Cheney, Dick, 163, 168, 170, 173, 144–45, 172–73, 178
176–77 Contras, 14, 72–74, 77, 83
China, 24–25, 162, 166 Counterterrorism and Effective Death
Christians, 211–12, 214n6 Penalty Act of 1996, 149
Clarke, Richard, 134, 139, 150, 166, counterterrorism, 32–35
172, 214–15n5 Cragg, Kenneth, 143–44
Clinton, Bill: Crenshaw, Marsha, 86
call for sacrifice, 142–45, 146–48; crime, 15–16, 41–42, 48, 92, 200–4,
characterized bin Laden as false 204–6
prophet, 152–53; Cuba, 71, 76, 84, 93–94
criticisms of, 136, 140–41, 149–50; cyberterrorism, 133–34
254 Index
Darby, Joseph, 177 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA),

Darsey, James, 141, 150 161
Daschle, Tom, 158 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI),
David, Javal S., 178 147, 165, 167–68
Davis, Tom, 163 foreign media reaction, 90, 92, 94, 120
De Rosa, Gerardo, 67 foreign terrorist organizations, 135
defoliation, 34 Forrestal, Michael, 33
Democratic presidents, 11, 43, 200–4, From, Al, 41
202t, 203t, 204t
Desert One, 37–38 Geneva Accords (Conventions), 25, 27,
Deutsch, John, 132–33 176, 178
Dobkin, Beth, 90 Germany, 67–69, 132
domino theory, 23 Ghotbzadeh, Sadegh, 60
Douglas, Paul, 34–35 Gingrich, Newt, 78–79
Douglass, William, 6 Glad, Betty, 44
Downing Street memo, 173 Glaspie, April, 108, 122, 213n2
Duberstein, Ken, 78 Gonzalez, Anthony, 178–79
Duffy, Kevin, 127 Graham, Bob, 164
Dyke, Nancy, 71 Granum, Rex, 51
Greenstein, Fred, 136
Edelman, Murray, 3
Gregg, Donald, 71–72, 89
Egypt, 67, 91–92, 120
Grenada, 78
Egyptian Islamic Front, 151
Guantanamo Bay, 176–78
Eisenhower, Dwight, 46
Guardians of the Islamic Revolution, 68,
El Salvador, 65–66, 72, 78, 80
87
embedded reporters, 6
Gulf Cooperative Council, 101
Executive Order 13233, 5
Export Administration Act of 1979, 70
extradition, 67–68, 93, 147–48 Habermas, Jurgen, 9
Hadley, Steve, 175
Fabrizio, Tony, 113–14 Hamas, 145, 192
fatalities: Hanson, George, 50
and public opinion, 116–18; Harris, Lou, 28, 50, 92, 116–17
comparison of political parties, 202, Harrison, William Henry, 179
204t; Hatch, Orin, 5, 213n4
during Carter era, 38, 63; Hatfill, Steven, 158
during Clinton era, 127–29; Henn, T. R., 55
during George H. W. Bush era, 117; Henze, Paul, 59, 62
during George W. Bush era, 156–58, Hezbollah, 66, 78, 192
215n1; Hill, Charles, 85
during Reagan era, 63, 65–70, 93; Hilsman, Roger, 24
from chemical and biological terror- Hitler, Adolf, 24, 113, 116, 160, 162.
ism, 2; See also Nazis
from nuclear terrorism, 2; Hoban, James, Jr., 146
from terrorism in South Vietnam, 17; Holder, Eric, 133
small relative to other threats, 2. See Holland, 132
also casualties Holloway, James, 71, 85–86, 91
Index 255
Homeland Security, department of, 211 Iraq:

Honduras, 80 and Persian Gulf conflict, 97–98;
Horner, Charles, 123 casualties, 156, 185;
hostage taking: Clinton’s response to, 141;
in Carter era, 37–40, 45–53; dishonesty of, 108, 172–73;
in Clinton era, 130–31; explanation for USS Stark bombing,
in George H. W. Bush era, 99, 107;
102–103, 110; hostages held by, 98, 102;
in Reagan era, 66–67, 69; omission as state sponsor, 71;
method of terrorism, 9; public support for bombing of, 14;
recent presidential reluctance to focus suspect in 9/11 attacks, 3;
on, 194. See also kidnapping terrorist training operations in,
Hoveida, Fereydoun, 123 169–70;
Howland, Mike, 37 US battle planning assistance for, 107;
Hussein, Saddam: WMD, 111, 132, 156;
advantages prior to U.S. military Islamic Jihad, 66, 69, 162, 212
involvement, 103–4, 114–15; Israel, 66–67, 79, 117, 119–20
Bush depiction as terrorist, 99–100, Italy, 67–68, 93, 132
Ivie, Robert, 23
104, 109, 171–72;
motivations of, 106–7, 118–19, 170;
Jamieson, Kathleen, 11, 43, 206
perceived links to al Qaeda, 169–70,
Japan, 134, 185
170;
Jefferson, Thomas, 179, 189
public diplomacy attacks on coalition
Jewell, Richard, 128, 191
forces, 119–21;
Johnson, Larry, 202–3
removal plan after 9/11, 156;
Johnson, Lyndon B., 19, 22–35, 208
secular nature of leadership, 169;
Joint US Public Affairs Office, 31–32
Soviet’s proposed concession plan for, Jordan, 121
112 Jordan, Hamilton, 46
use of ideological warfare, 118–21;
KAL 007 bombing, 69–70
identity, 2–3, 9–10 Kennedy, John F., 17–18, 22, 24, 43,
ideographs, 11–15, 90–95, 208–11 142
ideology, 7–16 Kennedy, Ted, 47
incubator story, 109–10 Kenya, bombing of US embassy, 129,
insurgency, 73–75 141, 148
International Atomic Energy Kern, Paul J., 177
Association, 173 Kharg Island, 52
International Committee of the Red Khomeini, Ayatollah, 14, 37, 40, 48, 50,
Cross, 176–78 55–57
International Communication Agency, kidnapping, 17–18, 48, 92, 130–31,
58, 62 193–94, 194t. See also hostage taking
International Court of Justice, 49 Kirkpatrick, Jeanne, 82
Iran, 3, 38–63, 65, 84, 93–94, 119, 156 Kirkpatrick, John, 72–73
Iran-Contra scandal, 69, 103, 194 Klinghoffer, Leon, 67
Iranian hostage crisis, 37–55, 103, 194 Kosczynski, Theodore, 162
256 Index
Krook, Dorothea, 45 McGee, Gale, 34–35

Kurds, 111 McGee, Michael, 12–15
Kuwait, 66, 97–99, 101–102, 104, McNamara, Robert, 25, 33–34
106–11, 115, 122–124, 141 McVeigh, Timothy, 127, 162, 191–92
Medhurst, Martin, 22
labeling: media, 5, 127–28, 150, 190, 210
definition of, 8; Meese, Edward, 74–75, 78, 83–84
of actions, 8–9, 193–95; Menarchik, Doug, 71, 75, 89
of agency, 9, 195–97; Middle East:
of agents, 8, 191–93; and the Carter era, 49–50, 57;
of purposes, 9, 198–200; and the Clinton era, 127–28, 140;
of scenes, 9, 197–98; and the George H. W. Bush era, 101,
relationship to ideological orienta- 113, 121;
tions, 7 and the Reagan era, 65–66, 68, 85, 87;
Laingen, Bruce, 37, 56 differences with US on terrorism, 209;
Latin America, 197–98, 214n2 recurrent subject of presidential
Leahy, Patrick, 158 terrorism discourse, 9, 197;
Lebanon, 56–57, 66–67, 78, 80, 87–88, terrorists attacks related to, 197–98,
94, 160, 185 198t, 214n2
Leogrande, William, 77 military response, 1, 14, 68, 115–18
Lewis, Guy, 164 Mohammed, Khalid Sheikh, 130
Libya: Moscow, 132–33
and Pan Am 103, 68–69; Mossadegh, Mohammed, 46
and TWA 847, 66; Moussaoui, Zacarias, 155
and West Berlin discotheque, 68; Moyers, Bill, 28–29
and World Trade Center, 161;
Mueller, John, 116
application of NSDD 138 to, 93;
Murad, Abdul Hakim, 161
as state sponsor of terrorism, 71, 84;
Muslims:
chemical weapons acquisition by, 132;
Carter’s focus on mutual interests
protests against America during
with, 57–58;
Iranian hostage crisis, 57;
fundamentalists as terrorists, 210;
U.S. bombing raid on, 14, 68, 94
historical clash with Christians, 214n6;
Lindh, John Walker, 176–77
in Iranian hostage crisis, 38, 40,
Livingston, Steven, 6
55–56, 59;
Loan, Nguyen Ngoc, 34–35
in 1991 Persian Gulf conflict, 118–21;
Lodge, Henry Cabot, 18, 21
Lucaites, John, 7, 9, 12 Soviet attacks on, 61–62;
terrorists’ demands for release of,
Maloney, Carolyn B., 161 66–67, 69
Manheim, Jarol, 6 Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties, 147–48
Matsch, Richard, 128
Mattke, Terry, 76–77 Nacos, Brigitte, 6
McCone, John, 19 narratives, 3, 7, 9–11, 15–16
McDaniel, Rodney, 91 National Liberation Front, 30–32, 35
McDonald, Al, 47, 53 National Security Directive 138, 93–94
McFarlane, Robert, 71, 74–75, 78, National Security Directive 221, 75–76
83–85, 93 National Security Directive 26, 108
Index 257
Nayirah, 109 Palestine, 185

Nazis, 17–18, 162. See also Hitler, Adolf Palestinian Liberation Front, 67
New World Order, 100, 105–7 Palestinian Liberation Organization, 37,
Nicaragua, 74, 76–78, 84, 93–94 67
Nichols, Terry, 128 Palmer, Richard, 42
9/11 Commission: Pan Am 103 bombing, 68–69, 87, 148
on bin Laden, 150–51, 214n3; Panzer, Fred, 28
on changes to US terrorism responses, Paris peace talks, 21
162–63, 201; Patriot Act, 175
on early suspects of 9/11 bombings, 3; PDD-39, 144
on pre-9/11 intelligence, 155, 160–61; Pearl Harbor, 168
on relationship between Hussein and Pearson, David, 70
al Qaeda, 170; Pentagon attack, 2, 6, 15, 155–56,
on Shifa Pharmaceutical Plant, 142; 167–68. See also September 11 attacks
on terrorism as ideologically-driven, Pentagon, 178
183; Persian Gulf conflict:
on US response failures to 9/11, 167–68 and Vietnam War, 116–18;
Nixon, Richard M.: and World War II, 111–16;
bifurcated approach to terrorism calculations for use of terrorism label
labeling strategy, 20–21; in, 102–4;
influence on Carter, 39–40; details of, 97–98;
labeled anti-war protesters as terror- fatalities of, 98;
ists, 21, 192; justifications for war, 100–1;
Sky Marshall Program, 160; public’s priorities related to, 102
use of Reign of Terror analog, 21; Persian Gulf Working Group, 101–2,
use of Cold War narrative, 22–24 105, 113, 115–16
North Korea, 84, 93, 132, 156, 163 Peru, 135
North Vietnam, 18–21, 24–25, 33–35. Philippines, 132
See also Vietnam War Phoenix Project, 20
Nunn, Sam, 115–16 PKK, 135
Poindexter, John, 91, 94
O’Neill, Paul, 172–73 polls:
Oakley, Robert, 78 during Clinton presidency, 149–51;
Odom, William E., 59 during George H. W. Bush presi-
oil, 79, 102–3, 170–71 dency, 101–2, 113–14, 116–18;
Oklahoma City bombing, 9, 127–28, during George W. Bush presidency,
140, 143, 154 2, 176;
Olympic bombings, 9. See also Centen- during Johnson presidency, 28–30;
nial Park bombing during Reagan presidency, 73, 79,
Oots, Kent, 86 82–84, 88, 91–92, 94, 208–9;
Operation Desert Storm, 97–98 party comparison on terrorism, 203;
Ortega, Daniel, 77 Republicans more religion-friendly, 205
Powell, Colin, 122, 157, 159, 163, 173,
Pahlavi, Mohammed Reza (Shah of 177, 180, 186–87
Iran), 46–48 Powell, Jody, 38, 61–62, 168–69
Pakistan, 56, 156 Precht, William, 60
258 Index
preemptive war, 93–94, 179. See also rescue mission in Tehran, 14, 37, 52–53
active defense measures Revolutionary Council (Iran), 48
presidential approval: Rice, Condoleezza, 6, 173
of Carter, 50, 103; Ridge, Tom, 160
of Clinton, 149–50; Roosevelt, Franklin D., 43, 114
of George H. W. Bush, 101–2; Rose Garden strategy, 50
of George W. Bush, 2; Rosenberg, Barbara, 165
of Reagan, 69, 103 Rudolph, Eric Robert, 128, 162, 191–92
presidential discourse on terrorism, 4–7, Rumsfeld, Donald, 161, 166, 169, 173,
11, 190 179–81
prophetic dualism, 26 Rusk, Dean, 18
prophetic tradition, 136–39, 142, Ryan, Hewson, 32
144–46, 148, 150
Sacred Sword of the Patriots League,
Qadhafi, Moammar, 68, 94, 213n2 19–20
Quayle, Oliver and Co., 29–31, 35
sacrifice, 49–51, 142–45, 146–48
Said, Edward, 90
Rademaker, Steven, 102, 104
Sandinistas, 77, 79
RANCH HAND, 34
sarin gas attack, 128–29
Reagan, Ronald:
Saudi Arabia, 73, 113, 116–17, 119–20,
administration leaks about Qadhafi as
123–24, 156
cross-dresser, 1;
Saunders, Harold, 39, 58, 62
arms for hostage deal, 69;
Scheurer, Michael (Imperial Hubris),
evidence of drug/terrorism link, 75–76;
152, 157, 184
focus on state sponsors, 8, 71–73, 107;
positioned terrorism as antithesis of Scotland, 68–69
democracy, 84–85; Scowcroft, Brent, 101, 108–9
public opinion related to, 73, 83–84, secrecy, 1, 5
91, 103; September 11 attack, 2–3, 6, 9, 15, 189.
redeployed US forces after 1983 US See also Pentagon attack; World Trade
Marine barracks attack, 66; Center attacks
rise in terrorism during tenure, 65; Sharon, Ariel, 4
terrorism incidents compared to Shifa Pharmaceutical Plant (Sudan), 5,
Democratic presidents, 63, 127; 141–42, 192
told political risks of terrorism, 95; Sick, Gary, 51, 56, 60
uniqueness of terrorist threat, 190; Smalley, Robert, 79, 82–83
use of Cold War narrative, 80–90; South Africa, 72, 132
use of terrorism as ideograph, 90–95, South Vietnam, 17–21, 23–30, 32–35.
208; See also Vietnam War
USS Stark incident, 107 Southern Poverty Law Center, 135
Red Brigades, 162 Soviet Union (USSR):
Reign of Terror, 13, 21, 160 application of NSDD 138 to, 93;
Reinhardt, John, 58 as evil empire, 82;
Reno, Janet, 133 as source of nuclear weapons spread,
Rentschler, James M., 58 131;
Republican presidents, 11, 200–5, 202t, as threat to Iran, 60–62;
203t, 204t KAL Flight 007, 69–70;
Index 259
not viewed as agent of TWA 847 strategic hamlet program, 32–33

hijacking, 83; Sudan, 14, 141
proposal for Iraqi concessions in Per- Syria, 67, 71, 83–84, 93–94, 120–21
sian Gulf Conflict, 112;
Reagan’s scapegoat for terrorism, 79–81; Taliban, 156, 163, 169, 171, 186–87,
U.S. fear of Iran-Soviet alliance, 58–59 193
Spain, 66 Tambs, Lewis, 75
Special Coordinating Committee Tanzania, bombing of US Embassy,
(SCC), 5, 50, 57, 59, 62 129, 141, 148
Spertzel, Richard, 165 Task Force on Combating Terrorism,
Sri Lanka, 135 70–71, 83, 87
State Department: Taylor, Maxwell, 19
annual list of terrorist acts, 5; Teeter, Robert, 102
comparison of presidential perform- Tenet, George, 139
ance on terrorism, 201–3, 202t, terrorism:
203t, 204t; and Communism, 17–22, 35, 208;
definition of terrorism, 198; and drug trafficking, 75–78, 135, 138;
influence on media, 6; and insurgency, 73–75;
international terrorism incidents, 191, and Nazism, 17;
191t; and organized criminals, 135, 138;
locations of, 134, 214n2; annual rate of facilities struck by
on Iranian hostage crisis, 49; decade, 196, 196t;
on Iraq, 107; annual rate of incidents by decade,
on Lebanon, 67; 191, 191t;
on Libya, 68; annual rate of kidnappings by decade,
on 9/11 attacks, 215n1; 194, 194t;
on Persian Gulf conflict, 113; as ideograph, 11–15, 90–95, 208–9;
on Vietnam War, 25; causes of, 87;
statistics on kidnapping, 194, 194t; coalitions infrequent, 86;
2003 Patterns reports, 157–58; culture-bound meaning, 14–15, 19–20,
use of terrorism label in Kennedy era, 95, 189;
18; debated as ideology, 7;
use of terrorism label in Nixon era, 21; elasticity of meaning, 13, 190;
victims of terrorism, 196, 196t, 197t incidents targeting business facilities,
state sponsors of terrorism: 196, 197t;
controversy surrounding, 72–73; location of, 169, 197–98, 198t, 214n2;
description of, 70–71; oppositional term of freedom and
ideology of, 182; democracy, 2, 12, 85, 182;
implications of, 71–72, 192–93; redefined by various presidents, 190;
removal of Iraq as, 107; State Department definition of, 199
removal of Libya as, 69; Terrorist Protection Act of 1985, 93
state sponsors in Reagan’s second terrorist-sponsored state, 163
term, 84; Tokyo subway, 128–29
wide latitude of application, 71 Tomseth, Victor, 37
Stetham, Robert, 66 tragic drama, 42–43, 45–46, 48, 52,
Stevens, Robert, 164 54–55
260 Index
tragic hero, 42–44 implications of terrorism on US

Truman, Harry, 27, 43, 190 response options in, 19;
Tunis, 67, 69, 87 influence on conflict in Nicaragua,
Turkey, 120 82–83;
Turner, Stansfield, 1, 73 influence on Iranian hostage crisis,
TWA 847 bombing, 66–67, 83, 88, 199 38–39, 41–42;
public merger of terrorism and Com-
UN Security Council, 49, 97, 110, 122 munism, 18;
Underhill, John, 159–60 South Vietnamese priorities for, 29–30;
United Arab Emirates (UAE), 156 terrorism as justification for US
United States Information Agency involvement in, 17–22, 189;
(USIA), 29–32, 90, 121 terrorism in South Vietnam, 17. See
unlawful combatants, 176. See also bat- also North Vietnam, South Vietnam
tlefield detainees von Rad, Gerhaard, 136
US Embassy in Tehran, 37, 41, 44–46, Voice of America, 58
61
US Embassy in Vietnam, 30 Wander, Phillip, 26
US Embassy in West Beirut, 66 War of 1812, 168
US responses to terrorism: War narrative: 6, 11, 16, 41, 104,
after 9/11, 156–58; 175–79, 200–1, 205–6, 210
insubordination related to, 1; War Powers Act, 4
of Clinton era, 141, 144, 148–49; Ward, Angus, 162
of Indians in early republic, 179–81; Washburn, John, 60
of Iranian hostage crisis, 37–38; Waxman, Henry A., 157, 161
of Reagan era, 91, 94; weapons of mass destruction (WMD),
of Vietnam War, 32–35; 9, 111, 132–33, 142, 168, 172–73
range of options, 1, 14; Webster, William, 114
threat redefinition prompts reengi- Weinberger, Casper, 66
neering of, 190 Wexler, Anne, 41
USS Cole, 129–30, 148, 160 white supremacists, 160
USS Saratoga, 67 Wilson, Woodrow, 174
USS Stark, 107 Woodward, Bob, 73, 163–64
USS Vincennes, 68 Wolfowitz, Paul, 156, 176
World Islamic Front, 129, 151
van Aken, 165 World Trade Center attack, 2, 6, 9, 15,
van Atta, Dale, 51–52 127, 148, 155–56, 161, 167, 171. See
Vance, Cyrus, 56 also September 11 attacks
victims, 25, 31, 195–97, 196t, 197t World War II, 6, 111–16, 189–90
Viet Cong, 18–20; 24–25, 30–33, 160
Vietnam War: Yemen, 71, 120–21, 129–30
American priorities for, 28–29; Young and Rubicam, 83–84
anti-war protesters as terrorists, 15, 21; Yousef, Ramzi, 127, 161
disassociation with Persian Gulf con- Yugoslavia, 68
flict, 116–17;
implications of terrorism on South Zakhem, Sam, 113
Vietnam government, 18–19; Zuliaka, Joseba, 6
implications of terrorism on South
Vietnam’s military, 18–19;

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In the Name of Terrorism

SUNY series on the Presidency: Contemporary Issues

SUNY series in the Trajectory of Terror

Presidents on Political Violence in the

State University of New York Press

© 2006 State University of New York

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever

For information, address State University of New York Press,

Production by Diane Ganeles

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

2. The Vietnam War and the Communist Terrorists 17

3. The Iranian Hostage Crisis: An American Tragedy 37

4. Origins of Terrorism as an American Ideograph: The Reagan Era 65

5. The Persian Gulf Conflict of 1991: The Cold War Narrative

6. Terrorism and the Clinton Era: A Prophetic Moment 127

7. America under Attack: George W. Bush and Noncitizen Actors 155

8. Terrorism and American Culture 189

Works Cited 217

to Joseph Valenzano, James Roland, Adrienne Proeller, Leslie Wade, Judy

T errorism is perhaps the most emotive, pejorative term in the English

The events of September 11 have fundamentally transformed long-

PRESIDENTIAL DISCOURSE AND TERRORISM

TERRORISM AND IDEOLOGY

Contemporary presidents evoke terrorism as a key component in their ideo-

context and within the specific application to modern presidential discourse

tion, kidnapping, torture, hostage taking, bombing, foreign military aggres-

between narratives and an individual’s identity. He argues that individuals

are collective terms of political allegiance that embody a society’s ideals.

administration to assign guilt to an entire group or class of individuals, they

The Vietnam War and the

T errorism was commonplace in South Vietnam beginning as early as the

LABELING THE THREAT

The Kennedy administration was the first to employ terrorism as a

Spokespersons depicted the Viet Cong as “Communists” and “terrorists”

Director of Central Intelligence John McCone maintained the campaign of

as Paradise Island), located south of the 17th parallel. Beginning in May

The three administrations involved in the US labeling strategy during

THE TERRORIST NARRATIVE IN THE VIETNAM WAR

Robert Ivie’s analysis of Vietnam War metaphors illuminates the conven-

Conventional cold warriors depict Communists as the characters who

that the Chinese would use a Communist success in Vietnam to demonstrate

Liberation of South Viet-Nam is the screen behind which the Communists

Honolulu, Johnson called for a revolutionary transformation in the Vietnam

dismantle fragile democracies in their drive to achieve global conquest, the

TERRORISM AND IDEOLOGY

Sampled from ninety-seven percent of the South Vietnamese population, the

showing mothers and small children killed by the bombings.

The memo revealed the administration’s public strategy on a number of

within the Johnson administration because of their lack of fortification, their

The Iranian Hostage Crisis:

O n November 4, 1979, several thousand demonstrators gathered outside

LABELING THE CAPTORS

Memories of the Vietnam War were highly influential in the development of

symbolic choice of words—e.g., calling the kidnappers in Tehran not ‘stu-

THE NARRATIVE OF THE IRANIAN HOSTAGE CRISIS

Tragic drama is a dramatic form that emphasizes the metaphor of crime.

After assessing the totality of Carter 1976 presidential campaign materi-

Carter’s public statements aside, previously classified memoranda from

policy, Carter maintained, “failure to release the hostages will involve

own family, my own sons and daughters” (1641). By personalizing the

House to respond to the hostage crisis rather than campaigning in primaries