Framing the Iraq War Endgame: War's Denouement in an Age of Terror

Framing the Iraq War Endgame

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Framing the Iraq War Endgame War’s Denouement in an Age of Terror

Erika G. King and Robert A. Wells

framing the iraq war endgame Copyright © Erika G. King and Robert A. Wells, 2009. All rights reserved. First published in 2009 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978-0-230-60898-6 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress. A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Scribe Inc. First edition: October 2009 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America.

For Robert and Liz

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Contents Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction: Constructing the Endgame Narrative for a Different Kind of War

1

1

Dominating the Discourse of Terror

25

2

Fighting the Central Front in the War on Terror

49

3

Recasting Iraq as War on Terror

77

4

Challenging the Iraq Victory Narrative

101

5

Confronting Chaos in Iraq

125

6

Changing America’s Course in Iraq

157

7

Envisioning War’s Denouement

189

Notes

217

References

237

Index

265

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Acknowledgments The war in Iraq has been this country’s major foreign policy undertaking for six years, and we have spent much of that time examining the frequently tortuous and contentious path that the public conversation over the war’s meaning and outcome has taken. We are therefore indebted to a number of people who have made this lengthy project possible. Grand Valley State University’s Office of the Provost gave the senior author a yearlong leave of absence to begin the research process, and without the luxury of this extended time for planning and thoughtful reflection, the research would never have gotten underway. We also extend our deep thanks to the hard-working editorial staff at Palgrave Macmillan, especially Anthony Wahl, who had the vision to see a book-length manuscript out of a conference paper, and Farideh KoohiKamali, Asa Johnson, and their colleagues, who had the forbearance to see the project through to completion and the editing talent to enhance the quality of the final product. We would also like to thank Jennifer Kepler and her colleagues at Scribe for their valuable editorial service. Mere words cannot express how grateful we are to our spouses, Robert and Liz, who gave unstinting support and encouragement from start to finish.

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INTRODUCTION

Constructing the Endgame Narrative for a Different Kind of War As he stood on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003, a “Mission Accomplished” banner conspicuously displayed in the background, President George W. Bush’s face and demeanor provided dramatic evidence of his elation over our military success in Iraq. But his victory in the war of words over the meaning and import of the conflict must have been equally gratifying to a man whose verbal gaffes and mangled syntax had provided a constant stream of derisive grist for the media and political mills throughout the 2000 campaign and the early months of his presidential tenure. Much had changed, of course, following a few horrifying moments on a beautiful late summer morning in 2001, including Bush’s public utterances and the responses they drew. We can all visualize and even quote from Bush’s decisive rhetorical turning points in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks as he found the voice that would reassure, rally, and mobilize a stricken nation and the mission and moment that would, he hoped, define both the remainder of his presidency and his legacy. Announcing our comprehensive assault on terrorism in the hours following the attacks, Bush warned that we were embarking upon a global war that entailed “a different kind of conflict against a different kind of enemy…a conflict without battlefields or beachheads.”1 Preparing the country for lengthy engagement, the president called for patience as well as resolve, for victory would not come in a single battle but in a “series of decisive actions against terrorist organizations and those who harbor and support them” (emphasis added). 2 Many of us can recite the key words and phrases Bush and his aides employed the following year to convince the American public, its elected representatives, journalists, and other opinion leaders that our heroic struggle against the terrorists responsible for the infamous deeds of 9/11 should best be focused not on the mountains

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of Afghanistan where Osama bin Laden and his followers were hiding but on the homeland of a most familiar U.S. nemesis, Saddam Hussein. Bush’s May 1 statement and its carefully choreographed-for-television setting were intended to celebrate successful closure of major combat operations in the primary front in the war against terrorism—the liberation of Iraq from the yoke of a tyrant who was an ally of al Qaeda, a source of terrorist funding, and a possessor of weapons of mass destruction. Although the hunt for bin Laden had thus far been thwarted and military gains in Afghanistan were modest at best, success in Iraq had come quickly; within weeks of the commencement of hostilities, Bush could triumphantly declare to the troops assembled before him and a worldwide television audience not only that “the tyrant has fallen, and Iraq is free” but that “the advance of freedom is the surest strategy to undermine the appeal of terror.”3 Adding to the perfection of that moment were the accolades that followed as U.S. media and political reactions to his announcement were all that any president could have desired. The American public was no less adulatory as Bush’s approval ratings hovered at stratospheric levels. Although Bush had been careful to caution toward the end of his May announcement that our military mission still continued and the battle of Iraq was but a first step in the ongoing war on terrorism, the message both sent and received that day—so succinctly encapsulated in the two words on the banner behind the president—was precisely the opposite. And all those laudatory responses to our declaration of victory would prove only too short-lived as events giving vivid lie to the message and images of success quickly intervened. Looking back with the benefit of six years of hindsight, we are painfully aware that our engagement in Iraq had barely commenced in the spring of 2003 and that the massive physical, psychological, diplomatic, and monetary costs of the war had yet to exact their horrific toll. As we cast a backward gaze over the course of the Iraq conflict, we also recognize that the compelling rationale Bush initially provided for why we must fight and why we will win—a narrative that tapped into the deepest wells of a collective American psyche still reeling from the tragedy of 9/11— began to lose its luster and resonance as each passing month failed to deliver the results that Bush had so glowingly envisioned. But even with steadily mounting evidence to the contrary, the president and his senior officials steadfastly continued to assert that we would prevail in Iraq and that its liberation was the crucial first step in the spread of freedom and our ultimate triumph over terrorism. Failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or any connections between Iraqi and al Qaeda leaders or even Osama bin Laden himself,

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the descent of Iraq into sectarian chaos, a poorly planned and stunningly mismanaged U.S. occupation, climbing numbers of American casualties, and disturbing visual evidence of our troops inflicting torture on Iraqi prisoners were among the litany of events that combined to produce, at first, a hushed but soon ever louder chorus of dismay and disapproval in this country. In the troubled and seemingly unending aftermath of “mission accomplished,” public discourse on Iraq was turning from the supine prewar embrace of the Bush perspective to increasingly pointed questioning of the connections the president still made among succeeding in Iraq, vanquishing the worldwide terrorist menace, and casting wide the net of freedom. Inexorably, the crux of the public conversation began to move from the war’s origins and justifications to the war’s denouement—when and how the conflict would end, what victory would look like, how to define success, and, of equal importance, what meanings we could and should assign to the war’s outcome. The Bush team had been remarkably successful in capturing the American imagination and dominating the debate over why we had to go to war; now it would be faced with the more daunting task of winning the monumental rhetorical struggle over how to write the script of the Iraq War endgame, the final episode of the major political and military production of the first decade of the twentyfirst century. Ascendant Terrorism and Bush’s Iraq Narrative Our purpose in this book is to trace the evolution of U.S. political and media discourse on the Iraq War endgame over the roughly five-year period from early 2004, when the issue of extricating ourselves from Iraq became a major focus in Congress and on the presidential campaign trail, to early 2009, when the president relinquished the lead role in the lengthy Iraq War performance to the dynamic, young political actor who had successfully auditioned to replace him. Even by the beginning of this time frame, accounts by political, bureaucratic, and media insiders had begun to challenge the motives of the key administration decision makers and their advisors and the strategies they employed to sell the Iraq conflict. Behind-the-scenes exposés by former Bush officials, staffers, and one especially well-connected journalist were starting to peel away the administration’s numerous layers of self- and public deception from the run-up to war to the military occupation.4 Reporters, media commentators, and politicians were confronting, often scathingly, their own and their peers’ hesitancy to examine the problematic rationale and evidence for war or to properly investigate its often disturbing consequences.5 But all the negative publicity surrounding each new revelation masked, we contend, a

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fundamental reality: Bush’s war-on-terror master narrative—his overarching explanation for why we were fighting in Iraq and what the conflict represented—continued to hold sway over American public discussion of the war’s justification and rationale and the emergent conversations about how it would conclude.6 In the days following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Bush and his advisors crafted an intensely compelling worldview about the terrifying new world order we faced at the dawn of the century and what we must do to confront it. It was a political and cultural construction of meaning that fed upon our greatest fears about the threats we face from outside and fit into our most deeply seated beliefs about who and what we are as a nation.7 It created a new reality in which war became the organizing principle, the sole and inevitable option for our survival. Alternative perspectives were quickly cast aside as ill conceived, immoral, or illegitimate as the public conversation was waged essentially within the confines set by the Bush worldview of ascendant terrorism and the need to remove this scourge by the most powerful means available. The clarion call to arms against a new kind of enemy in a new kind of war in a new age of terror proved impossible for this country to resist or even closely interrogate. So quickly embedded was this conception of the terrorist menace in the American public mind immediately after 9/11, it took but a modest suspension of disbelief to reach widespread agreement that Saddam Hussein was linked to terrorism; it remained so deeply engrained in our national consciousness that it became the great unexamined assumption underlying all the heated Iraq debates over the first several years following our premature declaration of victory. That we must fight and win the worldwide war against terrorism was a given in U.S. public discourse as 2004 commenced; although a growing number of political figures and members of the public were beginning to express skepticism about Iraq as the appropriate battleground, few denied that the threat of terrorism was real and had to be met with military response. We thus maintain that as of the starting date of our research, George W. Bush—rhetorically battered, bloodied, and besieged though he was almost a year into the conflict in Iraq—had achieved one essential victory in the suspenseful and ever twisting journey to define the meaning of the Iraq War: acceptance by the American public, its elected leaders, and the media of his conception of ascendant terrorism and the course we had to pursue to vanquish the grave danger it presented. By situating the Iraq War squarely within the discursive and interpretive boundaries of the global war on terror, the Bush administration had worked to assure that our national discussion of Iraq would play out against the wider backdrop

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5

of terrorism and that we would come to unhesitatingly acknowledge the existence of the terrorist menace and the necessity for war as the means to eradicate it. Competing interpretations of where we should confront the terrorist enemy had inflicted some damage on components of Bush’s Iraq narrative prior to 2004, but in the United States, they were all contested within the post-9/11 rhetorical space of global terrorism that the White House so painstakingly staked out in the aftermath of that fateful day. But even as the president’s overarching worldview about the new terrorist reality was playing out mostly according to his script, his quest to elevate Iraq’s role in the unfolding drama to more than an unnecessary and tragic sideshow was already proving to be fraught with difficulties. And in the wings, honing their denunciations of Bush’s vision of Iraq as one with the war on terrorism, stood some powerful challengers awaiting their moments in front of the spotlights. As we explore the American political discourse on the war’s denouement, we will focus specifically on the content of Bush’s Iraq War endgame narrative, the competing perspectives of the congressional opposition, and the representation of both in the U.S. mainstream media during President Bush’s second term in office. We are particularly interested in analyzing the struggle to achieve discursive control of the meaning and interpretation of the war as the conflict began to wind down and the political conversation shifted to how it would end. We seek both to describe the twists and turns of the public debate over the endgame and to explain how and why it has followed those paths. A general question guides our inquiry: as President Bush exits the political arena, has his perspective on the war’s meaning emerged as the dominant interpretation of why we fought and what we have gained in Iraq, or have one or more alternative viewpoints gained widespread acceptance and shaped our conception of what the war was all about? The answer to that query, we believe, should teach us much about the relationships among political leaders, the media, and the public in contemporary America and more than a little about ourselves as a society. It is important to note that this is not an inside-the-Beltway account or a psychologically based dissection of the various protagonists’ motives. Fascinating though such approaches may be, they can be properly undertaken only by those well positioned within the corridors of power.8 We instead examine the public record—specifically, the written and spoken communications of the major players and the accompanying media accounts as the war endgame debate played out in full view upon the public stage. We contend that close examination of the public dialogue about war—from the prospective debates over whether and why to enter

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a conflict to the retrospective ones over how it ended, what it all meant, and whether it was worth the effort—is a worthy topic in any nation whose leaders claim to derive political legitimacy from the consent of the governed and who therefore need public support, or at least public acquiescence, to mount and sustain a campaign that will cost the country dearly in lives and treasure. Constructing Political Reality: Political Discourses and Their Frames To inform our analysis, we will utilize several conceptual frameworks drawn from the interdisciplinary field of political communication. We seek to integrate them into an explanatory model that both describes the content of the Iraq War endgame debate and accounts for its winners and losers. As a prelude to discussing these frameworks, we will introduce some important terms and concepts and explain how they relate to one another and why they are of interest. First among these is discourse, a term we have already employed but whose specific meaning in the field of communication studies needs some further elaboration. Following the lead of communication scholars Richard Jackson, Marianne Jorgensen, and Louise Phillips, we define a discourse as a set of words, statements, symbols, and images that constructs a particular way of looking at, talking about, and understanding an experience or situation.9 Every discourse contains its own assumptions, logic and reasoning, and terminology that establish what can be said, how it is said, and, by extension, what cannot be said. It privileges a certain way of viewing reality and thus affects what we perceive, how we think and feel, and the actions we take. It triumphs when its basic tenets are reflexively accepted as conventional wisdom, outside the realm of debate. Discourses may be created about any situation, from medical or scientific to cultural or religious. Political discourses focus on social or political problems, events, issues, or actors; like all other discourses, they create the language that shapes how we view aspects of the world around us, providing, in this instance, rhetorically constructed realities about the exercise of power and influence. The discourse of war constructs a new reality about the use of state violence, employing a powerful arsenal of language, myth and history, symbolism, and imagery that accounts for why such a massive, costly, and horrific undertaking is at once necessary, desirable, and achievable—why war is, in short, the only possible option.10 Discourses are composed of frames, central organizing ideas that make sense of relevant events or situations and weave them into a basic narrative or storyline. Through the act of framing—choosing broad thematic

Constructing the Endgame Narrative

7

categories for a discourse—strands of information are selected, emphasized, linked, and then molded into a coherent tale.11 Frames thus act, in the words of researcher W. Lance Bennett, as “meaning organizers” that structure, integrate, and condense elements of a particular discourse and distill them into easily digestible capsule summaries. And equally importantly, they draw attention away from other aspects of the situation under consideration.12 Robert Entman, the premier student of political framing, further argues that frames are anything but neutral. Through their capacity to highlight and connect aspects of political events, issues, or actors, frames serve as champions of a particular interpretation, evaluation, or solution. In so doing, frames follow a well-traversed narrative path, first defining a given situation’s effects or conditions as problematic, next diagnosing its causes, then conveying a moral judgment about those involved, and finally, endorsing specific remedies or improvements. Entman contends that the first and last of these functions are essential but that to provide a complete and satisfying narrative, a frame should perform all four.13 A well-constructed political frame thus fabricates a morality tale about a political situation or figure that separates the good from the bad, the right from the wrong, and then succinctly tells us what we should do and why we should do it. It fashions certainty from uncertainty and provides ready responses to often thorny questions. It restricts ways of viewing any situation by assigning to it a limited range of meanings and imbuing it with a particular understanding; in essence, then, this narrative not only constructs but also promotes its own streamlined and simplified reality— what we “know” to be true about a subject and accept as a given without having to undergo any undue cognitive strain. By providing the story’s unambiguous ethical underpinnings, it also shields us from the burden of moral doubt. And for an exemplar of a framed political morality tale, we need look no farther than Bush’s storyline about the September 11 terrorist attacks: the death of thousands of innocent civilians in an unprovoked and unwarranted act of war (the problem) instigated by terrorists who hate us for who we are and the freedoms we represent (the cause), an act of such immense evil perpetrated against an innocent country and its civilians (the moral judgment) that we had no recourse other than to wage a global war on terrorism to eradicate its threat to the civilized world (the remedy).14 It is one thing to offer a particular perspective about a situation, but quite another to convince others that the narrative being presented is indeed the prism through which they ought to view it. As Entman notes, a political frame’s capacity to stimulate widespread support rests on its

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cultural relevance and resonance—its ability to tap into the wellsprings of human emotion by evoking words and images that are salient to a society’s conception of itself and others, that draw upon its important historical myths and cherished symbols, that give expression to its most elevated aspirations and its loftiest ambitions, and that disgorge its greatest fears and most deeply rooted anxieties. To achieve influence, the tale it tells must also be readily comprehended; its words and images and the connections it draws need to make sense to its intended targets, to be intellectually accessible as well as emotionally gratifying. And the capstone of any successful frame is what Entman terms its magnitude—the extent to which its narrative reaches out across a vast audience, is repeated, amplified, and echoed far and wide.15 Yet once again, the Bush depiction of the 9/11 attacks quickly springs to mind, this time as the epitome of a compelling frame that reverberated across the American emotional landscape—a melodramatic storyline of villainy, victimization, and vengeance, a Manichean battle of right versus wrong, morality versus immorality, and good versus evil.16 In any given situation, one perspective on reality may readily win acceptance, but in the political realm, there frequently exist opposing viewpoints that actively compete with one another, each seeking to extend its reach and establish itself as the dominant, or hegemonic, discourse—the one whose voice drowns out all others and to whose depictions we are all ineluctably drawn.17 As both Jackson and Entman note, even ascendant political discourses and their frames are not monolithic, nor are they ever totally hegemonic; some degree of contestation and some sites of resistance, however small, always exist. Thus, at any time period, these struggles for discursive ascendancy, or frame contests, as Entman calls them, can be arrayed along a continuum from almost total dominance by one paramount narrative to a situation of frame parity—an even-handed standoff between equally positioned perspectives. To achieve parity with a dominant frame, an opposing point of view, or counterframe, must, according to Entman, weave a tale of problem, cause, moral judgment, and remedy as complete and compelling as that of the ascendant viewpoint.18 This is no easy task, especially if the dominant frame is well embedded in the public consciousness, a situation that researchers find to be more common to discourses of national security and war than to those involving domestic policies and issues.19 Many frame challenges become one-sided affairs, for the more dominant a narrative, the more it is accepted as the full and final truth— the narrower the space for contestation and the greater the likelihood its adversaries will fall victim to what researchers Ronald Krebs, Jennifer

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Lobasz, and Patrick Jackson term rhetorical coercion.20 Trapped in the dominant narrative’s representations, unable to mount a politically sustainable counterargument, proponents of an alternative frame all too frequently find themselves exiled to the rhetorical sidelines, discursively marginalized and maneuvered into public assent to the dominant frame’s preferred terms of debate.21 Such was the case in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, as Bush’s morality tale of good versus evil, us versus them, and civilization versus barbarism so thoroughly fixed the meaning of the attacks and our response that it effectively disarmed the rhetorical arsenal of all would-be critics in the United States. But since no discourse reigns forever supreme, guardians of even the most dominant perspective must be ever vigilant, constantly maintaining and burnishing their cherished model of reality and keeping at bay all those who would topple it from its pedestal. In their struggle to dominate the terms of debate, political actors continually produce, publicize, maintain, and, when necessary, remake and reaffirm their versions of political truth. They seek, in other words, not just to frame the discourse surrounding a topic they deem important, but also to get others to come to regard it as the most pressing problem they should be thinking about in the political sphere. This process of pushing the importance of an issue or event to the forefront of people’s minds, of elevating its visibility and relevance, is known as agenda setting, and political figures work vigilantly to secure their cherished narratives as preeminent in the minds of the public and political elites alike.22 In this ongoing contestation process, victors emerge and the vanquished retreat. Thus, the ebbs, flows, and eventual outcome of any frame contest provide valuable insight into whose actions and what messages we come to embrace or reject, and why. And rarely is the promotional power of a narrative or the battle lines of a discursive contest more starkly displayed, more clearly drawn, or of greater import than in a time of war. The Media and War Discourse Although some discursive struggles occur behind closed doors, many are played out in the public sphere as the competing sides jockey for public attention and support. Thus enters another key set of players in a frame contest: the numerous mass media outlets that convey the protagonists’ words and images to a vast public audience. Far from being merely passive information conduits, the media have the ability to shape political narratives and even construct new ones, and media decisions about whether, when, and how to present various figures’ words and behavior create, depending on the circumstances, a continuum from deferential echo

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chamber to a strong counterweight to elite rhetoric. Just as political actors construct frames of reality, so also do journalists as they tell stories about the world around them, embedding strands of information in a storyline that organizes them, gives them coherence, emphasizes some, ignores others, and weaves them into a short, simplified, and dramatic narrative structure with characters, scene descriptions, actions and motives, conflict, and, ultimately, resolution.23 And just as political leaders attempt to set the political agenda, so do the media, as reporters and their editors and producers make decisions on a daily basis about which issues and events should be covered, which among them deserve to be emphasized and highlighted, and which ought to be cast into oblivion. Evidence abounds that the issues and events the media deem important affect the perceptions of the American public as to what constitute the most pressing problems of the day, a relationship so well expressed by media researcher Bernard Cohen some forty-five years ago: while the press may not always succeed in telling people what to think, “it is stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think about.”24 A predilection for stories that can be told with narratives that are heavily episodic—concrete, specific, event-oriented, dramatic, and personalized—runs throughout the media but is especially prevalent in television with its heavy reliance on good visuals. While attuned to the attentiongrabbing, emotive depictions of particular events and people, the print media also employ thematic frames, more in-depth, analytical accounts that provide general social and historical context.25 To understand the hows and whys of these media narratives and the critical role they play in the political discursive process, we must examine the environment in which they are created, especially the professional norms and organizational routines that guide journalistic decisions about what and whom in the political realm to cover, how to cover them, and how to present the results. We will begin with a brief historical overview of the shifting patterns in media presentations of political news over the past half-century, using examples drawn from our last two major wars in Vietnam and the Persian Gulf to lay the groundwork for our own analysis of the media’s contribution to the Iraq War endgame discourse. Those of us of a certain age can easily recall a not-so-distant mid-twentieth-century past when the three television networks, several large newspapers, the wire services, and three national newsmagazines stood at the apex of the American news media hierarchy, determining what national and international events and issues were most worthy of the media spotlight. The selection decisions made by this handful of print and broadcast organizations, known collectively as the elite media or prestige press, set

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the news agenda for the rest of the industry as journalists at the numerous metropolitan dailies and local television and radio stations willingly deferred to the wisdom of the media’s lead dogs in determining, in the words of the elite media’s most august member, the New York Times, “All the news that’s fit to print.”26 In this well-ordered media universe, news outlets large and small shared some basic professional values, norms, and standards of practice. Primary among these was the ideal of objectivity— the belief that the news was to represent a neutral, nonpartisan, balanced, complete, and accurate presentation of the facts unsullied by personal opinions or organizational biases. Held as sacrosanct by both the people who ran the media outlets and the journalists who worked for them, the search for impartial depictions of “the truth,” unaltered by the media lens, became journalism’s holy grail. News was to be clearly separated from opinion; ideological points of view were to be confined to editorial pages or, as in the case of the broadcast outlets, eliminated altogether.27 During this era of objective media, political reporters gathered at listening posts, or newsbeats, those institutional settings where political news was most likely to happen, waiting to question public officials, receive their statements, and depict their actions. Political news was thus primarily official news and the voices of these authoritative sources were accorded a privileged status in the stories the reporters constructed.28 Journalists were to maintain a stance of professional detachment from the political figures and issues they covered, acting neither as friend nor foe but as dispassionate inscribers of reality, as democratic watchdogs holding the government accountable and serving the public’s need to be informed about important events and public policies. It should therefore come as no surprise that during this time, political news narratives tended to closely parallel politicians’ frames and that across the American media spectrum, coverage of national and international politics was largely homogeneous as news organizations agreed about what was and was not newsworthy and struck a deferential pose toward those who held the reins of power.29 Media depictions of the early years of the Vietnam War well reflected these patterns as elite journalists’ accounts mirrored official statements on the purpose and conduct of the conflict. Reports from the ground were sanitized, and scenes of battle were shot from a distance as the horrors of war were eliminated from American living rooms. The primary newsbeat was official Washington; the news content came primarily from the Johnson administration’s statements, most of which were accepted at face value and reported as truth. In news reports, official facts became the facts. As media scholar and historian Daniel Hallin notes, it was not that the administration effectively controlled all information about the war

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and kept it from an inquisitive media.30 In the case of the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, for example, a great deal of information contradicting the official accounts was available but the media simply did not use it. Even when the New York Times editorially broke ranks with the administration over the policy of escalation in early 1965, it never challenged the underlying assumptions about the cause of the war and the dire consequences of defeat. Thus, far from interrogating the administration’s narrative of why we fought—the forces of democratic good confronting the spreading menace of communist evil—the paper accepted the prevailing cold war frame and merely questioned how the conflict was being implemented. And even as its editorials were critical of specific tactics, the content of the Times’s news reports continued to privilege the official discourse on the war.31 But as the war in Vietnam dragged on and casualties mounted, and as the Johnson administration’s representation of the war’s progress came under daily assault from competing facts on the ground, dissenting voices inside the corridors of power in Washington began to mount in number and volume. As more members of Congress and the executive branch began to give public expression to their concerns, the elite media, true to their objective ideals of balance and neutrality, dutifully presented these competing viewpoints. From the perspective of the media, however, the range of oppositional voices stopped just outside the official gates; the collective views of the growing antiwar movement received little media play and a rather unsympathetic media ear until the point at which they began to penetrate established centers of power. By early 1968, in the wake of the Tet offensive and CBS anchor Walter Cronkite’s infamous statement that “we are mired in stalemate,” the media frame of the war began to diverge significantly from that of the Johnson administration, but this new viewpoint reflected already-existing erosion in support on the part of political elites and the public alike—the death of the “sphere of consensus” over Vietnam, not an independent stance on the part of journalists. And just as in their pre-Tet reporting, journalists followed the official Washington leaders of the pack. Thus, media depictions of the public debate over what to do about the war took place within what Hallin terms “the sphere of legitimate controversy,” a playing field on which only powerful members of the political establishment were allowed to compete and the media remained deferentially on the sidelines, tallying the score.32 By the 1970s, as the turmoil over Vietnam increased and was joined by the scandal of Watergate, a sea change in reportorial practice and a reinterpretation of journalistic ideals and standards began to take place.33

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Reeling from embarrassment over the information they failed to uncover and lies they reported as fact during the early days of Vietnam and Watergate, reporters for prestige media outlets now sought the story behind the story, a depiction of the truth that would be revealed through the hard work of independent investigation, not merely the passive presentation of political officials’ perspectives. No longer functioning merely as political scribes or as members of a fawning pack, elite journalists assumed a more assertive position, bringing their professional expertise to bear as they depicted political events and issues and sought to inform readers and viewers about what was really going on, not just what officials claimed was happening. News with a point of view—a more subjective approach that incorporated journalists’ impressions and reactions in their news reports—became the norm as reporters and their bosses embraced analysis and interpretation as an integral component of their service to the public interest and viewed all public officials through a skeptical lens. But subjectivity in reporting was not to be confused with ideological bias; overt political opinion and commentary were still to be reserved for columns, programs, and publications explicitly labeled as such. In this era of interpretive media, reporters for the elite outlets were encouraged to provide a broad historical and social context for their stories; their role was to explain, assess, and, where necessary, offer a critique of the material they presented, but they were not to promote their own prejudices or personal political agenda.34 But that fine line between news and opinion seemed harder to see and easier to erase than it had been just a few years earlier. And where the prestige press led, other outlets followed, and as reporters across the board began to construct their own frames of the political world, the narratives they presented would frequently diverge from those of the political leaders they covered as well as those of their media compatriots. Media presentations were becoming more heterogeneous and adversarial, but they still granted fullest expression to the perspectives—conflicting though they might be—of highranking political figures. Competing voices were more likely to be heard, but they continued to be drawn from a limited population of official sources and supposedly impartial experts.35 Such modes of reporting fit perfectly the still-ascendant norms of balance, fairness, and political neutrality as the last century drew to a close, but even as objectivity remained the journalistic ideal, it became ever more elusive as it was forced to fight for air and print space amidst a rising cacophony of opinionated utterances, especially on the programs of the newest members of the media community, the twenty-four-hour cable news networks and talk radio.

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To what extent did this commitment to analytical, interpretive, and skeptical journalism lead journalists to change their coverage patterns of this country’s post-Vietnam military engagements? According to analyst Jonathan Mermin, who studied three elite news organizations’ depictions of critical viewpoints in eight cases of U.S. military intervention between 1983 and 1994, the answer is, “Not much.”36 In all of these instances, the spectrum of debate was highly circumscribed as high-ranking officials in the executive branch and leading members of Congress were the most sought-after sources, followed by U.S. foreign policy and national security experts. Even in the selection of voices critical of the various administrations’ policies, the media allowed the sounds of official Washington to drown out all others, as perspectives from outside that small and select universe were excluded or marginalized. And in those cases where there was active disagreement among elites, the media narratives tended to narrow the scope of debate by focusing on the policy’s execution, not its underlying assumptions or justifications.37 More detailed analyses of the elite media’s role in the 1990 buildup to the Gulf War confirm that even in an era when analysis and interpretation were the norm, when media organizations felt a greater sense of independence from and heightened suspicion of political officials, when the cold war foreign policy consensus had splintered, and at a moment when the public and political elites were openly questioning the Bush administration’s policy to commence hostilities against Iraq, elite media outlets still gave greater voice to the administration’s supporters than to its critics, provided the greatest attention to officials who had the strongest hold on policy-making power, and offered few fundamental criticisms of Bush’s policy toward Iraq.38 The reporters devoted much attention to the often heated debate over military engagement, but they calibrated their news judgments to the level of their sources’ political clout; thus, the more powerfully positioned administration officials received the lion’s share of the media focus and divergent perspectives were presented only when they were part of the debates within the Washington political establishment. That the news mirrored, rather than stepped outside the bounds of, elite discourse was well illustrated when Bush’s congressional critics failed to question the underlying assumptions and wisdom of his policy in the Persian Gulf, and the news reports did not independently raise these basic concerns.39 And once the war commenced in the winter of 1991 and authoritative voices of dissent fell silent, the media frame hewed to the administration’s script, effectively silencing the views of those few critics who still dared to speak outside the boundaries of elite consensus.

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Thus, as discursive participants prior to and during the Gulf War, journalists for the prestige media may have adopted a more skeptical pose and a more analytical mind-set than in the early days of Vietnam, but their standard operating procedures and the reports they produced, even in the age of cable television and live satellite transmission around the globe, remained essentially the same as they were a quarter of a century earlier, focused on the words and actions of high-ranking official sources in Washington newsbeats, reflecting their worldviews, adopting their frames, and marginalizing other perspectives. The main difference from the coverage of Vietnam was the greater incidence of elite oppositional voices in Gulf War media accounts, a phenomenon driven, researcher Scott Althaus contends, by the media’s increasingly prevalent “narrative imperative” of conflict and drama as well as its core values of balance and fairness.40 Journalists exercised considerable discretion not only in presenting critical discourse but also in proactively seeking out opposing views when their proponents were reluctant to step forward. However, the voices of the powerful still filled the airwaves and the pages of leading newspapers. For the media and the Gulf War, therefore, it was truly a case, as the old French saying goes, of plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose (the more things change, the more they stay the same). Our current war in Iraq is being waged during yet another media era that scholar Darrell West terms the fragmented media—a complex media universe that has witnessed a dramatic increase in the number and diversity of news outlets and platforms, a dizzying and often bewildering smorgasbord of media choices where speed of delivery and entertainment value are more desired than quality of preparation and substance, and information of even the most questionable veracity spreads instantaneously across the globe.41 Long gone is the neat and tidy hierarchical media universe of the last century; new players, some with no background in journalism, have access to an audience whose size is limited only by the number of people who choose to link to their website. The citizen journalists known as internet bloggers have pushed their way into the previously closed media fraternity, posting written and audiovisual material not vetted by professional journalists across the vast blogosphere. And ideological programs and publications and advocacy websites have proliferated as well. Thus, the traditional news organizations, staffed by trained reporters and their producers and editors, constitute only part of the expanding news media universe, and their role as news gatekeepers—the experts who make the decision of what is fit to print and air and accept responsibility for the final news product—is being challenged. Now labeled the mainstream media, these organizations, from national newspapers, newsmagazines,

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and television networks to small metropolitan dailies and local television and radio stations, are increasingly under siege by upstart competitors who dispute their role as news arbiters and decry their practices and ideals of dispassionate analysis, balance, and accuracy; by audiences that are turning away from the traditional news format in favor of more entertaining fare; and by owners for whom profitability is the measure of success and an ever-increasing bottom line is the new holy grail.42 Forced by economic and competitive pressures to deliver a more audience-pleasing and inexpensive product of soft news and infotainment and to embrace their emphasis on the dramatic, the sensational, and the scandalous; forced also to cut back on costly foreign affairs coverage and lengthy investigations, to churn out poorly researched stories to meet the incessant demands of a 24/7 news cycle, to report on Web postings of suspect validity, to substitute shouted opinion for thoughtful analysis, and to decrease the size of the news staff and even the size of the news product, members of the leading mainstream media organizations shoulder the weight of this shifting media environment. But as Bennett, Regina Lawrence, and Steven Livingston note, even if, on occasion, the pattern of information flow from the mainstream outlets to their audience is reversed by bloggers or advocates pushing their versions of the news into the public arena, mainstream journalists retain the advantage of access to the institutions of government and their high-ranking officials, a formidable edge when it comes to covering matters of public policy and the inner workings of government.43 A number of contemporary scholars, Bennett and Timothy Cook prominently among them, contend that even in this newly fragmented media universe, it still makes sense to think of the numerous mainstream organizations as a single institution that shares important news values and organizational practices, a collective entity that crafts a relatively homogeneous portrait of political reality reaching audiences in the tens of millions.44 Thus, the mainstream media outlets continue to be the key information channels in this country, and the top-tier organizations—the leading newspapers and newsmagazines and the broadcast and cable news networks—still set much of the political news agendas across the media spectrum and maintain their hold on the content and tone of public discourse on our most pressing national issues and our most important national debates. How the elite media, in the current era of media fragmentation, have depicted this country’s public deliberations about the denouement of the Iraq War will be a major focus of this book. But first we need to present the conceptual framework that will guide our analysis of the discourse over the war’s endgame and help us to understand how the conflict was refracted through both the political and media lens.

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Models of the Discursive and Framing Process We have seen how political figures and the journalists who cover them shape, present, and promote their own constructions of reality about political events, issues, and problems. It should come as no surprise that scholars also construct intellectually satisfying explanations to account for the topics they choose to examine and seek to understand. In the field of political communication, three such explanatory approaches currently exist: the hegemony model, the indexing model, and the cascade model. Exhibiting a number of similarities, these perspectives all examine what Cook terms the government-media nexus,45 as they train their analytical sights on the institutions, actors, and processes that determine the winners and losers in the many discourses of contemporary politics. The hegemony model holds that ruling elites work constantly to secure consent to the established political order and its dominant ideology through the “production and diffusion of meanings and values.”46 In other words, elites strive to create political and cultural consensus through persuasion rather than coercion, using traditional “cultural workers,” especially the media, to reproduce, represent, and renew their ascendant worldview and its perspective on any issue or event. Thus, journalists act merely as agents of those in power, privileging only the voices of the ruling group as their reportage relies on official statements and claims—the elites’ constructed or “manufactured” reality about a situation—rather than on the actual news events themselves. Because competing perspectives do not penetrate the halls of power and are denied access to the main information conduits, true democratic deliberation does not occur and political discourse is dramatically circumscribed. Although political figures may squabble with one another, such infighting is merely over political means—specific political tactics and strategies—not the important underlying political ends, and political leaders quickly close ranks against any threat to their underlying beliefs and values. Hegemony theorists do note that some exceptional historical moments may so rupture the political and economic life of a society that a “crisis in hegemony” occurs, weakening the influence of dominant ideologies and values and calling into question the leadership that rests on them. Although such moments are indeed rare, they demonstrate that hegemony can be resisted, altered, and challenged, and that the media may become the sites for the ensuing discursive battles.47 But the norm in this model is elite consensus on basic sociopolitical values and beliefs, media obeisance to the dominant ideology, the consequent triumph of establishment perspectives—the status quo—in political discourse, and the acceptance of the ruling elite’s worldview as “common sense” by the general public.

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The indexing model also emphasizes the circumscribed nature of political discourse, but it places elite disagreements at its center. According to its proponents, political elites frequently disagree about public policies and their implementation, and when such disputes erupt, media outlets provide the vehicle for transmitting these divergent views. In the post– cold war era, dissent in the foreign policy arena has increased, a situation that encourages journalists to construct their cherished narratives of controversy and its impact. The greater the level of discord among the powerful, the more these disagreements are presented in news reports; thus, the media calibrate, or index, their coverage to the level of elite dissensus.48 But in so doing, the media privilege respected official voices, usually excluding nonestablishment views, analyzing and interpreting only those perspectives presented by the politically well entrenched. And when the politically powerful are silent about a political problem or issue, the media cone of silence also descends. This model thus rests on the notion of a delicate symbiosis between political officials and journalists, with each providing what the other needs to survive and thrive—insider access and information for reporters and a relatively uniform and deferential transmission of their perspectives for political leaders—but with reporters constantly seeking to pit competing perspectives against each other to satisfy their framing imperatives of drama and conflict.49 W. Lance Bennett, the leading proponent of the indexing model, has recently modified it to account for event-driven news—news that arises from unanticipated disasters, accidents, and acts of violence that occur outside of the normal routines of institutional settings, information that new technologies make easier than ever for reporters to uncover. In these instances, news organizations are not subject to the dictates of the powerful and thus can exercise more independent judgments. But even in such cases, the perspectives of official sources tend to appear quickly as reporters look to those voices they deem authoritative to interpret the incidents.50 As in the hegemony model, the discourses most likely to prevail under the indexing model are those enunciated by the most powerful players, a discursive advantage in the realm of foreign policy that ordinarily adheres to the current administration but can, under the appropriate conditions, tip in the direction of important oppositional voices. The final model of the discursive process is the cascade model. Developed by Robert Entman, this approach analyzes the information flow of political narratives as they spread from the centers of power to the rest of society.51 More specifically, it seeks to explain the fate of an official White House narrative as it normally flows, or cascades, downward through the different levels of the information system—from other nonadministrative

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elites such as members of Congress, to news organizations and the journalists who staff them, and, via the news frames the media produce, to the general public. It also examines those occasional situations in which the information flow is reversed and alternative perspectives are pushed upward to the centers of power. The model is thus especially attuned to the struggles for narrative dominance, or frame contests, between the administration’s frame of events and issues and the competing viewpoints of political opponents. It identifies four variables that, acting together, can explain the emergence and outcomes of frame contests—cultural congruence, power, strategy, and motivations.52 The more the president’s narrative is congruent with the public’s usual way of viewing aspects of political and social reality, the more the president is able to control the apparatus of government and unify his administration, the more adept the administration’s promotional strategies and tactics, and the more journalists are motivated simply to reproduce the administration’s narrative, the greater the likelihood the official frame will become and remain the dominant interpretation of a particular event or issue. But when oppositional narratives are able to strike the more responsive chord, and their proponents are able to come together, dramatize and publicize their concerns, and present journalists with an exciting, compelling, and controversial storyline, the greater the challenge they can present to the White House’s depiction of reality. In issues relating to foreign policy and national security, the usual situation is for the administration’s frame to predominate throughout the information cascade cycle, but the contemporary political and media environments, especially the demise of the cold war consensus and the rise of the interpretive and fragmented media, have enhanced the ability of opponents to mount at least some degree of challenge and even, on occasion, to knock the official frame from its lofty perch.53 The specific conditions under which such challenges are more or less successful should be the topic of thorough and careful investigation, and this is the task we assign ourselves as we explore the framing of the Iraq War endgame. The Scope and Plan of this Book Following the lead of the cascade model of political information flow, and also drawing on the index and hegemony approaches, we will examine the fate of Bush’s Iraq War narrative as the war winds to its conclusion and the president’s frame of why we fought and why the war’s gains have outweighed its horrendous costs confronts some powerful challenges from a variety of political foes. We will assess the content of the competing endgame narratives, particularly their cultural relevance and resonance;

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analyze the discursive strategies and tactics of the different protagonists as they attempt to fix the meaning and import of the war; and evaluate the role of the elite media in conveying the various perspectives to the rest of society as they construct their own storylines about the war’s denouement. To accomplish our objectives, we will analyze the rhetoric of the major speeches, press conferences, addresses to the nation, press releases, and other statements that President Bush delivered on the rationale, conduct, eventual conclusion, and meaning of the Iraq War from early 2002, when he first began to mention Iraq as part of the axis of evil, to his final month in office. Because the specter of terrorism informed so much of Bush’s rhetoric on Iraq, we will also assess the content of Bush’s terrorism discourse from the day of the 9/11 attacks through the remainder of his time in office. As students of the presidency George C. Edwards III and Martha Joynt Kumar have documented, Bush chose to govern by campaigning— to make full use of the presidential “bully pulpit” and become the face and voice of the initiatives he was promoting—well before the terrorists struck this country.54 And once we had been attacked, the administration marshaled its strategic planning resources to seize control of the terrorism agenda, define the crisis that we faced, and promote the actions—including regime change in Iraq—we had to undertake. Although Bush was the primary actor in the unfolding drama of the war with Iraq, he was also aided by a supporting cast of characters, and we shall note the content and circumstances of their discourse on the war and how well they performed their roles. And even though the president’s opponents often had trouble finding their rhetorical voices, a few did function as important antagonists, and we shall investigate the substance of their narratives of the war’s rationale and conduct, making due note of the difficulties they faced when trying to compose a cohesive and coherent counterframe to the president’s tale of war and terror. As a complement to this study of elite political discourse, we will examine the content of news and commentary in several elite media outlets, in particular, the New York Times, Washington Post, NBC News, and the Associated Press, so that we can ascertain the national mainstream media’s contributions to the debate over the Iraq endgame. As we analyze the various political and media narratives of the war’s denouement, we will examine the broad themes they develop and the specific storylines they construct; the assumptions, beliefs, and values underlying the tales they weave; and the histories, myths, symbols, and images they employ to render these tales both emotionally compelling and intellectually gratifying. Our purpose is to understand which narratives achieve dominance

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and why, and thus determine whose perspective emerges victorious in the lengthy discursive contest over the war’s conclusion and its wider meaning. Our first chapter reviews the discourse of terror that President Bush and his aides constructed in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, a narrative that established the basis for a new foreign policy paradigm of the global war on terror. We begin by examining the content of Bush’s terror narrative and discuss why it resonated so strongly with the vast majority of Americans—why war became seen as the only accepted means of confronting our attackers. We then examine how the Bush administration shifted the discourse to Iraq as the epicenter of the war against terrorism, and we investigate the reasons Congress and the media deferred to Bush’s interpretation of why we had to remove Saddam Hussein from power. We also analyze why it was so difficult for Bush’s congressional opponents to construct and promote an effective counterframe—an alternative tale as compelling and resonant as the president’s terrorism narrative—to the menace of Saddam, even as a number of political leaders and average citizens resisted Bush’s push for extending our war on terrorism to Iraq. Chapter 2 begins by examining the rhetoric of Bush and the congressional opposition and the accompanying media narratives during the prelude to war and then as war commenced. We follow the rhetorical trail and the patterns of media coverage as problems in Iraq quickly surfaced in the aftermath of Bush’s triumphant appearance aboard the aircraft carrier to announce the cessation of major combat operations. We analyze the heated rhetorical struggles over staying the course in Iraq throughout the remainder of 2003, and how those battles only became more heated as 2004 brought a litany of bad news from the war front as well as negative news from home as public support began a downward slide and dissenting voices on the war’s rationale and conduct mounted in volume and intensity. And we look at the discourse of war and terror as it played out against the backdrop of the 2004 presidential campaign, a contest in which both candidates vied to see who could define himself as stronger and more steadfast in pursuing our terrorist adversaries while presenting some very different visions of the role Iraq should play in the battle against terrorism. Our third chapter highlights Bush’s new second-term twist on his Iraq and terror narrative—his freedom agenda, the idealistic goal of spreading liberty and democracy across the globe as an antidote to the tyranny and hopelessness that formed the breeding grounds for terrorism. The chapter also examines the White House decision to reaffirm the war-onterror narrative following its short-lived discursive foray into framing

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our antiterrorism efforts as a “global struggle against violent extremism” rather than a military conflict. And it analyzes the administration’s efforts to reset the agenda of war and terror in the aftermath of two highly publicized events—Cindy Sheehan’s antiwar vigil at Bush’s ranch in Crawford and the catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina. Chapter 3 also examines the redoubled efforts of congressional opponents in 2005 to challenge the Bush frame of Iraq as the central front in the war on terror and the cradle of Middle Eastern democracy, and in Chapter 4, we present as a case study the frame contest between Rep. John Murtha’s assertion that our policy was flawed and our troops had to be redeployed and the Bush administration’s insistence that we could persevere in Iraq and that to withdraw would only embolden terrorists around the globe and compromise our security at home. A major question will be to what extent, if any, the Murtha narrative changed the parameters of the war debate and why political and media discourse focused more heavily on Murtha’s challenge than on those of numerous other critics. Chapter 5 provides an overview of the mounting discursive struggles over the war’s conduct by early 2006 as the Democrats intensified their criticisms of U.S. policies and cracks began to form within Republican ranks over the administration’s handling of homeland security and the question of whether the term civil war should be applied to the situation on the ground in Iraq. We analyze the White House’s rhetorical efforts to deflect criticism, bolster its official narrative of stay the course, and embed the increasingly chaotic war in Iraq within the wider terror-and-security narrative. The chapter examines the role of Iraq in the 2006 midterm elections and the White House, congressional, and media interpretations of the Democrats’ victories, particularly the extent to which the electoral results were a referendum on Iraq. Against this background, we analyze the various political and media interpretations of the Iraq Study Group’s December recommendations for a “new way forward” in the war. Our sixth chapter examines the intense political discourse surrounding the White House’s January 2007 strategic shift and accompanying rationale for a troop surge in Iraq as it played out over the spring and summer against a backdrop of continuing decline in public support, mistreatment of Iraq veteran outpatients at Walter Reed Hospital, the defections of several important GOP senators, and congressional proposals for troop withdrawals. In this stage of the endgame debate, ever-louder calls for redeployment were confronted by a policy that entailed precisely the opposite, and the discursive battle lines were drawn more clearly than ever. The chapter addresses the question of how and why we arrived by midsummer 2007 at a situation of “endgame deadlock” with both sides

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arranged in a position of rhetorical stalemate in anticipation of what was being framed as the decisive report on the situation in Iraq. Chapter 6 also analyzes the critical role played by General Petraeus, Bush’s new Iraq commander, in the administration’s promotion of both the troop surge and the wider meaning of the war from the winter of 2007, when Petraeus was first introduced to the nation, through the following fall, when Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker delivered their much-anticipated report on the status of the surge to Congress. To what extent was there a “Petraeus effect” on the Iraq debate, and how did it affect both Bush’s frame of the Iraq War denouement and the endgame narratives of the president’s opponents? We are particularly interested in the administration’s strategy to present Petraeus as the face of the surge and the media’s consequent depiction of him—in particular, why journalists found Petraeus to be such an intriguing story and how his representation across the mainstream media outlets signaled a shift in coverage tone and content. In our final chapter, we address the status of the Bush Iraq endgame frame during the 2008 presidential primaries and general election campaign as both Republican and Democratic contenders presented carefully calibrated perspectives about the war’s meaning and conclusion. During this time, the surge was accomplishing much of what the president had promised, as Bush and his supporters were wont to remind us all. But as the time he had to leave office drew near and the president’s presence on the national stage became ever dimmer, the media and the public turned from his interpretations of events to focus on the narratives of those who wished to replace him. We complete our inquiry with an overview of the discursive fate of Bush’s vision of Iraq early in the term of his successor, Barack Obama. Thus, as we conclude our study, we seek an answer to the following question: has Bush’s master narrative about Iraq as one with the war on terror—a war of necessity we were forced to commence to protect our very way of life—been able to maintain its dominance, or has it, like so many depictions of reality whose time has come and gone, already been relegated to the dustbin of history?

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CHAPTER 1

Dominating the Discourse of Terror In his formal address to a stunned and grieving nation on the evening of September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush framed that morning’s terrorist attacks as deliberate, despicable, and unprovoked acts of aggression against a virtuous nation and its blameless citizens, heinous actions taken not in retaliation for some specific occurrence or policy but because of who we are and what we stand for. “Our way of life, our very freedom,” was targeted, the president asserted, because we are “the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world.” Noting that “today our nation saw evil,” Bush promised that we would “find those responsible and bring them to justice,” and he issued the ominous warning that in our “war against terrorism,” we would make no distinction between the terrorists who committed the acts “and those who harbor them.”1 Claiming the next morning that “freedom and democracy are under attack” by a “different enemy” who “hides in the shadows, and has no regard for human life…who preys on innocent and unsuspecting people, then runs for cover,” the president warmed to his theme, declaring that we were now locked in a “monumental struggle of good versus evil,” a contest we did not seek but were fully prepared to engage. And this was not merely America’s fight: “This enemy attacked not just our people, but all freedom-loving people everywhere in the world;” thus, all who would place themselves on the right side of the moral ledger must “go forward to defend freedom and all that is good and just in the world.”2 Assaults this horrendous were also more than mere acts of terror; they were, the president insisted, “acts of war” and nothing less than a full military response would suffice. To that end, we would “use all our resources to conquer this enemy;” we would “rally the world” in a battle that “will take time and resolve” but, Bush assured, one whose ultimate outcome—that “good will prevail”—must never be in doubt.3 Within the first twenty-four hours of the attacks, the president had thus started to flesh out their effects and their cause, affix a moral stamp

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to both the perpetrators and their targets, and provide an overview of, and rationale for, how this country would respond. Bush and his lieutenants had begun to chart a course—to construct a rhetorical roadmap—that would pinpoint our final destination and tell us why it was desirable, plot the best route to get us there, estimate the length of the journey and its cost, mark potential roadblocks and detours, and also suggest some side trips that might be useful to see along the way. And over the next few weeks, the Bush administration would hone its rhetoric and embed the meaning of the attacks into a political morality tale that set the stage for retaliation on a massive scale, an act of retribution that, terrible though it might be, was at once necessary, desirable, inevitable, and unquestionable. It was a tale with a simple and yet intensely compelling threefold theme: terrorist evil’s unprovoked strike against an innocent and freedom-loving nation, restitution through the call to arms in a divinely sanctioned just and noble cause, and the eventual triumph of American virtues and ideals over an ideology of hatred and destruction. Why We Fight the Global War on Terror: An American Morality Tale Depicting the terrorist attacks as an unwarranted assault by the barbaric, savage, and treacherous upon the civilized, enlightened, and noble, Bush reduced the event and its resolution to a Manichean battle of right versus wrong, morality versus immorality, innocence versus guilt, freedom versus tyranny—in short, a titanic clash of good versus evil.4 We had been attacked by an enemy who hated all the best that this country represents and embodies; it was not merely “a new kind of enemy” we faced but “a new kind of evil.” A just and honorable nation, so hideously wronged, therefore had no recourse but to respond with the sword to eliminate an illegitimate, subhuman enemy who had, in the president’s words, “chosen to live on the hunted margin of mankind…divorced…from the values that define civilization itself.”5 And to anyone who might not immediately recollect what those cherished ideals and values were, Bush supplied quick reminders of just what the “evildoers” most despised. To the rhetorical question “Why do they hate us?” the president succinctly responded, in his September 20 address to a joint session of Congress and the nation, “They hate our freedoms—our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.” The terrorists kill “not merely to end lives, but to disrupt and end a way of life.…They stand against us, because we stand in their way.” Thus this was not just America’s fight—“this is civilization’s fight. This is the fight of all who believe in progress and pluralism, tolerance and freedom.”6

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Among that fraternity of civilized nations, America stood tallest as the beacon of hope, the exceptional community, that unique nation born of freedom’s fight, beloved by God, the example for all to follow. Throughout history, American exceptionalism meant that we had been called upon to shoulder the burden of some special responsibilities and, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Bush declared, our “responsibility to history is already clear: to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil.”7 In a speech to the United Nations on November 10, the president issued this resounding statement about our mission and our calling: “It is our task—the task of this generation—to provide the response to aggression and terror. We have no other choice.…We did not ask for this mission, yet there is honor in history’s call. We have a chance to write the story of our times, a story of courage defeating cruelty and light overcoming darkness. This is a calling worthy of any life, and worthy of every nation.”8 It was also a calling with providential approval, as God’s chosen people would rid the world of this new incarnation of evil. From the moment that he publicly spoke about the terrorist attacks, the president employed a spiritual discourse that imbued all of his terrorrelated communications with the language, syntax, cadence, symbolism, and appeal to a higher authority of a minister extolling his flock to engage in that loftiest and most noble of all actions—a divinely sanctioned crusade against evil. His use of moralistic binaries, of “prophetic dualism,” in which the world is divided into two opposing absolutes, fit beautifully into a major current of America’s Christian tradition, which holds that absolute evil exists and cannot be tolerated, and it provided the indisputable basis for the actions we were about to take.9 In his first brief remarks on the morning of the attacks, Bush invoked God’s blessing for the victims, their families, and America; that evening, he asked for the nation’s prayers, and, citing Psalm 23—“even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me”—he called on his vast audience to “go forward to defend freedom.” Three days later, at the National Day of Prayer and Remembrance, he again asked for God’s blessing, comfort, and guidance as we embarked upon “the calling of our time”—to “rid the world of evil.”10 And as communication scholars David Domke and Richard Jackson have carefully and exhaustively documented, the religious foundation of our war against terrorism would form the discursive bedrock of the president’s many speeches, addresses, and interviews over the months to come. In our campaign to wrest freedom and liberty from the clutches of evil, we were not only defending our basic values, we were spreading God’s universal gospel of freedom to all mankind: a country newly “awakened to danger and called to defend freedom” would

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now go forth and wage the struggle both comforted and strengthened by the knowledge that “the world He created is of moral design” and that in such a divinely ordered world, we were doing God’s bidding.11 Also integral to the idea of America as an exceptional community was the notion that we—as a collective entity—had undergone extraordinary levels of suffering in the terrorist attacks. Minutes after they occurred, an obviously shaken Bush announced that we had suffered a “national tragedy,” and in the ensuing hours and days, he spoke of a “terrible national shock,” a “wound to our country,” “our nation’s sorrow,” “our grief,” and a “kinship of grief.” He also spoke movingly of the victims, their suffering, their families’ private sorrows and anguish, and the many children’s lives that had been so brutally shattered.12 Weaving this into a melodramatic plot line of the death of thousands of innocent civilians in an unwarranted act of war by hate-filled terrorists who despise our very existence, the president constructed an American national identity that, in the words of political communication scholar Elizabeth Anker, “establishes its own moral virtue through victimization and heroic restitution.”13 Central to this narrative were the victims of the attacks, those innocent lives—those “souls of the departed”—who were sacrificed in an act of “deliberate and massive cruelty.”14 As Richard Jackson cogently notes, such “sacrilising language” created a myth of exceptional grievance, a sense of special victimhood that forged a moral community, unsullied by immorality or evil and unified by shared values and the practices of freedom and democracy as well as the shared horrors of 9/11. Attacked precisely because of this constructed moral exceptionalism, the powerful victim had no choice but to seek justice through the most potent means available and, in so doing, it would further solidify the moral community that is America.15 Again in the words of the president: Great harm has been done to us. We have suffered great loss. And in our grief and our anger we have found our mission and our moment. Freedom and fear are at war. The advance of human freedom—the great achievement of our time, and the great hope of every time—now depends on us. Our nation—this generation—will lift a dark threat of violence from our people and our future. We will rally the world to this cause by our efforts, by our courage. We will not tire, we will not falter, and we will not fail.16

Given the enormity of the attacks, the inherently evil nature of the terrorist enemy, and our exceptional innocence, military engagement— “every necessary weapon of war”—was essential, Bush declared, to protect ourselves from the threat that terrorism posed to our way of life and our cherished ideals. We would not allow this to be “an age of terror,”

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the president proclaimed; the actions we were about to undertake would assure, instead, “an age of liberty.” Because one cannot reason or negotiate with evil, diplomacy, and the traditional routes of deterrence or containment were futile: the “only way to defeat terrorism…is to stop it, eliminate it, and destroy it where it grows.”17 Anything less would not only smack of appeasement but would suffer the same fate as did that ill-considered policy of the 1930s. Threatened by an evil that was the twenty-first-century heir to the “murderous ideologies” of fascism and communism, only immediate military action could defend that most precious of all values—our freedom. And to inscribe the importance of why we must fight in the minds of all, the White House bestowed the name “Operation Enduring Freedom” upon the Afghan campaign. Critical to Bush’s frame was the idea that we sought not revenge, but justice, the righting of a heinous wrong that could only come from first confronting and then eradicating the terrorist menace. Ours would be a just and moral war, but to reach our new golden age of liberty, it would have to be global in nature, a broad and sustained campaign “unlike any other we have ever seen.” Operation Enduring Freedom would therefore be anything but simple and quick; to ensure lasting freedom, we would have to endure a conflict of indefinite length and indeterminate parameters. It would not be like the Persian Gulf War, “with a decisive liberation of territory and a swift conclusion,” nor would it look like the air war above Kosovo, “where no ground troops were used and not a single American was lost in combat.” We would instead “meet violence with patient justice” in a war “without battlefields or beachheads,” a conflict that would not end “until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated.” And in this protracted struggle, the president asked for patience as well as resolve; offering himself as the model, he declared, “I will not yield; I will not rest; I will not relent in waging this struggle for freedom and security.”18 Thus this president and this country would not—indeed, could not—allow the global war on terror to languish or desist while its essential task of securing our liberty and our freedom remained incomplete. No matter how perilous the journey, how difficult and fraught with danger the path on which we were now embarking, President Bush confidently maintained that we could be assured of one thing: our eventual triumph. The sheer “rightness of our cause,” aided by a higher power, could yield no other result, for “freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them.”19 In a November speech to the United Nations, Bush issued this succinct statement about the terrorists’ fate: “There is no corner of the

30

Framing the Iraq War Endgame

Earth distant or dark enough to protect them. However long it takes, their hour of justice will come.” And the president delivered this powerful peroration: “We face enemies that hate not our policies but our existence.…But the outcome of this conflict is certain: There is a current in history and it runs toward freedom. Our enemies resent it and dismiss it, but the dreams of mankind are defined by liberty.…We stand for the permanent hopes of humanity, and those hopes will not be denied.… We know that evil is real, but good will prevail against it.…So let us go forward, confident, determined, and unafraid.”20 The final strand of Bush’s war-on-terror narrative was that in a global conflict of such magnitude and import, no country had the luxury of remaining indifferent to, or in any way supportive of, the terrorist threat. In his September 20 address, the president put all governments on notice: “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.”21 Throughout the fall of 2001, the Bush administration began to warn those still unspecified supporters of terrorism about vague but threatening consequences of failure to join us in the global war against terrorist evil. In a televised address to the nation on October 7, the day that he ordered our forces to launch strikes against al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, Bush issued this clear and none-too-subtle message: “Today we focus on Afghanistan, but the battle is broader. Every nation has a choice to make. In this conflict, there is no neutral ground. If any government sponsors the outlaws and killers of innocents, they have become outlaws and murderers themselves. And they will take that lonely path at their own peril.”22 It would be only a short discursive leap from the camps of al Qaeda to the palaces of Saddam Hussein, a rhetorical maneuver that Bush triumphantly completed in his 2002 State of the Union address. Noting that three “outlaw regimes”—North Korea, Iran, and especially Iraq—constituted an axis of evil that sought weapons of mass destruction and supported terrorists, the president declared that this country “will not permit the world’s most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world’s most destructive weapons.” History had called us to action, Bush reminded his vast audience, and “it is both our responsibility and our privilege to fight freedom’s fight.” But what we had found in Afghanistan confirmed that “far from ending there, our war against terror is only beginning.” If we were to stop now—“leaving terror camps intact and terror states unchecked—our sense of security would be false and temporary” (emphasis added), and the price we would pay for such foolish and monumental indifference would be “catastrophic.”23 And the rest, as they say, is

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31

history, as official administration rhetoric over the following year filled in the specifics of the Iraq-as-war-on-terror frame, beefed up the role of its new antagonist, and introduced a new subplot of preemptive war—that we must “confront the worst threats before they emerge”24—a storyline whose basic underpinnings had been so clearly and convincingly articulated in the days and weeks following the 2001 terrorist attacks that few thought (or dared) to challenge this dangerous new detour in Bush’s rhetorical roadmap of the global war on terror. SPREADING

THE

GOSPEL

OF THE

WAR

ON

TERROR

Promoting the cause of any war, justifying to a national and worldwide audience why so many lives would not be taken in vain, requires diligent and constant effort, a task to which President Bush quickly and enthusiastically rose in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks. By the time the president told the nation that he was launching airstrikes against al Qaeda and the Taliban on October 7, 2001, he had issued more than fifty public statements on our new global crusade, from short exchanges with reporters to lengthy speeches to joint appearances with foreign leaders. And in the two months following his October address, he made almost eighty additional public statements relating to our war against terrorism, a marathon pace he would maintain as he worked to promote the shift in focus from Afghanistan to Iraq throughout the ensuing year and a half.25 He appeared in numerous venues on many different occasions, and his televised addresses to the nation—those direct, unmediated “conversations” with the American public that are the contemporary heirs to FDR’s fireside chats—set a modern presidential record in the eight months following the attacks.26 This strategy of “going public,” as student of the presidency Samuel Kernell terms it, reflects the framers’ constitutional intentions of an energetic executive as well as contemporary political, public, and media expectations that the commander in chief will personally respond and vigorously take charge in a time of national emergency; determine when, how, and, if necessary, against whom the nation will react; and define, interpret, and shape the situation’s meaning—in essence, then, he becomes not only our emergency “coordinator in chief ” but also our crisis “framer in chief.”27 And to be effective—to control the public discourse—political scientist Jarol Manheim reminds us, a president and his team must engage in “strategic political communication” and have a well thought out plan of creating, controlling, and distributing the administration’s many messages about the emergency we face.28

32

Framing the Iraq War Endgame

The first part of a strategic communication plan is to offer a compelling story that strikes just the right emotional and cognitive chords with its intended audience. It helps immensely, of course, to begin with a setting in which a horrified and shaken country turns in unison to the leader who, in times of crisis, symbolizes the nation itself and who can use the presidential megaphone to reach the millions already cued by the course of events to heed his words. And as we have seen, the war on terrorism morality tale that the president put forth contained all the ingredients that made it irresistible to America: the stark, unambiguous, and apocalyptic simplicity of the evil “other” versus the good “us;” the tragedy of an insidious attack; the dramatic tension of imminent and catastrophic danger; the enthralling excitement of a monumental struggle; and the emotional release of justice triumphant. A clear, comprehensible, and compelling narrative is only part of the equation, for effective strategic communication also entails message consistency and repetition—in contemporary political terms, it requires “message discipline.” Bush’s ability to remain “on message” was most impressive; he stuck to his prepared script and even in those impromptu sessions with questioners from the press, he had so internalized the language of the war on terror, he uttered almost identical phrases to those his speechwriters had so carefully crafted. Quantitative analyses of the content of Bush’s public statements demonstrate the centrality of terrorism and the war on terrorism in his discourse in the months following the attacks and even as he began to move the country toward war with Iraq.29 And he was a faithful servant to his cause, using, as we have seen, every available opportunity provided by the presidential bully pulpit to preach the war on terror gospel and present it as our nation’s most important and pressing concern. From the inception of the war against terrorism through the buildup to war against Iraq, the Bush team also worked to achieve discursive consensus throughout the administration by coordinating daily terrorismrelated messages for use by officials throughout the executive branch and monitoring their words as they fanned out across numerous media and public locales, repeating their terrorism mantras and rarely straying from their assigned topics.30 In a study of the passage of the 2001 USA PATRIOT Act—a wide-ranging piece of legislation that dramatically expanded the government’s foreign and domestic intelligence-gathering and surveillance powers—Domke and his colleagues found that in their public comments about the legislation, the president and his attorney general, John Ashcroft, were models of discursive consistency as they emphasized the same themes of success in the fight against terrorism, the importance of providing security, a call for unity, and the necessity of

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33

congressional approval.31 Thus, Bush may have been the most visible and voluble member of the choir, but he was backed up by a unified chorus of advisors and officials, all loudly singing from the same hymnal as they assiduously spread the gospel of the war on terror across the land. The success of the administration’s rhetorical efforts can be measured at least in part by the public responses they drew. In the many opinion polls taken in the days and weeks following the terrorist attacks, the public overwhelmingly supported going to war against Afghanistan; they saw Osama bin Laden and the Taliban as archenemies of freedom, democracy, and civilization who had to be removed through whatever extreme means necessary; they thought another terrorist strike was likely; and they viewed this country as the wounded but resilient victim of a hideous atrocity—in short, the public had internalized the president’s discourse of terror.32 And in so doing, the public bestowed upon its president the highest public approval ratings ever recorded, a triumph for a leader whose public ratings had previously been languishing in the distinctly mediocre range. It was also a stratospheric approval level that, the Gallup Organization reported at the end of December 2001, was the longestsustained of any president in the company’s polling history.33 So powerful was the official terrorism narrative that, as political scientist Ian Lustick has so aptly noted, public opinion pollsters never even bothered to ask the basic question of whether war was the appropriate response to terrorism; the wording to which the public was asked to respond involved questions such as how well the president was handling the war on terrorism and whether it was worth the cost, not whether there should have been a war in the first place.34 THE LOYAL OPPOSITION: BOXED

INTO THE

9/11 FRAME

Democratic members of Congress (as well as any wavering Republicans) had little recourse but to jump on the war on terror bandwagon in the wake of the attacks, for so effectively had Bush seized the moral and discursive high ground, it would have seemed foolish, uncaring, and unpatriotic, at best, to dispute his terrorism narrative. Neither the old liberal lions of the Senate nor representatives from securely liberal districts attempted even half-hearted roars or bearing of rhetorical fangs, as they and their colleagues docilely nestled in the shelter of the Bush narrative. Was there any viable political space to challenge Bush’s representations of the horror and evil of the attacks, the innocence of the victims, America as an exceptionally aggrieved nation, and the need to seek justice? Apparently not, as Democrats merely echoed or fell silent in the face of the Bush frame, offered no competing or even slightly differing interpretations of

34

Framing the Iraq War Endgame

the events of September 11, and instead adopted key elements of the Bush discourse. Senator Edward Kennedy’s (D-MA) wording in a September 14 press release on Congress’s Joint Resolution Authorizing the Use of Force is especially telling: “I strongly support the bipartisan resolution to authorize the use of force against terrorists. This is an appropriate and needed response to the vicious and horrifying recent attacks on America. Those who murder American citizens must find no hiding place, and those who harbor terrorists must pay the price. America must be decisive and effective in apprehending terrorists and identifying and punishing those who give them support.”35 Kennedy did caution that our response should not be indiscriminate, that we should act only when we were certain who the perpetrators were, and that we should do so in a way that “preserves our ideals and protects the fundamental rights and liberties of the American people,”36 but here, too, he was echoing sentiments already expressed by the president. In a similar vein, Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee and House Democratic Whip, stated on the House floor just over a month after 9/11, “With the barbaric attacks… terrorists are challenging our way of life. We must not let them succeed. Democrats and Republicans alike stand side by side with President Bush in rooting out terrorism wherever it exists in the world.”37 And several months later, in the weekly Democratic radio address, her support of the Bush frame was no less enthusiastic as she affixed her party’s imprimatur to the war on terror: “This week, President Bush delivered his State of the Union address, in which he eloquently stated that our nation remains committed to the war on terrorism and that we will do everything necessary to ensure our nation’s security. We Democrats stand shoulder to shoulder with the President. As generations of Americans have before us, we will pay any price and bear any burden to keep our country secure.”38 Krebs and Lobasz argue that because the Bush narrative employed the rhetoric of identity and solidarity rather than the prose of information, it was initially filled with symbolic reassurance but light on policy details. When the administration did propose specific policies to combat terrorism, it cloaked them in the mantle of good confronting evil, freedom defeating tyranny, and security overcoming peril. Challenging the policies would have meant undermining the whole carefully constructed rationale of our war on terror, a form of political suicide almost no elected officials were willing to commit.39 Thus, Congress quickly, and by wide margins, acquiesced to Bush’s antiterror policy requests, beginning with war against al Qaeda and the Taliban and then, in rapid order, the USA

Dominating the Discourse of Terror

35

PATRIOT Act, a bailout for the airline industry, and the creation of a new agency dedicated to homeland security. In his study of Senate deliberation about the PATRIOT Act, Domke found few voices of congressional dissent (it passed the Senate by a vote of 98 to 1) and that the senators’ justifications for supporting the legislation paralleled the administration’s themes. The words of Senate majority Tom Daschle (D-SD), during floor discussions, are illustrative: “This is a new kind of battle. Winning it will require a new set of tools. And winning it is the only acceptable outcome.”40 Whatever reservations the Democrats might have had about pursuing the war on terror, they kept mostly to themselves throughout the fall of 2001. When leading Democrats did offer some divergent views, it was not until the beginning of 2002, and then primarily to present specific criticisms of the administration’s conduct of the war against terrorism, including the failure to capture Osama bin Laden, commit adequately to Afghanistan’s reconstruction, or upgrade our intelligence capabilities. In the words of author and journalist Nicholas Lemann, the Democratic critique varied from person to person but its underlying bellicose vision could be called something like “war on terror: the enhanced edition.”41 The actions (or inactions) of the congressional Democrats, in conjunction with the media’s compliant response to Bush’s formulations, led Lemann to conclude, almost exactly one year after the attacks, that the phrase “war on terror” “has entered the language so fully, and framed the way people think about how the United States is reacting to the September 11th attacks so completely, that the idea that declaring and waging war on terror was not the sole, inevitable, logical, consequence of the attacks just isn’t in circulation.”42 As we shall see shortly, the loyal opposition—including a few prominent Republicans—did venture forth with some competing perspectives as the administration began the push for war with Iraq, but the parameters of the Democrats’ discourse had been established within hours of the terrorist attacks themselves and their arguments were so constrained— they were, to use the phrase of Krebs and his colleagues, so “rhetorically coerced”—that all they would end up doing is crafting a rebuttal that centered on the timing and the circumstances of an invasion, not the legitimacy of a preemptive war itself.43 THE MEDIA

AS

GREEK CHORUS

For the many members of the mainstream news media, the terrorist attacks may not have been a divinely sanctioned call to arms, but they provided the stuff that journalistic dreams—and nightmares—are made

36

Framing the Iraq War Endgame

of. Within moments of the first attack, our major media outlets were collecting all the information they could, immediately disseminating it, monitoring the rapidly breaking developments, correcting rumors (while reporting new ones), and attempting to make sense of the horrific events and place them in proper perspective.44 Because New York City and Washington DC are the home bases of our largest print and broadcast organizations, thousands of media personnel were available to collect, prepare, and present the news—and to do so around the clock. Regular programming was interrupted, advertising revenue was sacrificed, infotainment was banished, and a steady diet of crisis news permeated the airwaves and the pages of the print media in the hours and days following the attacks. And the public, as political communication scholar Doris Graber documents, turned just as quickly to the media outlets, especially the network news broadcasts and cable news networks, to bring them the latest developments and provide some sort of interpretation, as more than 90 percent of the public claimed to be paying at least “fairly close” attention to the coverage of the attacks.45 In the new media environment of twenty-four-hour news coverage on cable television, satellite radio, and the Internet, the public had an enormous menu of media offerings from which to choose, and its president possessed an equally broad avenue of access to mobilize his base of public and political support. Providing images that none of us shall ever forget, television did what it can do so well: covering real-time, unfolding events in a “calm, poised, systematic” way, thoroughly and factually, “without panic or speculation,” bringing the best that professional journalism had to bear on the appalling events.46 Searching to depict the unfathomable tragedy unfolding around them, reporters focused on the immediate and the personal, the visual depiction of tragedy and its traumatic aftermath.47 Stories of the victims became a hallmark of postattack coverage, and in the New York Times, they quickly evolved into a sort of journalistic shrine to those who had perished, as the paper published a special memorial section titled “Portraits of Grief ” for many months following the attacks.48 Faced with an archetypal example of event-driven news, reporters and their editors and producers struggled in the moments after the attacks to provide meaning for what was happening and initially had to do so without the benefit of official guidance. The news narrative of “America under Attack” had to suffice as a temporary sketch, one that provided a large, mostly blank canvas upon which the Bush administration could complete the official portrait of the attacks. And even before the paint was dry on the image that the president created, members of the media stood back, took a good, close look, and declared it to be a masterpiece.

Dominating the Discourse of Terror

37

A number of excellent scholarly analyses have been conducted on the media’s depiction of the meaning of 9/11, and all conclude that where the official Bush discourse led in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, mainstream media discourse uniformly, unhesitatingly, and quite enthusiastically followed.49 Operating in what Richard Jackson terms “semantically complicit mode,” the media frame of the attacks reflected, supported, reproduced, and amplified the administration’s narrative, transmitting its words in an essentially unmediated and unimpeded fashion. Official sources, particularly the president and his top officials, became the sources, and although reportage supplied some context and interpretation, the Bush message became the message that the American audience heard and read.50 This was particularly true for Bush’s depiction of the war on terror. As we noted earlier, when the media initially go to war, they tend to do so wholeheartedly and in lockstep patriotic mode. Recollect that even in the case of Vietnam, a conflict in which so many so inaccurately remember the press’s role, media outlets, both large and small, at first adopted the administration’s general frame of why we had to confront the menace of rampant communism and spoke approvingly of our engagement in Southeast Asia. Almost four decades later, this general pattern showed little change. Once President Bush framed the 9/11 attacks as a confrontation of good versus evil and war as the only possible response, media outlets incorporated his rhetorical constructions, particularly his use of binaries as well as his war-based discourse, into their reports and commentaries. Communication scholar Andrew Rojecki found that media elites were particularly receptive to Bush’s representation of American exceptionalism, as editorial and opinion pieces in the New York Times and Washington Post prior to the invasion of Afghanistan were filled with proclamations of U.S. virtue and condemnations of our evil enemies.51 David Domke and his colleagues likewise found that in editorials following each of the president’s major addresses over the four months after the attacks, twenty major U.S. newspapers faithfully echoed the president’s use of good versus evil and security versus peril binaries, frequently adopting his precise language. As Domke notes, binary discourse is well suited for the media for it inherently suggests conflict and competition, provides simple rhetorical flourishes, and has great moral staying power—elements that all fit tidily into today’s news narrative structures and that the media find so difficult to resist.52 The dramatically engaging discourse of war is no less appealing to the media, and once Bush began his constant use of the war metaphor, journalists rapidly followed suit. The cable news networks had omnipresent

38

Framing the Iraq War Endgame

on-screen banners proclaiming such tempting verbal nuggets as “America’s New War,” “America At War,” or “War Against Terrorism,” all accompanied by a visual feast of red, white, and blue. Newspaper coverage and headlines embraced Bush’s discourse as well. In a comprehensive study of Washington Post reportage and commentary in the period before we launched air strikes in Afghanistan, political communication scholar Anthony DiMaggio found that nonviolent alternatives were downplayed and that the military preparation frame dominated competing frames of our allies’ opposition and negotiations with the Taliban by a margin of three to one.53 Researcher Brigitte Nacos found that during the same time period, ABC News broadcast almost 90 stories containing the terms war and terrorism, CBS aired almost 100 such stories, NBC broadcast over 130, CNN televised almost 320, and NPR aired close to 170. And in her search of print media mentions of the two terms in the Lexis-Nexis archive, she discovered just over 5,800 articles that mentioned war and terrorism during that same brief time frame.54 Not only did the media replicate the Bush discourse, they also gave it a strong stamp of approval. In the weeks following the attacks, almost no criticism of the president’s underlying assumptions entered the mainstream media lexicon in either news reports or editorials and commentary, and what few critiques did appear focused primarily on specific tactics, not the general message of our need to wage war against terrorist evil.55 Like the chorus of classical Greek drama, the media presented important background and summary information about the official morality tale of terror, underlined its main themes, offered running commentary, and provided a sense of rich spectacle—but did not veer from the approved storyline. In keeping with standard media operating procedures, the mainstream outlets also privileged the voices of the president, high-ranking members of his administration, and powerful members of Congress in the attacks’ aftermath. These were the authoritative sources to whom the media turned to make sense of the chaotic situation; they were also the holders of the reins of power who would decide what course the country would follow.56 Voices of dissent from sources outside the halls of Washington were infrequently heard and because members of Congress offered little criticism and the administration offered a unified and consistent perspective, alternative viewpoints were effectively marginalized and silenced. Indexing their coverage to the level of elite disagreement, the media found only consensus and thus presented the Bush narrative as the interpretation of the meaning of the attacks and how we had to respond. Faithful to their imperatives of conflict and drama, and reflecting the

Dominating the Discourse of Terror

39

need for constant “breaking news” updates in an era of 24/7 coverage, impatient media organizations did draw some parallels between the war in Afghanistan and the quagmire of Vietnam when the Afghan airstrikes did not immediately accomplish measurable objectives. In a search of the Lexis-Nexis media database, Nacos found that just over 800 news and commentary pieces contained the words Afghanistan and Vietnam, and more than 100 mentioned both Afghanistan and quagmire in the several weeks after the strikes were launched. Thus, media outlets did not attend solely to those highly placed sources within the Bush administration, nor did they act merely as official stenographers. But as soon as Kabul was liberated and the defeat of the Taliban was imminent, the Vietnam analogies quickly disappeared from media discourse and media independence once more took a back seat to media deference.57 As Nacos has also documented, even the existence of opposition to the discourse and policies of the administration was barely acknowledged in the fall of 2001, as newspaper articles about domestic antiwar protests were few in number and confined to short articles on the inside pages, and the broadcast and cable networks carried only a tiny handful of segments about antiwar activities.58 The competing narratives of a smattering of public intellectuals, most notably, Susan Sontag, were confined to niche publications such as The New Yorker, and their alternative problem definitions—that the attacks were undertaken as a consequence of specific American foreign policy actions—did not enter mainstream media discourse in the months following 9/11.59 The few high-profile media personalities who, like Bill Maher, did use their media platforms to offer some challenges to the Bush narrative, found themselves figuratively cast by the wayside, ridiculed, berated, and, in Maher’s case, quickly removed from the air. Much more typical were the responses of news anchors and correspondents who began to sport flag lapel pins or ribbons and to check their own discourse for signs of unpatriotic prose.60 Once again, Domke’s study of the political and media discourse surrounding the passage of the PATRIOT Act provides some useful illustrations about the nature of media compliance in a time of national crisis. This legislation, so strongly pushed by the Bush administration, engendered some debate in Congress, but as we have just seen, congressional deliberation tended to support the themes and arguments of a highly unified administration, and a bill containing everything the White House requested was rapidly enacted. News coverage similarly echoed the administration’s communications. In fifteen leading newspapers and the three broadcast networks, the content not only closely paralleled Bush’s major themes but did so most approvingly.

40

Framing the Iraq War Endgame

The only theme that did not garner strong media approbation was the protection of civil liberties. Although Bush and Ashcroft were adamant that civil liberties would be fully upheld under the PATRIOT Act, almost half of media news stories and commentary contained some criticisms about constitutional issues, privacy rights, or treatment of minorities and immigrants. But—and this is a telling caveat—the concerns that were raised came almost entirely from nongovernmental organizations and individuals; none came from inside the Bush administration and only 16 percent of these critical sources were members of Congress. And equally importantly, over 80 percent of the negative content also contained claims that supported the administration, especially its themes of the need for security and quick and decisive action. Domke and his colleagues thus note that “even in the one domain of Patriot Act news coverage in which the administration was substantively challenged, perspectives supportive of the administration were heavily represented and the possibility of alternative approaches was not.”61 And they are led to conclude that when the White House and congressional leadership line up together, news coverage becomes heavily one-sided, with the result that “the news media functionally play a game of elitist ‘follow the leader’ that suggests others should do the same.”62 In sum, then, the terrorist attacks provided U.S. journalists not only an opportunity to keep the country informed and abreast of important developments, but an occasion to help bind our national wounds, speed our recovery from a horrible national trauma, and instill in us a firm sense of national community and national purpose. It also set us on a path dictated by the president—a course of protracted global war against an ill-defined enemy whose specific identity was about to undergo a most important shift from an elusive figure lurking somewhere in Afghanistan to a high-profile leader safely ensconced (for the moment, at least) in one of his many palaces in Iraq. From Afghanistan to Iraq: Extending the War on Terror By the time that President Bush began to make the discursive pirouette from a general condemnation of all states that sponsored terrorism to a specific focus on Iraq as the chief culprit in early 2002, the United States had recovered from its initial post-9/11 period of shock, horror, and mourning. Would the return to a more normal pace of life and a more reflective mindset encourage our elected officials, the mainstream media organizations, and the administration itself to engage in a more thoughtful and thorough examination of the president’s discourse on the war on

Dominating the Discourse of Terror

41

terror—what Sontag had contemptuously termed the “self-congratulatory bromides…the sanctimonious, reality-concealing rhetoric…unworthy of a mature democracy”63—and an equally careful interrogation of the policies that had so reflexively flowed from it? The answer would become all too obvious as political challengers to the unfolding Iraq-as-war-on-terror frame struggled to find the words that would provide an equally resonant tale of why Iraq was an inappropriate target, and journalists continued to advance the administration’s constant and consistent narrative about confronting terrorism. That no American political figure or mainstream journalist would step forward with a critique of the basic idea that we needed to pursue a war against terrorism—regardless of its specific target—gives proof of just how firmly rooted in our national consciousness the underpinnings of Bush’s war-on-terror frame had become. FRAMING IRAQ

AS

TERROR

As it turned its focus to Iraq, the administration’s message was firm, confident, consistent, and disciplined—and it contained its own internal war-on-terror logic. From the day of the attacks, the Bush team had scripted a constant “discourse of danger,” which held that 9/11 was but a harbinger of terrorist horrors yet to come and that we faced an ongoing, fundamental threat to our very existence.64 Under this apocalyptic vision of catastrophic terrorism, the greatest menace was not bin Laden and his minions but those “outlaw regimes” whose leaders gave aid and comfort to the terrorists and who could supply them with biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons of mass destruction. As he unveiled the “axis of evil” in his 2002 State of the Union address, the president wove the major strands of his terrorism discourse—that “evil is real, and it must be opposed”—into a storyline whose villain had pursued terrorist means against thousands of his own people, was plotting to develop weapons of mass destruction (WMD), was “continuing to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror,” and whose regime had “something to hide from the civilized world.”65 In their quantitative analysis of Bush’s rhetoric in the lead-up to war against Iraq, political scientists Amy Gershkoff and Shana Kushner found that the president’s sustained dialogue on Iraq frequently referred to terror and terrorism, and that the magnitude of these references was especially high during September and October of 2002, a time when the administration mounted a particularly aggressive rhetorical campaign against Saddam Hussein. Iraq and terrorism were thoroughly entwined in the president’s prewar speeches throughout 2002 and the spring of 2003, appearing usually within the same paragraph and often within the same

42

Framing the Iraq War Endgame

sentence. And although he began to discuss weapons of mass destruction at the same point that he began to discuss Iraq, and continued to refer to them in most of his speeches, the president mentioned terrorism more than five times as often as WMD. Only once, in his March 19, 2003, address that announced the beginning of hostilities, did WMD appear more frequently in Bush’s rhetoric.66 Thus, terrorism was the master narrative that formed the basis of Bush’s push for war, and WMD was the proximate cause for why we had to make the momentous decision to engage in combat so quickly. As he continued to ratchet up his anti-Saddam rhetoric over the course of 2002, the president worked to convince America that this new condition of extreme and massive threat gave us no choice but to remove the danger before it struck. Thus, preemptive action against Saddam’s rogue regime was the only thing that stood between us and Armageddon. Reminding the audience for his 2003 State of the Union address that “time and distance from the events of September the 11th will not make us safer unless we act on its lessons” and that “this nation and all our friends are all that stand between a world at peace, and a world of chaos and constant alarm,” the president reiterated his message that “the gravest danger in the war on terror, the gravest danger facing America and the world, is outlaw regimes that seek and possess nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.” Only through “vigorous action abroad and increased vigilance at home” could we be protected from yet more attacks and achieve “freedom’s victory.”67 Having so compellingly constructed the supreme emergency of WMD in a world of ascendant terrorism as the defining problem of our age, the administration then laid the groundwork for what it claimed as the only logical solution: removal of the most insidious threat—Saddam Hussein—by whatever means necessary. And so thoroughly had the president constructed the idea of the terrorist threat, he was not called upon to provide the evidence for his assertions about Saddam and terrorism. Simply implying such a connection, he let his audience draw their own conclusions. For a number of months, the administration was also not compelled to demonstrate that Saddam currently possessed weapons of mass destruction; the mere warning that he might employ these deadly tools seemed to suffice.68 As they had in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, Bush’s senior lieutenants provided a constant and uniform stream of supportive discourse in the buildup to war with Iraq. In a host of speeches, interviews, and personal appearances, their statements added color, texture, and heightened urgency to the threatening images the president had painted. A few well-known

Dominating the Discourse of Terror

43

examples should enable us to recollect the yeoman service these officials performed. In a speech delivered in late August of 2002 to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Vice President Cheney declared that “there is no doubt” that Saddam Hussein currently possessed biological and chemical weapons and was intent on using them against the United States. Saddam had also “resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons,” the vice president claimed, a horrific goal that he would accomplish “fairly soon.”69 In a September CNN interview, in response to a question about Saddam’s nuclear capabilities, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice also obligingly provided the headline-grabbing sound bite that “we don’t want the smoking gun to become a mushroom cloud.” In early 2003, she published an op-ed piece in the New York Times under the title “Why We Know Iraq is Lying,” which claimed Iraq’s failure to disarm was “clear and resounding” and that it was treating the United Nations weapons inspections process merely as a “game.”70 And Secretary of State Colin Powell rose to the occasion in a lengthy speech before the United Nations in early February 2003, proclaiming that Iraq’s many denials about WMD were merely “a web of lies” as he presented what he said was conclusive proof of Iraq’s refusal to comply with the UN resolutions that it disarm.71 Evidence that Saddam Hussein had supplanted Osama bin Laden as public enemy number one in the eyes of the American public is provided by a host of public opinion surveys in the months leading up to military engagement with Iraq. The Bush administration’s discourse certainly cued the public to make the connection between Saddam and terrorism, but as researcher Scott Althaus demonstrates, Americans had already been primed to believe—by a decade’s worth of political and media characterizations of Saddam as evil incarnate—that there was a link between Iraq and terrorism and that Saddam was probably responsible for the attacks of 9/11.72 This was a demon with whom America felt well acquainted and not at all hesitant to blame. But it is one thing to point an accusatory finger and quite another to contemplate the costs of marching off to yet another war, and as political scientist Jon Western notes, public support for invading Iraq began to drop from a peak of almost 75 percent in late fall 2001 to just over 60 percent in June 2002; it then continued to decline as both congressional leaders and mainstream journalists began to raise some competing narratives about Iraq as the appropriate site for pursuing the war on terror.73 Contesting a president’s national security frame is difficult under most circumstances and it becomes an especially formidable task in the aftermath of a crisis as monumental as the attacks of 9/11. Congressional critics of military action against Saddam on both sides of the aisle did begin

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to offer some rebuttals to Bush’s Iraq narrative in the spring and summer of 2002, but their critiques were circumscribed and clearly within the discursive boundaries set by the president. Opponents in Congress were joined by some high-ranking foreign policy officials, including two former Republican secretaries of state and one national security advisor, all of whom sounded some very loud and bipartisan public alarms. The opposition’s arguments centered not on whether we should engage in regime change in Iraq but on how and when we should go about accomplishing that goal. And they focused primarily on the dangers of unilateral action, the concomitant loss of international goodwill that was so essential to winning our war against terrorism, and the problems of going to war “on the cheap.”74 Not surprisingly, the Bush administration fought back and stepped up its rhetoric about Saddam and WMD, and this was the point at which the national security advisor made her alarming comment about the mushroom cloud and the vice president insisted that Iraq now possessed weapons of mass destruction, was amassing them to “use against our friends, against our allies, and against us,” and would soon—perhaps within the year—be able to acquire nuclear weapons.75 As a guest on CBS’s Face the Nation, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld also chimed in with this ominous connection among the three discursive pillars of Iraq, terrorism, and WMD: “Imagine a September 11 with weapons of mass destruction. It’s not 3,000; it’s tens of thousands of innocent men, women, and children.”76 Availing himself of the opportunity presented by the first anniversary of the terrorist attacks, the president also went public, first delivering a prime time address to the nation from Ellis Island with the Statue of Liberty dramatically lit in the background and then giving a major speech to the United Nations General Assembly the following morning. His words to the nation were filled with the discourse of terror and the icons of 9/11 as he declared that “joined by a great coalition of nations,” we would “rid the world of terror.” Entwining his favored notions of good versus evil, security versus peril, freedom versus tyranny, and civilization versus barbarism, he continued: We will not allow any terrorist or tyrant to threaten civilization with weapons of mass murder.…This nation has defeated tyrants and liberated death camps, raised this lamp of liberty to every captive land. We have no intention of ignoring or appeasing history’s latest gang of fanatics trying to murder their way to power. They are discovering, as others before them, the resolve of a great country and a great democracy. In the ruins of two towers, under a flag unfurled at the Pentagon, at the funerals of the lost,

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we have made a sacred promise to ourselves and to the world: we will not relent until justice is done and our nation is secure.77

To the United Nations, he detailed Saddam’s flagrant disregard of the measures the international body had imposed and he challenged the UN to enforce its own rules. If it neither could nor would do so, the United States had no option but to act: “We must choose between a world of fear and a world of progress. We cannot stand by and do nothing while dangers gather. We must stand up for our security, and for the permanent rights and the hopes of mankind.”78 Data from opinion surveys in late summer 2002 reveal that the administration’s ramped-up efforts to regain control of the debate over war against Iraq were having the desired effect. As Western notes, the number of people who said they believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction increased to 79 percent in the wake of Cheney’s August speech and a most impressive figure of 69 percent believed that Saddam already possessed nuclear weapons. But the polls also revealed that the public preferred that we not go it alone and thought that the president should seek congressional authorization.79 When some congressional opponents refused to be stilled, the administration intensified its rhetorical efforts throughout late September and early October of 2002. This was no-holds-barred discursive combat, but it was rapidly becoming a one-sided frame contest as the Democrats acquiesced to regime change and retreated to the position that we should first secure broad international and UN support for any military action against Iraq. Recognizing imminent victory in the war of words, the administration pressed its case even more strongly. In a speech on the anniversary of the launching of airstrikes against Afghanistan, the president carefully stated that Saddam planned to forge a direct relationship with terrorist organizations including al Qaeda, that Iraq could “have a nuclear weapon in less than a year,” and, borrowing from the now-infamous phraseology of his national security advisor, he added, “facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof—the smoking gun—that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”80 By this point, the outcome of the rhetorical struggle was no longer in doubt, and although some leading Democrats continued to criticize our unilateralist foreign policy, in midOctober, the House and then the Senate overwhelmingly passed a resolution authorizing the president to use the military “as he determines to be necessary and appropriate” to defend against the threat posed by Iraq. The Bush frame of the interconnections between Iraq and terrorism, securely ensconced in the official master narrative and so forcefully championed by the president and his senior officials, had proven simply too

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potent for its opponents to mount a sufficient and sustained challenge. Nor could the mainstream media withstand the rhetorical onslaught of the administration’s campaign for an expanded battle against terrorism. THE MEDIA’S MARCH

TO

EXTENDED WAR

From the moment the president first mentioned the axis of evil in early 2002 to his announcement fourteen months later that the invasion had been launched, the media trained their powerful lenses on the buildup to war with Iraq. As we have discussed above, one of the strengths of Bush’s terrorism discourse was that its concise and compelling prose so beautifully filled the media need for a storyline that was at once dramatic, exciting, engaging, and readily comprehensible. The administration had already provided the media with a broad narrative outline of villainy and imminent threat, and journalists could simply insert their own specific scripts into the now familiar war-on-terrorism plot. And the president’s shift in leading dramatis personae from bin Laden to Saddam in no way interfered with that general storyline; in fact, one could argue that it made the tale even more enticing since the war against Afghanistan had been difficult to cover and its target remained frustratingly elusive. A number of studies of mainstream media content in the period leading up to war with Iraq have all reached the same major conclusions: the media adopted the Bush frame of Iraq-as-war-on-terror and generally acquiesced to the president’s rationale for why, when, and how we should confront Saddam; they delivered, in an essentially unmediated fashion, the evidence the Bush administration presented for war; they privileged high-ranking sources within the administration and discounted voices of dissent from within the intelligence community; and they marginalized many competing viewpoints, especially those from outside official Washington.81 And just as the powerful theme of American exceptionalism had won the hearts and minds of elite media commentators in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the juxtaposition of American virtue and the evil nature of our enemies provided a strong moralistic underpinning to press commentaries on our need to confront Iraq.82 Media critic Michael Massing has chided the elite media—those organs of the press who pride themselves on their political independence and their thorough analyses—for their collective failure to investigate the claims of the Bush administration during the march to war from the fall of 2002 to spring 2003. “Far too reliant on sources sympathetic to the administration,” Massing writes, elite outlets “shut out” those with dissenting views, and “reflecting this, the coverage was highly deferential

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to the White House. This was especially apparent on the issue of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction—the heart of the President’s case for war.”83 The following research results are illustrative of the general pattern of reportage that Massing found so disturbing. In an analysis of prewar New York Times coverage from the fall of 2002, DiMaggio discovered that almost 75 percent of the paper’s stories contained only positive statements, mostly in the form of direct quotes from official sources, about the administration’s WMD charges; a mere 15 percent of the articles contained a balance of positive and negative statements; and fewer than 10 percent included only statements that were skeptical of or refuted the WMD charges.84 In a separate study of the Times’s coverage of major Bush speeches from September 2002 to May 2003, Gershkoff and Kushner found that over 85 percent of the stories quoted at least one member of the administration, 60 percent quoted Bush directly, only about one-third quoted Democrats, just over one-third quoted criticism from UN members, and only a handful of articles quoted nonelite domestic opponents or Iraqi critics. These authors also report the important finding that there was little debate in the paper’s articles on the appropriateness of placing the conflict within a terrorism frame.85 Nor did the pattern differ for the broadcast networks, as media analyst Andrew Tyndall reported that fewer than 10 percent of the stories on NBC, ABC, and CBS from September 2002 to February 2003 originated outside the White House.86 The fact that Congress did not immediately embrace Iraq as the primary battleground of the war on terror, and that a number of prominent Republicans as well as Democrats went public with their concerns, added an intriguing dimension of conflict and confrontation to the media’s tale of the march to war. As Entman notes, media coverage did reflect elite dissensus in the summer of 2002, and the majority of sources quoted in elite print and broadcast outlets during that period of conflict among powerful American officials were critical of the administration’s Iraq strategy.87 What made the stories particularly appetizing to the media were the public disagreements among Republican leaders, a dramatic and conflict-laden tale that was difficult to downplay. But this proved to be one of those exceptions that proves the more general rule, and once the Republican dissenters, as well as most congressional Democrats, fell into line behind their president, the nature of the story changed. And by the time that President Bush delivered his 2003 State of the Union address and Secretary Powell unveiled his evidence to the United Nations, media organizations had resumed their normal pattern of prewar coverage: deferential, supportive, and carefully marching behind the leader.

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THE PATH

TO

WAR

IN THE

AGE

OF

TERROR

Although he had proclaimed in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks that we would not allow this to be an age of terror, President Bush used the discourse of terror to shape this nation’s sense of who we were and what we must do at the dawn of a threatening new century. And our primary task was to rid the world of terrorist evil, a mission that could be accomplished only through a war of undetermined length against a new kind of hydraheaded enemy. War in the age of terror would be a war of absolutes, of good versus evil, freedom versus tyranny, light versus darkness. The age of terror would be an age of war, but our battles would be waged for a just and noble cause, guided by the certainty that justice would emerge triumphant. To a nation still reeling from the horrors of 9/11, still frightened and angered by events we could not comprehend, the president’s rhetoric provided comfort, hope, a sense of purpose, and the promise of retribution. Binding the nation into his soaring discourse of terror, the president was able to lead a willing Congress, media, and public into a war in Iraq for which he had provided a compelling morality tale but only the scantest of evidence and, we would soon discover, only the sketchiest of postinvasion plans.

CHAPTER 2

Fighting the Central Front in the War on Terror “Our war against terror is a contest of will in which perseverance is power,” President Bush proclaimed in his 2003 State of the Union address, a statement that could just as readily have been applied to his own determined campaign for war against Iraq. Invoking the icons of 9/11, he continued, “In the ruins of two towers, at the western wall of the Pentagon, on a field in Pennsylvania, this nation made a pledge and we renew that pledge tonight: Whatever the duration of this struggle, and whatever the difficulties, we will not permit the triumph of violence in the affairs of men—free people will set the course of history.”1 In this time of “great consequence,” those gathered in the House chamber had the duty to confront “the man-made evil of international terrorism,” and thus we had no option other than regime change should Saddam Hussein continue to flaunt the UN mandate to disarm. With his discourse of danger in full sail, the president unfurled the most damning evidence against his adversary—Saddam’s attempts to acquire uranium and high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production. Making reference to the horrors of the terrorist attacks, Bush asked his nationwide audience to conjure up the very worst that might befall us were Saddam to go unchecked: “Imagine those 19 hijackers with other weapons and other plans—this time armed by Saddam Hussein. It would take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known.” And the danger was not just hypothetical, Bush insisted, for Saddam had acquired a stockpile of biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction and had already unleashed them on the Iraqi people. Providing gruesome details of the horrors the dictator had wrought on whole villages, “leaving thousands of his own citizens dead, blind, or disfigured,” the president declared, “If this is not evil, then evil has no meaning.”2

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President Bush also warned that threats of terrorism emanated from across the globe, not just from Iraq: “There’s never a day when I do not learn of another threat, or receive reports of operations in progress, or give an order in this global war against a scattered network of killers.” But Iraq presented the most pressing menace, and in the face of such grave and looming danger, America’s choice was clear: we must end “the threats to the civilized world” through “whatever action is required, whenever action is necessary.” Emphasizing that while we would go to war only reluctantly, the president noted that we would do so “with confidence,” secure in the knowledge that the cause for which we fought—the universal ideal of freedom expressed in the liberation of an oppressed people— “is the right of every person and the future of every nation. The liberty we prize is not America’s gift to the world, it is God’s gift to humanity.”3 The applause inside the chamber was deafening; the speech’s reception in newsrooms and living rooms across the country was no less enthusiastic. In the month and a half following Bush’s address, his administration, Congress, and the media each engaged in what had become their standard post-9/11 operating procedures: the president repeated his Iraq-asterrorism and Saddam-as-evil mantras in numerous locations within and beyond the Beltway; his senior lieutenants took their own advocacy shows on the road, repeating his message in scores of public appearances; congressional supporters provided a noisy chorus of approbation; congressional critics, having already acquiesced to the Bush demand for a resolution approving the use of force, remained quiescent; and the mainstream media, finding few voices of dissent within that highly circumscribed arena of important authoritative sources, gave little play to alternative points of view and allowed the Bush discourse to dominate the airwaves and news pages. And by the time the president announced the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom on March 19, 2003, the country had been fully primed for war—conditioned to perceive this preemptive military engagement as a war of necessity, the only way to defend our country and its cherished ideal of freedom in the new age of terror. The Turning of the Tide? As we engaged the Iraqi forces in March and April, the president and his top officials continued to perform as models of rhetorical consistency, seizing all opportunities to repeat and amplify their message of why we fight and to erase any lingering doubts about our mission. The specter of looming disaster was omnipresent in the official discourse, as Bush polished his performance as the framer in chief of terror and danger. In his first Saturday radio address after hostilities had commenced, Bush

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51

reiterated our threefold mission: “To disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, to end Saddam Hussein’s support for terrorism, and to free the Iraqi people.” He also emphasized that this campaign was nothing less than “a fight for the security of our nation and the peace of the world.”4 In a speech to the U.S. Coast Guard at the very end of March, the president used the words terror, terrorism, or terrorist fifteen separate times as he emphasized that in addition to fighting the menace of terrorism abroad, we must also undertake the massive task of guarding the American homeland against probable terrorist incursions. “All Americans understand that we face a continuing threat of terrorism,” Bush warned, for not only might “the dying regime” in Iraq try to “bring terror to our shores” but “other parts of the global terror network” could also view this as an opportune moment to strike.5 Three days later, in a speech to the Marines at Camp Lejeune, he said, “Free nations will not sit and wait, leaving enemies free to plot another September the 11th, this time, perhaps, with chemical or biological or nuclear terror,” a warning he repeated verbatim forty-eight hours later in his Saturday radio address.6 Within twenty-four hours of the terrorist attacks, Bush had begun to emphasize that the battle we faced would be lengthy and that the American people must commit to this monumental campaign with both patience and resolve. For a year and a half, he drove home the message that victory in the war on terror would be neither swift nor easy and would have to be fought in many locations around the world. Even when it appeared that the duration of the conflict in Iraq would be brief, the president reminded his countrymen that there still existed a global terror network training its sights on America. “The Iraqi theater was a part of the war on terror, and we continue to fight the war on terror,” he said on April 11, 2003, in response to a reporter’s question about his foreign policy priorities once hostilities in Iraq concluded, and three days later he reiterated that theme: “Our victory in Iraq will be a crucial advance in the war against terror. Yet, the war on terror continues.”7 Just in case anyone had failed to hear or comprehend, he repeated his message yet again in a speech at a Boeing plant in St. Louis, this time combining our commitment to a global conflict against terrorism with an emphasis on our eventual victory over the worldwide terrorist menace: “Since September the 11th, we’ve been engaged in a global war against terror, a war being waged on many fronts. That war continues, and we are winning.”8 And even on May 1, as he strode forth in that dramatic staged-forthe-cameras moment on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln to claim the mantle of a crucial victory, Bush emphasized the specter of terrorism, noting that our wider fight against terrorism was far from finished: “The

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battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11, 2001—and still goes on.…The war on terror is not over; yet it is not endless. We do not know the day of final victory, but we have seen the turning of the tide” (emphasis added).9 But amidst the great hoopla and excitement, what everyone heard was his pronouncement that “major combat operations in Iraq have ended,” and what the audience saw was the giant banner behind the president proudly and succinctly proclaiming “Mission Accomplished.” The message the nation received was the forthright declaration of our military success in Iraq, not the more nuanced one of our continued need to wage a more general campaign against terrorism. And it would have been particularly difficult for anyone to uncover the carefully embedded message that we had so far failed in our efforts to capture the actual mastermind of 9/11, Osama bin Laden. During the buildup to war in early 2003, the media’s frame echoed the administration’s, focusing primarily on the threat of weapons of mass destruction and secondarily on our goal of liberating oppressed people in the Middle East. In both their news reports and commentary, the mainstream media tended to support the need for regime change in Iraq as they accepted, as axiomatic, Saddam’s possession of an arsenal of deadly weapons.10 The administration’s Iraq agenda also became the media agenda as news reports turned from Afghanistan and bin Laden to the enemy in Iraq, and Iraq became the number one news story in America. Media analysts Stephen Farnsworth and Robert Lichter report that in 2003, the three broadcast networks ran over 800 stories on Iraq before the war started, a number that rose to just over 1,050 during the period between March 19 and May 1 and climbed to almost 1,600 over the final eight months of the year. In stark contrast, only 132 broadcast news stories in all of 2003 focused on our ongoing efforts to find bin Laden and combat al Qaeda.11 Iraq was an equally important topic for the American public, with more than 60 percent saying they were closely following developments both during the debate over going to war and the conflict itself and almost another third reporting that they were paying fairly close attention. Although public attention decreased after May, the killing of Saddam’s sons in August, the rising tide of U.S. casualties in late summer, and the capture of Saddam in December elicited renewed public interest, and the Pew Research Center reported that news about Iraq dominated the public’s news interest for 2003.12 As the war commenced, much of the coverage from the theater of combat took the usual form of reports of official Pentagon briefings and interviews with military personnel. A new twist was the use of embedded journalists who remained with individual military units and reported the

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53

war from an “on the ground” soldier’s perspective. While bringing a personalized and dramatic—and mostly positive—touch to news reports, it did little to place events in a broader context.13 For the war’s big picture, the media turned to official Washington. And just as in the aftermath of 9/11, they privileged domestic sources and the voices of the powerful once the invasion began. The media watchdog organization Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting found that during the first three weeks of the war, U.S. sources constituted 76 percent of all sources cited on six broadcast and cable networks, and more than two-thirds of these were either current or former government or military officials. On-air American guests also adopted a pro-war stance, with 71 percent favoring the war and only 3 percent explicitly speaking out against it. And although U.S. officials made a total of 840 appearances on television news programs in the initial stage of the war, FAIR identified only four instances in which they could clearly be identified as holding antiwar opinions. To hear any opposition to the war, viewers had to wait for the occasional comments of foreign sources, for nonofficial domestic voices of dissent were almost never aired.14 How the media depict reality as a nation marches off to war is well represented by the reporting of two events in early April—the rescue of Private Jessica Lynch and the toppling of Saddam’s statue in Baghdad—both of which were granted iconic status in the cutthroat and breathless media echo chamber of 24/7 coverage and required more than a little suspension of the journalistic norms of skepticism and objectivity. But these events met the media imperatives of drama, excitement, and audience accessibility while simultaneously fitting into the wider narrative of America’s fight in a just and noble cause, and thus they received widespread play. From an April 1 military briefing reported as breaking news on the cable news networks, to stories on the AP wire, the New York Times, and the network news, and from there to a front-page story in the Washington Post, the narrative of brave Jessica Lynch and her daring rescue sped across the media universe in a matter of hours. A young female soldier from West Virginia, severely wounded in an Iraqi ambush, had bravely fought off her attackers before being taken prisoner. Held captive in a heavily guarded hospital, she was rescued a week later in a daring night raid by special operations forces. Framed as a tale of American strength and indomitable spirit in the face of overwhelming odds, the story was catnip to the media, initially accepted without question, and reported as presented by unnamed Army officials. It took several days for media organizations to begin to question the facts, and once they began a proper investigation, the story began to unravel.15 But having been trumpeted as

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a powerful, affirming tale of heroism, the myth of Jessica Lynch had been seared into the nation’s consciousness, and subsequent media refutations would do little to erase the story from the public mind. The cable networks’ story of the toppling of a statue of Saddam Hussein on April 9 followed a similar path. Always on the trail of sensational and dramatic images, and having been cued by senior officials in the Bush administration to expect our troops to be welcomed as liberators, television journalists were quick to pounce on what seemed to be a perfect visual opportunity. Providing saturation coverage of a sequence of events—a crowd of Iraqis milling about the large statue in central Baghdad, then pelting it with debris and trying to knock it down, American marines arriving on the scene, roping the statue and pulling it to the ground, with the crowd then stomping on the fallen image and eventually dragging its head through the nearby streets—CNN and Fox News elevated the event to the level of a defining moment. Interpreting the meaning of the actions and combining commentary with powerful images, the cable networks constructed what researchers Sean Aday and his colleagues have termed a “victory frame”—a visual and verbal narrative that intertwined the celebratory images of Iraqi citizens with analogies to comparable iconic incidents in past wars and explicit assertions that the war was over.16 This narrative also affected the wider war news agenda, for even though there was no decrease in fighting, stories about the battlefield declined significantly across both print and electronic outlets in the week after the statue had been toppled.17 But it would take only a brief time for more accurate and nuanced—and far less optimistic—depictions of Iraqi opinion to emerge and the tale of victory to vanish. As the war commenced, the mainstream media also adhered to Bush’s depiction of why we had to confront Saddam, rarely questioning the rationale for war or investigating the administration’s claims about WMD. As we have seen, the administration defined the key problem of Saddam as his possession of these deadly weapons and this became the core argument for war. Researcher Robert Entman found that almost 600 news and editorial items in the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, and Los Angeles Times used some version of the term WMD during the first week of war coverage alone, and most accepted the administration’s argument that our security depended on the removal of weapons that threatened the very existence of this country.18 With the advantage of 20/20 hindsight, both the Times and Post would later issue formal apologies for failing to perform their watchdog roles, but in the run-up to the conflict with Iraq and during the initial phase of the war, these leading outlets acted essentially as cheerleaders for the administration and a

Fighting the Central Front in the War on Terror

55

megaphone for the official point of view.19 The editorial pages of these and other major newspapers did carry more thorough and balanced discussions of the administration’s evidence and justifications for war, but they were not reflected in the papers’ news reports. Media researchers Bennett, Lawrence, and Livingston place the blame for the media’s inability to meet their own reportorial standards during this time on what they term the “unwritten rules” of Washington reporting—the practice of filtering political stories through the perceived hierarchy of power in government that leaves little space for the perspectives of those not holding the most powerful positions. As these authors conclude, “what carries a story is not necessarily its truth or importance, but whether it is driven by dominant officials within institutional decisionmaking arenas.…The advantage generally goes to those officials with the greatest perceived power to affect the issues or events at hand, the greatest capacity to use the levers of office to advance their news narratives on a regular basis, and the best communications operations to spin their preferred narratives as well.”20 Even a powerful member of the Senate who passionately spoke out against the silence of his Democratic colleagues during the buildup to war was essentially marginalized by the media, for he represented merely an isolated voice of dissent that would obviously have little impact on the actual military policy. Throughout the months of February and early March 2003, Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) implored his colleagues to contemplate what they were about to allow to happen, as illustrated by these prescient Senate floor remarks from February 12: This Chamber is, for the most part, silent—ominously, dreadfully silent. There is no debate, no discussion, no attempt to lay out for the nation the pros and cons of this particular war. There is nothing. We stand passively mute in the United States Senate, paralyzed by our own uncertainty, seemingly stunned by the sheer turmoil of events.… And this is no small conflagration we contemplate. This is no simple attempt to defang a villain. No. This coming battle, if it materializes, represents a turning point in U.S. foreign policy and possibly a turning point in the recent history of the world. This nation is about to embark upon the first test of a revolutionary doctrine applied in an extraordinary way at an unfortunate time. The doctrine of preemption…is a radical new twist on the traditional idea of self defense. It appears to be in contravention of international law and the UN Charter.… One can understand the anger and shock of any President after the savage attacks of September 11. One can appreciate the frustration of having

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only a shadow to chase and an amorphous, fleeting enemy on which it is nearly impossible to extract retribution. But to turn one’s frustration and anger into the kind of extremely destabilizing and dangerous foreign policy debacle that the world is currently witnessing is inexcusable.21

But only that tiny segment of the American public tuned to C-SPAN would hear or read these words as the media narrative focused on how effectively the Bush administration was marshalling its rhetorical and military forces. The decision of members of Congress to remain largely supportive or mute, and congressional and media failure to carefully interrogate the WMD claims, had certainly worked to the benefit of the Bush administration, an advantage that was only too apparent as media outlets across the board reverentially presented Bush’s triumphant May 1 declaration that “the tyrant has fallen, and Iraq is free” and gushed about the public relations coup of his “Top Gun swagger” aboard the aircraft carrier.22 STAYING

THE

COURSE

IN THE

WAR

ON

TERROR

In the weeks that followed, as it became ever more apparent that the conflict’s current was running in the direction opposite of what the president had so confidently predicted, the White House intensified the message that Iraq was part of the global war on terror, that our battle against terrorism would continue unabated, and that our security depended on its success. But our failures to find WMD, stop the resistance of Iraqi soldiers, or stem the rising tide of civil unrest made the administration’s message of resolve and perseverance all the more difficult. So, once again, the president and his aides went public as they sought to control the discourse and impress upon the country not only what we had accomplished in Iraq but also the immense task that lay ahead. Meeting at his ranch in Crawford with Prime Minister Howard of Australia two days after we had declared victory in Iraq, Bush came out to greet the press with the discourse of terror in full display. Affirming that “we won’t tire in our attempts to fight terror” and that “nothing will deter us,” he emphasized that both countries were committed to “defeating the threat of terror because we have both felt terror’s effects.”23 But the questions from the press showed that while the military tide may not have turned, the media were definitely in the process of executing a reportorial about-face. “Is there a possibility that you may never find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? And how would that square with your rationale for going to war?” the first reporter asked. Stumbling through his reply,

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Bush insisted that Saddam did indeed possess such weapons. “I mean, he spent an entire decade making sure that inspectors would never find them.…We’ll find them. And it’s just going to be a matter of time to do so.” And in response to a second query along the same lines, the president managed to do some serious backpedalling: “But what we’re going—the world will find is, the man had a program to develop weapons of mass destruction, that he had terrorist connections, and that he was, by far, one of the most brutal dictators in the history of the world” (emphasis added).24 At a May 7 press conference with another of our allies, President Aznar of Spain, President Bush pressed on with his security and terror themes. Announcing that Spain would join the United States and Great Britain in introducing a UN resolution to lift sanctions on Iraq, Bush emphasized that we had liberated a nation and, in so doing, had brought “greater security to people of all nations.” The two countries would also continue as “strong allies in the war against terror” and would “work for a better world beyond the war on terror.” But the press questioners once again focused on our postwar problems, and one even highlighted Senator Byrd’s criticism of Bush’s aircraft carrier landing as “flamboyant showmanship.”25 Dominating the public discourse, which had gone so smoothly for the Bush administration in the lead-up to war and the early stages of the conflict, was becoming more problematic by the day. On numerous occasions throughout the remainder of the spring, Bush spread his message about protecting America from terror and victory in Iraq as essential to achieving that goal. Adhering to his prepared scripts, he showed little hesitation in constantly repeating the same sound bites. In brief remarks on the White House lawn prior to his departure for Camp David on May 16, the president uttered the phrase “the war on terror continues” twice and “the war on terror goes on” once; the following day, in a short statement condemning terrorist bombings in Morocco, he said “the war against terror goes on;” and in welcome ceremonies for Philippine President Arroyo three days later, Bush again stated, “the war on terror continues.”26 “Not only does the war on terror go on,” Bush declared in a talk to U.S. troops in Qatar on June 5 en route home from a G8 meeting in Europe and talks with the Israeli and Palestinian leaders, “but we’ve got a lot of work to do in Iraq. And we’re going to stay the course until the job gets done” (emphasis added).27 A new sound bite had just been born. The president’s message was one of determination and resolution to rid the world of the terrorist menace, however long it might take. But the media’s focus had turned to a more immediate topic, and in his first

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session with the press upon his return to Washington, Bush drew the following question: “Sir, is U.S. credibility on the line over weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?” Again thrown on the defensive, the president stumbled through an answer: “I’m not exactly sure what that means. I mean, Iraq had a weapons program. Intelligence throughout the decade showed they had a weapons program.”28 What was changing after May 1, 2003, was not the administration’s constant war-on-terror and defend-our-security refrains but the responses they elicited from the media, Congress, and the public. Reporters increasingly turned to questions about our rationale for war and the many difficulties we were encountering with our occupation and reconstruction efforts, and the general tone of Bush’s media coverage began to shift in a decidedly negative direction. Analysts Farnsworth and Lichter found that assessments of the president on the network evening news programs were only 32 percent positive during the six months from May 1 through October 31, 2003. While on-air sources identified as Republican were highly supportive of Bush, Democrats were almost uniformly negative, and sources not identified with either party also gave generally negative evaluations.29 And Bush’s lieutenants and the agencies they headed also received unfavorable treatment by on-air sources during this period. As Farnsworth and Lichter note, the Defense Department’s coverage was only 26 percent positive, and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld was treated favorably a mere 22 percent of the time. The assessments of the CIA and Director Tenet were equally negative, and the State Department and Secretary Powell received positive coverage only about a third of the time. And the leader in negative assessments was “the administration” itself, with a scant 16 percent of favorable mentions, as even some supporters of the war found fault with the Bush team’s efforts in the aftermath of “mission accomplished.”30 By the middle of May, some powerful members of Congress on both sides of the aisle had also begun to issue very loud and public complaints about the chaotic postwar situation in Iraq, and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held hearings on the many problems we were encountering. Chair Richard Lugar (R-IN) stated his concern that the administration’s “initial stabilization and reconstruction efforts have been inadequate” and that “the planning for peace was much less developed than the planning for war.”31 His Democratic colleagues were far less restrained. In testimony before the committee, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz was peppered with questions from frustrated senators, and even though he admitted mistakes had been made and carefully repeated the administration’s message that it was fully committed to

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rebuilding Iraq and that we could not afford to fail, his questioners were far from satisfied; giving full rein to their displeasure, members of the committee called for a thorough investigation.32 And this one example was but the tip of the iceberg as Bush and his cadre of senior officials spent the summer defending not only their rebuilding efforts in Iraq but the very serious charge that they had been mistaken about their core argument for war, Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction. Nor was the administration’s cause aided by the start of the 2004 campaign season, as Democratic hopefuls began to test the rhetorical waters for themes that would position them to defeat a Republican incumbent hampered by an increasingly unpopular war. Not surprisingly, the clash of titans in Washington became the biggest storyline for the media, a conflict narrative that allowed our failures in Iraq—from the inability to find WMD, to the rising tide of civil unrest, to the spiraling costs of occupation, to mounting U.S. military casualties—to take center stage. By September, the New York Times had changed the general heading for its news analyses about the war from “Aftereffects” and “After the War” to “The Struggle for Iraq,” and frontpage stories in the Washington Post were replete with headlines such as “House Probers Conclude Iraq War Data Was Weak,” and “At U.N. Bush Is Criticized Over Iraq.”33 Negative depictions of the administration rippled outward from Iraq to other policy arenas, as Farnsworth and Lichter found the network news’ assessments of Bush’s handling of international terrorism and even his policy regarding the 9/11 attacks to be less than 30 percent positive over the six months following the cessation of major combat operations.34 And where Congress and the media went, so did public opinion, as poll after poll documented a slide in public approval not only for the war but also for the president throughout the summer and fall of 2003.35 The capture of Saddam in December did cause a supportive bump but it was only a temporary spike in a general downward trend. Although a majority of Americans still approved of the decision to use military force in Iraq by the end of the year, that number had fallen from a high of approximately 75 percent in April to around 60 percent by December, a figure that would continue to decline over the course of the next year.36 THE CENTRAL FRONT

IN THE

WAR

ON

TERROR

Seeking to regain control of the public discourse over Iraq as the second anniversary of 9/11 approached, President Bush delivered several major speeches. He began with a prime-time address to the nation on September 7, the first since he had announced the bombing of Baghdad nearly six

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months earlier. With his opening words—“Good evening. I have asked for this time to keep you informed of America’s actions in the war on terror”—the president left no doubt that he would be wrapping the war in Iraq securely within the broader terrorism mantle. Using the words terror, terrorism, or terrorist twenty-eight separate times, the phrase war on terror five times, and September 11, 2001 twice in his eighteen-minute address, Bush declared that Iraq had now become the “central front” in the global war on terror.37 The following excerpt beautifully encapsulates the culmination of twenty-four months of war-on-terrorism rhetoric: Two years ago, I told the Congress and the country that the war on terror would be a lengthy war, a different kind of war, fought on many fronts in many places. Iraq is now the central front. Enemies of freedom are making a desperate stand there—and there they must be defeated. This will take time and require sacrifice. Yet we will do what is necessary, we will spend what is necessary, to achieve this essential victory in the war on terror, to promote freedom and to make our own nation more secure. (emphasis added)38

Leaving wide open the duration and eventual cost of the Iraq conflict, the president announced that he was requesting an additional $87 billion from Congress for the next fiscal year to cover ongoing military and intelligence operations as well as rebuilding efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. On September 10, in a thirty-two-minute speech at the FBI Academy, Bush bested his previous mentions of terrorism record, making references to terror, terrorists, or terrorism fifty separate times, the war on terror six times, and the date of September 11, 2001 five times.39 Two days later, in a speech at Fort Stewart, Bush once more chanted his terrorism refrain, again including the phrase, “Iraq is now the central front in the war on terror.” To his audience of soldiers and their families, he emphasized America’s commitment to its men and women in uniform, and noting that “we in government have a solemn responsibility to give you every tool you need to achieve victory,” he pushed Congress to appropriate the additional money we needed to ensure that this nation remained secure.40 President Bush did succeed in seizing the rhetorical and political agenda as members of Congress engaged in intense and heated debate before finally acceding to his request for funding (with some notable exceptions, including the senator who would become the Democratic nominee for president), and the media extensively chronicled the war of words as fought in the corridors of official power, granting, as usual, the greatest exposure to those most strategically positioned to affect the outcome of the policy debate. The media storyline was the battle for political

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control; the press’s focus was more on who would emerge victorious in the struggle to dominate the foreign policy agenda than the substance of the contestants’ claims.41 And the Democrats’ inability to develop an opposing narrative that was as clear, compelling, consistent, and amplified as Bush’s only added to their media and policy woes. Congressional opponents could fuss and fume all they wanted about the mounting chaos in Iraq, the steady increase in U.S. casualties, and the disastrous consequences of our misguided reconstruction efforts, but they remained, to borrow Ian Lustick’s phrase, trapped in the Bush war-on-terror narrative, furiously criticizing the Iraq policy’s execution but remaining essentially silent on its fundamental goals.42 As we headed toward a presidential election and events in Iraq became ever more violent, however, the debate would intensify as new and increasingly vociferous challenges to the Bush war frame emerged. But neither the rhetorical dynamics we have presented above nor the Iraq policy outcomes would undergo a significant change. REAFFIRMING

THE

WAR

ON

TERROR

As 2004 began, news from Iraq contained little that was positive: civil unrest continued to spread, civilian and military death tolls spiraled upward, and an end to the conflict seemed nowhere in sight. The news from the home front was equally negative for the president with the publication of a highly critical book whose major source, former Bush treasury secretary Paul O’Neill, accused the administration of looking for a pretext to go to war with Iraq from the very beginning of Bush’s term. Hard on its heels came an accusation by Senator Kennedy that Iraq “could well be one of the worst blunders in more than two centuries of American foreign policy.”43 While the president and his team adamantly denied the allegations that they sought to invade Iraq prior to 9/11, they did admit to supporting an existing national policy, in effect during the Clinton administration, which promoted regime change. The charges and countercharges received wide play in the elite media as more congressional Democrats hurled accusations of their own, but in the absence of conclusive evidence, O’Neill’s claims and the Democrats’ attacks did not change the general parameters of the debate over Iraq. And in the midst of all this controversy, Bush remained fixed on his now familiar terror and security discourse, reiterating in his 2004 State of the Union address his claim that Iraq was part of a wider offensive against terror, that democracy was taking hold in Iraq, that a world without Saddam’s regime “is a better and safer place,” and that without the seed of democracy, the Middle

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East would remain a haven for terrorists and a threat to the security of the United States.44 March 2004 also brought the terrorist bombings in Madrid to the forefront of American public and media attention, and our ally’s suffering provided President Bush a potent opportunity to energize his narrative for why we fight. Coming just before the first anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, these terrorist attacks enabled Bush yet again—and with fresh and terrifying imagery—to intertwine the war in Iraq with our wider campaign against terrorism and to elevate the frightening specter of terrorism to a public now thirty months removed from the devastation on our shores. In remarks before members of Congress, senior U.S. civilian and military officials, and representatives of the diplomatic corps from eightyfour countries on March 19—the invasion’s one-year anniversary—the president issued this ringing reaffirmation of his war-on-terror frame: The murders in Madrid are a reminder that the civilized world is at war. And in this new kind of war, civilians find themselves suddenly on the front lines.…No nation or region is exempt from the terrorists’ campaign of violence. Each of these attacks on the innocent is a shock, and a tragedy, and a test of our will.…And each attack must be answered, not only with sorrow, but with greater determination, deeper resolve, and bolder action against the killers.… There is a dividing line in our world…separating two visions of justice and the value of life.…There is no neutral ground—no neutral ground— in the fight between civilization and terror, because there is no neutral ground between good and evil, freedom and slavery, and life and death.45

At the very end of March, insurgents in the Iraqi city of Fallujah killed four American civilian contract workers and desecrated their bodies, an incident that the Bush administration not surprisingly—and with no dissent from Congress or the media—framed as a vicious anti-American atrocity, an important subplot in the war-on-terror narrative. Robert Entman found that news reports of the ensuing U.S. military response—a series of massive strikes in which some 500 Iraqi civilians were killed— adopted the White House frame that these were precision assaults against brutal insurgents, and even those media outlets that had expressed editorial displeasure with our general war policy made little mention of civilian casualties or bothered to question our military tactics of targeting civilian areas with such heavy weaponry.46 Entman attributes this pattern of reportage partly to the obstacles American journalists faced in obtaining credible information separate from that provided by the military or

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the White House. Although descriptions and images of civilian carnage were available from sources such as UN officials and al Jazeera, they were either too gory for American audiences or could not be authenticated by authoritative American sources, and thus were deemed unacceptable.47 Members of Congress also did not challenge the official frame of a military operation against a legitimate enemy. And equally important was that the storyline of U.S. military overkill was simply incompatible with the prevailing narrative of the character of our military, a depiction of our fighting forces that was, however, about to undergo a far more severe test. QUESTIONABLE MEANS

IN

PURSUIT

OF A

RIGHTEOUS END

Integral to Bush’s master terrorism narrative was American innocence and moral exceptionalism. Attacked by the forces of evil precisely because we represented “the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity,” this country, Bush repeatedly argued, would wage war to defend democracy, liberty, and “all that is good and just in our world.”48 It became an unquestioned assumption among the American public and leaders alike that ours was a noble mission and that even though we would unleash the deadly weapons of contemporary warfare, it would be only for the most virtuous of reasons—eradicating terrorist evil and spreading democracy to heretofore oppressed peoples. And as he elevated Iraq to the central front in our campaign against terrorism, the president constantly emphasized that Iraq was an essential part of this “calling of our time” and that failure in Iraq would doom our righteous cause. Entwined with that argument was the depiction of our soldiers as the world’s greatest and most honorable fighting force, our willing servants in the cause of freedom. Within days of launching our campaign in Afghanistan, the White House made our exemplary military part of the dominant discourse of war and terror, casting it in a heroic mold in America’s post9/11 morality tale of courage defeating cruelty and security overcoming chaos. And the president was quick to lavish praise upon all that our soldiers had accomplished under the harshest of conditions in the most trying of circumstances. “In these last 22 months,” Bush declared at a military reenlistment ceremony in the East Room in July of 2003, “our Armed Forces have been tested and tested again. In every case, in every mission, America’s servicemen and women have brought credit to the uniform, to our flag, and to our country. We have needed you, and you have never let us down.”49 In statement after statement Bush lauded individual and collective acts of valor and sacrifice by our uniformed forces, tributes that were echoed in media reports from the battlefront to military hospitals and even by those members of Congress who most fervently

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decried the administration’s policy of war against Iraq. To criticize our fighting forces—the representation of the best this country had to offer— was tantamount to rejecting the carefully constructed image of America as the shining hope for all mankind, a self portrait that the nation had so warmly embraced. It would thus come as a tremendous shock when photographs of American soldiers inflicting torture on Iraqi detainees in a location most Americans had never heard of were revealed on the CBS program 60 Minutes II in late April of 2004. Spreading like viruses across the Internet, additional digital photos provided graphic evidence of the full extent of sadistic and degrading treatment to which the prisoners had been subjected. The images spoke for themselves; no amount of official spin could blunt the horrors they depicted. And there was no administration denial of the pictures’ legitimacy, for the Pentagon was aware of the situation, had already mounted an investigation, and had issued a confidential report on the treatment of prisoners in Iraq. But what had previously flown under the radar now erupted into a full-blown political and media feeding frenzy, yet one more piece of damaging event-driven news that had engulfed our Iraq policy over the preceding several months.50 Engaging in step one of damage control, President Bush and his team were quick to acknowledge the obvious—that they were all sickened, disgusted, and outraged by the images; that the actions in Abu Ghraib were abhorrent, thoroughly unacceptable, and inexcusable; that the president was determined to find whomever was responsible; and that those persons would be held fully accountable and brought to swift justice. Moving rapidly to contain further damage by employing a consistent narrative of carefully circumscribed blame, Bush appeared with a series of other world leaders who gave their stamps of approval to our official frame of Abu Ghraib. At a press appearance with the prime minister of Canada a day and a half after the television program had aired, the president insisted that the prisoners’ treatment “does not reflect the nature of the American people” nor did “those few people who did that…reflect the nature of the men and women we’ve sent overseas” (emphasis added).51 His top advisors also went on the offensive. In an interview with the television news channel Al Arabiya several days later, National Security Advisor Rice assured the Middle Eastern public that, quite simply, “Americans do not do this to other people.…We came there to help to liberate the people of Iraq.”52 Hewing to his narrative of our noble military, Bush steadfastly repeated the line that a few poorly supervised, low-level, rogue soldiers were responsible for isolated, disgraceful acts that were simply incompatible with the true character of our military. In full rhetorical form at a

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press conference with Jordanian King Abdullah a week after the story broke, the president declared, “the troops we have in Iraq, who are there for security and peace and freedom, are the finest of the fine, fantastic United States citizens, who represent the very best qualities of America: courage, love of freedom, compassion, and decency,” sentiments the visiting monarch graciously echoed as he assured the gathered reporters that the “heinous crimes” did not reflect the values the United States stands for and that he was certain the perpetrators would be brought to justice.53 And in a statement at the Pentagon, President Bush again acknowledged “how painful it is to see a small number dishonor the honorable cause in which so many are sacrificing,” but carefully underlined that “what took place in the Iraqi prison does not reflect the character of the more than 200,000 military personnel who have served in Iraq” (emphasis added).54 Also crucial to the Bush damage-control strategy was holding at bay any attempt to subsume the events at Abu Ghraib under the rubric of a foreign policy that condoned the practice of torture. To that end, the emotionally and politically loaded term torture never appeared in official discourse. Employing language that served to blunt the abhorrent nature of the soldiers’ behavior, the Bush administration and its Republican allies instead adopted the far more neutral labels of abuse, mistreatment, scandal, acts, and actions to describe what the troops had done. Nor did Bush’s congressional opponents, in their numerous expressions of outrage and condemnation and their many calls for investigations up the entire chain of command, utilize the more damning term of torture in the weeks following the revelations at the prison, a linguistic concession, whether conscious or unconscious, to the Bush narrative of the events. And not one member of Congress had anything but praise for our brave and heroic soldiers on the field of battle. The opening statement of Senator Carl Levin (D-MI), the ranking member of the Senate Arms Services Committee, at the committee’s hearings on May 7 is illustrative of the rhetorical hesitancy of leaders of the Democratic opposition: “The abuses committed against prisoners in U.S. custody…dishonored our military and our nation, and made the prospects for success in Iraq even more difficult than they already are. Our troops are less secure and our nation is less secure because these depraved and despicable actions will fuel the hatred and fury of those who oppose us” (emphasis added).55 While noting that the abusive actions most likely represented part of a larger conscious effort to extract information, the senator seemed to go to some lengths to avoid applying the label of torture either to the soldiers’ conduct or to our interrogation policy. It is also telling that even as he condemned the abusive means we were using,

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Levin also embraced the general parameters of the Bush discourse in his description of our lofty mission and our national ideals: “As we seek to bring stability and democracy to Iraq and to fight terrorism globally, our greatest asset as a nation is the moral values we stand for.”56 Senator Joseph Biden (D-DE), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, expressed similar sentiments in opening statements at the committee’s May hearings and also performed some important discursive damage control for the president. Stating that things in Iraq were not going well and that the Abu Ghraib prison scandal had “dramatically damaged our standing in Iraq and further undermined the security of our troops,” he nonetheless called for a “strategy for success” that would overcome the security and legitimacy deficits created by the administration and build upon the humanitarian, educational, economic, and political “miracles” that our people had performed in Iraq.57 Thus, it should come as little surprise that even amidst the spate of congressional hearings in the spring and summer of 2004, with Defense Secretary Rumsfeld taking center stage to accept responsibility for abuses that had happened on his watch but denying that he had issued any order to mistreat prisoners, there would be no debate specifically on the issue of our torture policy. This was a dramatic and enthralling story that reverberated across traditional media outlets and the blogosphere, capturing the headlines and editorial pages of the elite media for a number of weeks. But just as it had with congressional discourse over Abu Ghraib, the administration succeeded in defining and limiting the media’s depictions of the events as an isolated instance of poorly supervised soldiers engaging in the mistreatment of prisoners. In a comprehensive analysis of news articles and editorials written about the incidents at the prison in the elite U.S. media between the first of April and the end of August, 2004, Bennett and his colleagues found that the most prominent framing category, by far, was the administration’s preferred and exculpatory term of abuse and that the more highly charged categorization of torture—the descriptor that the White House sought explicitly to exclude—rarely made an appearance. In the Washington Post, for example, the term abuse appeared as a primary story label in 81 percent of the paper’s 242 news stories and 61 percent of its editorials; torture was used to describe Abu Ghraib in only 3 percent of news stories and 17 percent of the paper’s editorial pieces. Only once did the term torture appear in the Post’s headlines, and the term was employed in the article merely to describe the titles of the experts who were commenting on the abuse of Iraqis at the prison. In similar fashion, in only 2 percent of New York Times news articles and editorials did torture stand alone as the

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descriptive term. Nor were the backgrounds of the individual prisoners or the circumstances of their detainment ever depicted in the media reports; in that sense, they remained invisible even as their images captured the attention of the world.58 As Bennett and his colleagues concluded, even in an era when digital photos allowed journalists to break important and provocative news, they still turned to government officials to provide the all-important interpretive perspective.59 And in the absence of specific evidence to the contrary or any credible and authoritative challenges to the administration’s narrative that the events at Abu Ghraib, despicable though they might be, merely represented the unfortunate acts of a handful of misguided lowlevel soldiers, few opposing perspectives were presented in news accounts once the Bush administration announced that it would launch a full investigation. The White House’s success in managing the damaging Abu Ghraib revelations can also be measured in the reactions of the public. The photographs were published at a time when public opinion for the war in Iraq was already in decline, and when the images were released, public approval for the war took an immediate dive, a severe descent that represented one of the sharpest drops in wartime approval rates in the last five decades. But once the Bush administration began—with congressional and media acquiescence—to define the meaning of the images, public opinion polls showed an upsurge in popular support, not to preinvasion heights but at least above the symbolically and politically important 50 percent approval level.60 The power to control the depiction of an event, to push aside competing frames and mold the tale that becomes the accepted version of reality, is especially critical in a situation like Abu Ghraib where political leaders must rapidly react to the widespread dissemination of potentially explosive information. The Bush administration’s goal in the spring and summer of 2004—which it was able to achieve with little difficulty—was not to ignore or deny the dreadful behaviors the photographs revealed, but to have the public discourse center around the images themselves as a specific instance of wrongdoing and to construct from them a narrative of individual rather than systemic malfeasance. Framed as a horrifying but limited exemplar of a few low-ranking military personnel run amok, the damage Abu Ghraib wrought on Bush’s master narrative of noble America and her heroic military fighting for the cause of freedom in the global war on terror was relatively minor, especially as both congressional opponents and the mainstream media declined to interrogate the wider implications of the events. Political analyst Mark Danner elegantly summed up the

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situation in a lengthy article in the New York Review of Books, an alternative media outlet that—along with the New Yorker and its investigative reporter, Seymour Hersh—was providing a more thorough and thoughtful examination of the events at the prison in Iraq than was available from other media sources: So far, officials of the Bush administration, who counted on the fact that the public, and much of the press, could be persuaded to focus on the photographs—the garish signboards of the scandal and not the scandal itself—have been proved right. This makes Abu Ghraib a peculiarly contemporary kind of scandal, with most of its plotlines exposed to view—but with few willing to follow them and fewer still to do much about them. As with other controversies over the Iraq war, the revelations have been made, the behavior exposed, but the moral will to act, or even to debate what action might be warranted, seems mostly lacking.61 A LEADER WHO WILL KEEP US SECURE

The struggle to dominate the discourse of war and terror was also being played out against the backdrop of a presidential election campaign. As Senator John Kerry (D-MA) quickly moved to defeat his Democratic rivals for the presidency in late February of 2004, it was obvious that the presumptive nominee and his fellow Democrats believed Iraq would provide an important electoral battleground. Capitalizing on Abu Ghraib, escalating violence against troops and civilians alike, and the revelations of Richard Clarke,62 the National Security Council’s former chief counterterrorism advisor, that the administration had ignored the many warning signs of a pending terrorist attack in the summer of 2001, the Democrats attacked Bush’s failures to build an international coalition, tell the truth about Saddam’s WMD, plan for the postcombat phase of the war, or clarify how expensive the war and its aftermath would be. In sum, Kerry charged in March, “This president didn’t tell the truth about the war,” an accusation he repeated soon thereafter when he claimed that Bush had “misled” the American people about the need for war.63 Positioning himself as credible, tough-minded, and strong on security and national defense, Kerry worked throughout the spring and summer to paint the Republican incumbent as a failed president, a leader both mendacious and intransigent—and incompetent to boot. But in highlighting his own national security credentials, Kerry had to perform a careful balancing act as he emphasized his support for our wider campaign against terrorism and acknowledged that the removal of Saddam did accomplish some good while still questioning whether the war was

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necessary or sufficiently well planned. In a conference call with reporters following Bush’s speech marking the anniversary of the Iraq invasion, Samuel Berger, a senior advisor to Kerry and the former Clinton national security advisor, noted that “the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq have converged.…But it’s increasingly clear that how we conducted the war in Iraq—hurried, alone and not prepared for the day after—made the terrorism problem more difficult.”64 These words may have scored a direct hit on the White House’s poorly executed Iraq policy, but they served also to underline the strong bipartisan support for Bush’s master narrative of the war on terror. As the campaign progressed into the fall, Kerry stepped up his condemnation of our Iraq policy while at the same time embedding this message in the official security and terror discourse. Asserting that America was “less secure and weaker in the war on terrorism” and that Iraq had become “a haven for terrorists,” Kerry charged, in what was billed as a major speech on terrorism, that Iraq was a “profound diversion” from our fight against terrorism, a sorry state of affairs for which we had only the White House to blame. “This policy has been plagued by a lack of planning, by an absence of candor, arrogance and outright incompetence,” Kerry stated in his September speech. “And the president has held no one accountable, including himself.” But the Democratic candidate also added that “we cannot afford to throw up our hands [and] see Iraq become a permanent source of terror.” And he promised that he would refocus this nation’s energies on “the real war on terror” and “make Afghanistan a priority again, because it’s still the front line in the war on terror.”65 While Kerry was making some inroads into the Bush discourse on Iraq, the winner in this late round of the contest to determine who would emerge as the most resolute in fighting terrorism was yet again the administration’s terror narrative. For his part, President Bush sought to portray Kerry as the most recent incarnation in a long line of waffling, weak-on-defense Democrats, a man who could, at one moment, agree that Saddam was a threat but, in the next breath, would say America had no business removing that threat—in other words, “I voted for the war before I voted against it.” Simultaneously burnishing their official terror and security discourse, Bush and his lieutenants continually emphasized the need to combat the menace of terrorism and keep America secure—and the importance of Iraq in meeting that goal. Quantitative analyses of Bush’s rhetoric during the primaries found that terrorism was the major theme of more than 20 percent of the president’s speeches, with Iraq comprising the major focus of an additional 9 percent,

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figures that rose to 36 percent and 11 percent, respectively, during the general election.66 Because things were going so poorly in Iraq, it became essential for Bush to hammer home the theme that Iraq and the war on terror were inseparable. Forced constantly over the course of the spring and summer to respond to problems in Iraq, the president figuratively put his head down, clutched tightly the rhetorical ball of terrorism, and headed for the election end zone as his team executed play after play that would keep him on that steady path. The president, however, would have taken issue with that characterization. “The war on terror is not a figure of speech,” Bush declared on the first anniversary of the invasion. “It is an inescapable calling of our generation.”67 Addressing an audience of diplomats, he noted that the terrorists themselves were only too well aware of the key role that Iraq was playing in the wider war against terrorism: Whatever their past views, every nation now has an interest in a free, successful, stable Iraq. And the terrorists understand their own interest in the fate of that country. For them, the connection between Iraq’s future and the course of the war on terror is very clear. They understand that a free Iraq will be a devastating setback to their ambitions of tyranny over the Middle East. And they have made the failure of democracy in Iraq one of their primary objectives.… The terrorists are offended not merely by our policies—they are offended by our existence as free nations. No concession will appease their hatred. No accommodation will satisfy their endless demands.…The only way to protect our people is by early, united, and decisive action.68

But as the ugly reality of Iraq kept intruding on Bush’s inspirational rhetoric, the White House was forced to confront the many setbacks we were encountering, and the president did publicly admit that insurgents were making some gains. At the same time, however, Bush insisted that we were facing neither a popular uprising nor a civil war. In a nod to what he termed “tough weeks” in Iraq, the president acknowledged in an hour-long prime-time press conference in mid-April—only the third such meeting with the press thus far in his first term—that there was an upsurge in “serious violence” in some areas of Iraq, but he vowed not to waver in our mission “to serve the cause of liberty,” and, declaring that we would prevail, he continued to portray Iraq as the central component of our campaign to keep America safe from terrorism: “Above all, the defeat of violence and terror in Iraq is vital to the defeat of violence and terror elsewhere; and vital, therefore, to the safety of the American people. Now is the time, and Iraq is the place, in which the enemies of the civilized world are testing the will of the civilized world.”69

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As the June 30 date for the transfer of sovereignty of sovereignty in Iraq to an interim government approached, the president reaffirmed that an independent, self-governing Iraq would not only bring peace and freedom to the Middle East but security from terrorism to the United States. With only slight rhetorical variations, Bush would repeat that basic message for the duration of the presidential campaign, weaving in his subtheme that Kerry could not even give a straightforward response about the threat of terrorism let alone provide the steadfast leadership and comprehension of our national security needs to guide us at this critical juncture in the nation’s history. A stump speech on October 6 incorporated many of these themes: My opponent’s endless back-and-forth on Iraq is part of a larger misunderstanding. In the war on terror, Senator Kerry is proposing policies and doctrines that would weaken America and make the world more dangerous. …Senator Kerry approaches the world with a September the 10th mind-set. He declared in his convention speech that “any attack will be met with a swift and certain response.” That was the mind-set of the 1990s, while al Qaeda was planning the attacks on America. After September the 11th, our object in the war on terror is not to wait for the next attack and respond, but to prevent attacks by taking the fight to the enemy.70

Just as he had with Abu Ghraib, the president conceded that there were problems with the Iraq policy’s implementation while maintaining that the larger goals of the war on terror were inviolate. And at no time did his political opponent challenge that perspective. STANDING TALL

IN THE

WAR

ON

TERROR

Several incidents in the fall underscored how potent a campaign weapon the discourse of terror had become, and how even a slight equivocation by either candidate about our need to destroy or ability to defeat the terrorist menace would result in instant condemnation from the opposing camp and a flurry of negative press attention. At a speech to a convention of minority journalists and also in an interview on NBC’s Today show just before the Republican National Convention, President Bush gave more contemplative and introspective responses to the issue of our long-term terrorism strategy and our ability to win the war against terrorism than his usual blustery sound-bite pronouncements on the campaign trail. Stating that we had “actually misnamed the war on terror,” Bush told the assembled journalists that “it ought to be the struggle against ideological extremists who do not believe in free societies who happen to use terror as

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a weapon to try to shake the conscience of the free world.” A syntactical nightmare most definitely but a thoughtful exposition nonetheless—and one on which his opponent would quickly jump as soon as Bush followed it up with another candid and reflective comment on the morning news program. Asked by Today host Matt Lauer about achieving victory in the war on terror, Bush replied, “I don’t think you can win it. But I think you can create conditions so that those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world.”71 Recognizing a dangerous tactical error and the need to mount a quick retreat from this discursive heterodoxy, press secretary Scott McClellan claimed that the president actually meant that the war against terrorism could not be won by conventional means, and the Bush campaign had the candidate immediately return to his usual tough-on-terror refrain. “Make no mistake about it: We are winning and we will win,” Bush declared to the American Legion Convention the following day. “We will win by staying on the offensive. We will win by spreading liberty,”72 an uncompromising approach from which he did not deviate for the remainder of the campaign. For its part, the Kerry campaign issued an almost instantaneous press release with the headline, “Bush Flip-flops on Winning the War on Terror,” rapidly followed by one titled “Bush: Against Winning the War on Terror Before He Was for It,”73 as the Democrat rushed to promote his toughest-on-terror credentials. To the same audience Bush had addressed the previous day, Kerry proclaimed, “I absolutely disagree with what he said in that interview in a moment of candor. With the right policies, this is a war we can win, this is a war we must win, and this is a war we will win. The terrorists will lose and we will win, because the future does not belong to fear, it belongs to freedom.”74 President Bush could not have said it any better. Kerry also lost his way along the vanquisher-of-terrorism path as he engaged in his own quickly-to-be-regretted moment of candor. “I believe I can fight a more effective, more thoughtful, more strategic, more proactive, more sensitive war on terror that reaches out to other nations and brings them to our side and lives up to American values in history” (emphasis added), he said to the minority journalists convention, a statement that elicited this derisive rejoinder from Vice President Cheney: “America has been in too many wars for any of our wishes, but not a one of them was won by being sensitive. A ‘sensitive war’ will not destroy the evil men who killed 3,000 Americans and who seek the chemical, nuclear, and biological weapons to kill hundreds of thousands more.”75 And in early October in an article published in the New York Times magazine, Kerry drew a parallel between containing terrorism and containing

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such crimes as prostitution, illegal gambling, and organized crime, saying that for America to feel safe again, “we have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives but they’re a nuisance” (emphasis added). Those comments were just too inviting for the Bush campaign to ignore, and at a campaign rally, the president accused his rival of viewing terrorism merely as a “law enforcement and intelligence-gathering operation,” a vision with which he could not disagree more strongly: “Our goal is not to reduce terror to some acceptable level of nuisance. Our goal is to defeat terror by staying on the offensive, destroying terrorists, and spreading freedom and liberty around the world.”76 Both candidates had learned an important lesson: to move beyond their carefully scripted stamp-outterrorism mantras was to court public derision and electoral disaster. We have already noted the slide in Bush’s public approval ratings following the invasion of Iraq, a general trend that—with the short-term exception of the Abu Ghraib information-management boost—continued throughout 2004 as the number of respondents who said that the decision to use military force in Iraq was wrong steadily climbed and the number who said it was the right decision maintained a downward trajectory. The figures for the question “How well is the Iraq war going?” showed a similar pattern, as the percentages of the public who thought the war was going poorly had drawn almost even with those who believed it was going very well or fairly well by the end of the year.77 In preelection polls taken in October, Bush did manage to eke out a small lead over his Democratic opponent as the preferred candidate on Iraq, and exit polls showed that 51 percent of voters supported the president’s decision to go to war in Iraq, a narrow but decisive margin.78 Public opinion about the war on terror, however, was quite a different matter. Numerous polls throughout the primary and general election season revealed Bush’s significant retrospective and prospective advantages on the terrain of terrorism and security. When asked whether they approved of how the president had been handling our war against terrorism, 55 percent gave a favorable response, and when matched against his opponent on who would best be able to combat terrorism in the future, Bush held commanding lead in late August, a number comparable to the eighteen-point margin found in November’s exit polls as 58 percent said they trusted Bush to handle terrorism but only 40 percent were willing to place their trust in Kerry to do so. And when asked which party would do a better job of handling the war on terror, the public favored the Republicans by the same margin.79 It is therefore no wonder that the Bush team worked so diligently to incorporate the

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increasingly unpopular Iraq policy into the favored master narrative of defeating the terrorist menace. Analyses of the mainstream media’s depictions of the candidates also reveal that terrorism was a winning theme for Bush—in fact, according to comprehensive research by Farnsworth and Lichter, assessments of the president’s terrorism policies constituted the only positive press that he received from the three broadcast networks during the general election period. Evaluations of Bush’s leadership abilities were much harsher than Kerry’s, and press coverage of the president’s domestic policies was only half as positive as his opponent’s. Although foreign matters dominated campaign news during the 2004 general election, neither candidate was the recipient of positive foreign policy coverage, with both faring especially poorly in network news depictions of their Iraq policies. Kerry’s Iraq coverage was only 21 percent positive, but that figure was significantly higher than Bush’s dismal 11 percent showing.80 Once again, however, the issue of terrorism yielded a very different pattern. On matters related to the threat of terrorism and our policies to combat it, Bush’s media assessments were 65 percent positive, more than seven times as favorable as Kerry’s paltry 9 percent.81 And critical though the media discourse on Iraq was throughout the campaign season, the only negative discourse on the war on terror in the mainstream media came in reference to how our counterterrorism policies were being harmed by actual or proposed policies in Iraq. For the media as for the public and the Democrats, our war against terrorism did indeed stand as the unassailable narrative of campaign 2004. In a series of remarks immediately following his victory, President Bush made it clear that his commitment to combat terrorism was not mere campaign rhetoric but would shape the actions of his second term: “We are fighting a continuing war on terror, and every American has a stake in the outcome of this war.…Every civilized country also has a stake in the outcome of this war. Whatever our past disagreements, we share a common enemy.…I’ll continue to reach out to our friends and allies, our partners in the EU and NATO, to promote development and progress, to defeat the terrorists and to encourage freedom and democracy as alternatives to tyranny and terror.”82 As a portent of the difficulties still to come for Bush, however, the first postelection questions from reporters to their newly reelected president focused not on the war on terror but on the problematic war in Iraq.83 And signs of trouble also lurked in some important data from the election’s exit polls: whereas 55 percent of all respondents agreed that Iraq was part of the war on terrorism, and 81 percent of those voters supported Bush, 42 percent said that Iraq was distinct

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from our efforts to combat terrorism, and almost 90 percent of those respondents supported the Democratic candidate.84 The White House may have convinced America about the need to fight a war on terror, but it had failed to persuade more than four in ten voters that Iraq was an essential component of that noble mission. AN ENDLESS WAR?

President Bush’s antiterrorism rhetoric had proceeded on two tracks from the day we were attacked on 9/11—a relentlessly optimistic morality tale of eventual triumph over the forces of chaos and darkness tempered by the less sanguine subplot of a lengthy, arduous, and open-ended conflict. His rhetoric on Iraq followed this same twofold narrative, emphasizing both our ultimate path to victory and the many difficulties we would have to endure to achieve it. In a brief acceptance speech the day after his 2004 election victory, Bush employed his preferred tone and subject, the rosy-tinted big picture of success: Because we have done the hard work, we are entering a season of hope.… We will help the emerging democracies of Iraq and Afghanistan so they can grow in strength and defend their freedom. And then our servicemen and women will come home with the honor they have earned. With good allies at our side, we will fight this war on terror with every resource of our national power so our children can live in freedom and peace.…Reaching these goals will require the broad support of Americans.…And when we come together and work together, there is no limit to the greatness of America.85

The media and congressional Democrats, however, were far more interested in deconstructing the smaller and less shadowy elements of the president’s plans for Iraq, and the first queries out of the mouths of reporters at a press conference on November 4 asked about how much the war was going to cost and whether Bush intended to send more troops or planned to bring troops home. The president eluded these attempts to pin down specifics, noting that we would work with the recently appointed Allawi government to achieve our objective of “elections, on the path to stability,” that our troops would remain as long as they were needed to complete their missions, and that he would need to meet with his senior Pentagon and OMB officials to bring a realistic Iraqi cost assessment to Congress. And in response to a reporter’s question about our precise objective as American forces were preparing to launch a major offensive in Fallujah, Bush offered this uplifting but vague reply: “In order for Iraq

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to be a free country those who are trying to stop the elections and stop a free society from emerging must be defeated.”86 In remarks to U.S. troops at Bagram airfield in Afghanistan in early December, President Bush acknowledged that “America’s willingness to lead the fight against terror has come at a cost,” but paying homage to the loss of “some of the finest people in our military,” he emphasized that “by their sacrifice, and by your continuing mission, we will one day overcome the threat of global terror” (emphasis added).87 But neither Congress nor the media—nor the American public—would be satisfied with the application of such an open-ended time horizon and the rhetorical trappings of imprecise hopefulness to the war with Iraq. Senator Biden succinctly spoke for a number of his colleagues when he said, in reference to all that we had failed to hear about the administration’s longer-term plans for Iraq: “Incredible rhetoric, deafening silence.”88 The gap between the White House’s tale of optimism and the sad reality of the situation in Iraq was beginning to widen into a chasm, and, as 2004 came to an end, it was apparent to all that the contest of wills over where we were now headed in Iraq, for how long, and at what cost, was only just heating up. And also ominously looming on the horizon for the Bush Iraq narrative, words like exit strategy, endgame, Vietnam, and quagmire were beginning to slip a little more frequently into the political and media discourse.

CHAPTER 3

Recasting Iraq as War on Terror November of 2004 may have brought President Bush victory in the presidential election, but the prospect of victory in Iraq seemed more elusive than ever. Even as he savored his reelection success, our military forces were launching a major offensive in Fallujah to confront entrenched insurgents and foreign supporters of al Qaeda, a battle whose outcome was far from decisive and whose bloody and destructive aftermath would necessitate a large-scale recovery and reconstruction effort. Nor was the violence contained, for just over a week after Bush delivered his acceptance speech, armed insurgents rampaged through Iraq’s third-largest city, Mosul, detonated a massive car bomb in Baghdad, and seized control of two smaller cities. As the violence continued to spread, senior U.S. military commanders spoke of the need to increase our combat forces and extend some tours of duty in order to quell remaining areas of resistance in Iraq.1 The president, however, kept his focus strictly on the positive. Appearing with Prime Minister Blair in mid-November, Bush began to unveil his new freedom agenda, the glorious prospect of liberty and democracy on the march around the globe. Noting that the two leaders shared “a vision of a free, peaceful, a democratic broader Middle East,” the president sketched the outline of a mission as breathtakingly idealistic as anything that Woodrow Wilson could ever have imagined in his quest to make the world safe for democracy. “We must apply the combined strength and moral purpose of Europe and America to effectively fight terror, and to overcome poverty and disease and despair, to advance human dignity, and to advance freedom,” Bush grandly declared to the vigorous assent of the man standing beside him. Turning to more immediate concerns, Bush did acknowledge that violence could escalate as January elections in Iraq drew near, but he nonetheless emphasized that “the success of democracy in Iraq will be a crushing blow to the forces of terror” and vowed that we “will continue to stand with our friends, and we will finish the job.”2

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Once again, however, dramatic events rather than the president’s ringing words were driving the news agenda as reporters took aim at Bush’s optimistic rhetoric with pesky questions at a December 20 press conference about such nagging issues as the training and commitment of Iraqi troops, the declining levels of public support for our Iraq policy, interference from Syria and Iran, uncertainty about the real time horizon of war in Iraq, where bin Laden might be hiding (and why he was still on the loose), reports of torture of detainees held at Guantanamo, and Secretary Rumsfeld’s questionable performance.3 Media reports became litanies of the unfolding acts of violence in Iraq, and newspaper editorials and columnists—in words redolent of those employed by the Kerry campaign— railed against the administration’s incompetence and intransigence. Undeterred by negative media accounts, President Bush continued to engage in the power of positive thinking as the new year began, infusing his second inaugural address with the warm glow of freedom spreading around the world, light years removed from the horrors we were facing in Iraq: “Because we have acted in the great liberating tradition of this nation, tens of millions have obtained their freedom. And as hope kindles hope, millions more will find it. By our efforts, we have lit a fire as well— a fire in the minds of men. It warms those who feel its power, it burns those who fight its progress, and one day this untamed fire of freedom will reach the darkest corners of our world.”4 And even though the president did not specifically address the specter of terrorism or the war in Iraq, he did so indirectly, noting that it was his “solemn duty to protect this nation and its people against further attacks and emerging threats,” as he warned those who still sought to oppress their fellow man that, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, “Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and, under the rule of a just God, cannot long retain it.”5 Lest anyone have wondered whether President Bush was putting to rest the discourse of terror and Iraq as the central front in the war on terror, their concerns were soon allayed as specific and numerous references to terrorism and Iraq immediately reappeared in his next public statements and would continue to share the spotlight with Bush’s freedom agenda for the remainder of 2005. The occasion of Iraqi elections for an interim national assembly at the end of January provided Bush his first opportunity to intertwine the themes of terrorism, Iraq, and freedom’s spread as he declared on the eve of the voting that “tomorrow the world will witness a turning point in the history of Iraq, a milestone in the advance of freedom, and a crucial advance in the war on terror.”6 Ever careful not to raise expectations about the outcome of the vote itself, the president replied to a reporter’s question

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about what would constitute a credible turnout in the elections with the quick rejoinder that “the fact that they’re voting, in itself, is successful.” He simultaneously reminded his audience that while this was merely the beginning of an electoral process that would take place over the course of the next year, it was nothing less than “a grand moment for those who believe in freedom.”7 To ensure that the White House frame of the Iraqi elections would capture the media headlines, the president’s senior advisors also went public in a variety of media outlets, echoing Bush’s theme that Iraq was now demonstrating its crucial role in the march of freedom around the globe. The topics of terrorism, freedom, and Iraq were also prominently displayed in Bush’s February 2 State of the Union address as the president devoted the second half of his speech to the foreign policy agenda for his second term. He began by reminding his audience of all that had been accomplished over the past three and a half years—both at home and abroad—to safeguard American security. But cautioning that “our country is still the target of terrorists who want to kill many, and intimidate us all,” he pledged to pursue our enemies in the war on terror. Making specific reference to Iraq as a “vital front” in our battle against terrorism, Bush said we were fighting terrorists there so that “we do not have to face them here at home” and that we would confront regimes—notably, Syria and Iran—that continued to harbor terrorists and pursue weapons of mass murder. Honing his theme of the advance of freedom, he declared, “The only force powerful enough to stop the rise of tyranny and terror, and replace hatred with hope, is the force of human freedom,” and he checked off the areas in the Middle East where freedom was on the move. And in his uplifting peroration, Bush equated his dream of freedom ascendant with this nation’s greatest moral triumphs: The attack on freedom in our world has reaffirmed our confidence in freedom’s power to change the world. We are all part of a great venture: To extend the promise of freedom in our country, to renew the values that sustain our liberty, and to spread the peace that freedom brings. As Franklin Roosevelt once reminded Americans, “Each age is a dream that is dying, or one that is coming to birth.” And we live in the country where the biggest dreams are born. The abolition of slavery was only a dream—until it was fulfilled. The liberation of Europe from fascism was only a dream—until it was achieved. The fall of imperial communism was only a dream—until, one day, it was accomplished. Our generation has dreams of its own, and we also go forward with confidence. The road of Providence is uneven and unpredictable—yet we know where it leads: it leads to freedom.8

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Congress, it became readily apparent, was in no mood to bask in this postelection idealism. As hearings for several of Bush’s high-profile secondterm nominees got underway, Democrats, and even some Republicans, took aim at the administration’s conduct of the war in Iraq, in particular, its treatment of detainees, its reliance on questionable evidence for war, and its numerous missteps in implementing its own war policies. Losing Our Way in Iraq and the War on Terror Having shaken off their postelection gloom, Democratic members of Congress greeted the new year by girding for renewed rhetorical combat over Iraq, and in early January, they used several high-visibility events to express their discontent and push back against the Bush narrative of Iraq. Alberto Gonzales, Bush’s nominee for attorney general, underwent intense grilling by the Senate Judiciary Committee over the use of torture against terrorism suspects, and where both Congress and the media had rhetorically feared to tread the previous spring in reference to Abu Ghraib, they now leapt in with determination as the term torture made a number of appearances in both congressional and media discourse—and in responses by the nominee. “This administration does not engage in torture and will not condone torture,” Gonzales declared on his first day before the committee, and the headline from the next morning’s New York Times—“Gonzales Speaks Against Torture During Hearing”—highlighted the importance of our interrogation techniques to his confirmation hearings. As the hearings progressed, torture continued to punctuate the political and media discourse, as recorded in a January 19 headline in the Washington Post that read, “Torture by U.S. Personnel Illegal, Gonzales Tells Senate.”9 The accompanying article used the word torture—a term so much at odds with the president’s characterization of our noble fight against terrorism—no less than ten times, and all of the news articles on Gonzales’s appearance before the Judiciary Committee gave full voice to the Democratic frame of our Iraq policies as misguided, inept, counterproductive, and, most damning of all, immoral and illegal. Even some Republican senators admitted failings with our interrogation policies. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), a supporter of the war with Iraq, accused the administration of “playing cute with the law” in its treatment of detainees, an approach that he claimed had “dramatically undermined” our campaign against terrorism by ceding the moral high ground and endangering the lives of our troops. “I do believe we have lost our way,” the senator concluded,10 a sentiment with which all of the eight

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Democratic members of the Committee concurred as they unanimously voted against Gonzales’s appointment. Confirmation hearings for Condoleezza Rice to become secretary of state were no less rancorous as Democratic members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee peppered her with questions about problems with the war’s rationale, planning, and conduct, and used the media spotlight to issue scathing denunciations of our war policies. In a heated floor debate prior to the final Senate vote, a number of Democrats voiced emotional objections to the war and Rice as one of its major architects. Assailing Rice’s invocation of nuclear holocaust to justify the need to go to war in Iraq, Senator Kennedy said he would vote against her confirmation; Senator Byrd said Rice simply did not deserve to be promoted, and that he could not support higher responsibilities “for those who helped to set our great nation down the path of increasing isolation, enmity in the world and a war that has no end;” and Senator Levin stated that voting to confirm Rice would be “a stamp of approval for her participation in the distortions and exaggerations of intelligence” that the administration used in the lead-up to the war.11 But as the minority party whose own members were divided about whether to confirm, Democratic opponents of the appointment could not prevail, and, in the end, there were only thirteen negative votes. An article in the next day’s Washington Post did note, however, that this was the highest number of dissenting Senate votes for the position of chief diplomat in the last 180 years.12 Senator Kennedy had been especially outspoken in his criticisms of both the Gonzales and Rice nominations, urging his colleagues not to support the new appointments of a White House counsel so deeply involved in the policy of torture and other prisoner abuses or a national security advisor who pressed for war despite the many warnings of our senior military and intelligence officials. Saving his most damning condemnations of our entire Iraq policy for a January 27 speech at the Johns Hopkins School of International Studies, Kennedy unleashed the analogy of Vietnam as he declared that we could not allow that failed history to repeat itself in Iraq: “No matter how many times the Administration denies it, there is no question they misled the nation and led us into a quagmire in Iraq. President Bush rushed to war on the basis of trumped up intelligence and a reckless argument that Iraq was a critical arena in the global war on terror.…As in Vietnam, truth was the first casualty in this war” (emphasis added).13 And Kennedy was just warming up, as he went on to summarize one misstep after another with our whole misguided Iraq policy, labeling it not—as had President Bush the previous year—“a catastrophic success”

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but, instead, a “catastrophic failure” that only a “genuine exit strategy” could hope to reverse. “Setting a firm strategy for withdrawal may not guarantee success,” Kennedy concluded, “but not doing so will almost certainly guarantee failure,” for there would be much more serious violence if we were to continue “our present dangerous and reckless course” (emphasis added).14 Kennedy then went on to call for the immediate redeployment of at least 12,000 troops with a goal of complete military withdrawal as early as possible in 2006. With those words, the senator threw down a rhetorical and policy gauntlet to which the Bush administration knew it would have to respond. Kennedy’s Senate and House colleagues also ratcheted up their criticisms of our Iraq policy in the days before Bush was to deliver his State of the Union address in early February. Senator Harry Reid (D-NV), the new Senate minority leader, called for the president to present a coherent plan for the future of our Iraq policy, and in a statement the day before the president’s speech, he said, “Most of all we need an exit strategy so that we know what victory is and how we can get there; so that we know what we need to do and so that we know when the job is done” (emphasis added).15 In her response to the president’s address, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi asserted that the United States could not stay in Iraq indefinitely but “neither should we slip out the back door, falsely declaring victory but leaving chaos.” We needed, Pelosi went on to say, what President Bush had thus far failed to offer—“a credible plan to bring our troops home and stabilize Iraq.”16 But as should be apparent from the few examples we have provided here, the Democrats were far from unified in their assessments about how we ought to proceed in Iraq, with a few, like Kennedy, calling for an explicit withdrawal timetable, but others, including the Democratic congressional leadership and its 2004 presidential standard bearer, expressing concern that specific dates would deprive us of needed flexibility in our exit strategy and potentially place our troops in harm’s way. No uniform and coherent alternative message—in Entman’s terminology, no effective counterframe—about where we should go from here with our Iraq policy was forthcoming from the Democrats at the beginning of Bush’s second term, a state of disarray that would redound very much to the advantage of the White House as the president, with the support of senior officials, used the powers of the bully pulpit, in the days leading up to his State of the Union address, to initiate a major discursive offensive about the meaning of the Iraqi elections and their importance for the wider cause of freedom. The communications blitz continued as President Bush undertook a nationwide speaking tour to promote the

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themes he had presented in his address and then embarked on a trip to Europe to gather international support for his freedom agenda. In his weekly radio address on the eve of his departure for Brussels, Bush again affirmed his desire to defeat terrorism by shining the light of liberty across the world: “At the dawn of the 21st century, the deepest values and interests of America and Europe are the same: defeating terrorism, conquering poverty, expanding trade and promoting peace. On both sides of the Atlantic, terrorist attacks on our cities and civilians have shown that freedom has dangerous enemies, and that the key to a lasting peace is the advance of human liberty.”17 Honoring Terrorism’s Innocent Victims The Democrats may have agreed with Senator Graham that we had lost our way in the war on terror, but the idea that we must vigorously pursue the battle against terrorism and continue to honor those who had perished in the deadly attacks of 9/11 was never a point of contention, as Rep. Pelosi made abundantly clear in her official response to Bush’s State of the Union address: Just as we must transfer greater responsibility to the Iraqi people for their own security, we must embrace a renewed commitment to our security here at home. It’s been over three years since the attacks of September 11th. Our hopes and prayers will always be with the 9/11 families, who strengthen our resolve to win the war on terror. The pain and horror of that day will never be forgotten by any of us yet the gaps in our security exposed by those attacks remain.…For three years the President has failed to put together a comprehensive plan to protect America from terrorism, and we did not hear one tonight.18

Pelosi’s remembrance of the victims of the terrorist attacks might have been prompted in part by the intense media, political, and public furor that had erupted in late January over an Internet essay written by Ward Churchill, a little-known professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. The essay had languished in cyberspace obscurity for almost three and a half years until its contents were summarized in the student newspaper at Hamilton College, the upstate New York campus where Churchill had been invited to speak in early February of 2005.19 Within hours, the whole essay had been revealed and its highly incendiary statements splashed across online news and advocacy outlets, the cable news networks, talk radio, and the blogosphere. An intriguing instance of the instantaneous spread of

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controversial information in the age of the Internet, we focus here on the uproar surrounding Churchill as an important demonstration of the staying power and resonance of President Bush’s master terror narrative even as his frame of Iraq as the central front of our battle against terrorism was undergoing intense and sustained assault.20 Written the day after the 2001 attacks and posted on the Internet two weeks later, Churchill’s 5,600-word essay, “Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens,” was penned as an immediate and angry rejoinder to the Bush frame of 9/11. Spanning centuries and continents in its savage condemnation of our leaders and their foreign policies, Churchill’s self-described “stream of consciousness” invective cast the perpetrators of the terrorist attacks as “secular activists” whose intent was to jolt all Americans out of their complacency and force them to recognize that the pain and grief we were now suffering was equal to that endured historically by those peoples whose countries we had ravaged, whose cities we had obliterated, and whose populations we had dislocated and massacred. He leveled his most fiery and shocking rhetoric at those who had lost their lives in the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, the many office workers—from cleaning staff to corporate executives—whom the official frame had so compellingly depicted as the innocent civilian victims of evil’s unwarranted assault upon the good and virtuous: True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break. They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America’s global financial empire—the “mighty engine of profit” to which the military dimension of U.S. policy has always been enslaved—and they did so willingly and knowingly.…To the extent that any of them were unaware of the costs and consequences to others of what they were involved in—and in many cases excelling at—it was because of their absolute refusal to see. More likely, it was because they were too busy braying, incessantly and selfimportantly, into their cell phones.…If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I’d really be interested in hearing about it. (emphasis added)21

His reference to Adolph Eichmann, the high-ranking Nazi SS officer responsible for the logistics of the extermination of millions during the Holocaust, was particularly disturbing, and Churchill was well aware of the ghastly metaphor he was drawing. The philosopher Hannah Arendt had coined the term banality of evil in reference to Eichmann’s deeds, arguing that even though what he had done was monstrous, he was quite an ordinary technocrat who was “just obeying orders” with no thought

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as to the horrific consequences of his actions.22 This was, of course, precisely Churchill’s point, as he framed the victims of the attacks as culpable because they, like the rest of America, had made a deliberate choice to remain indifferent to, or at least oblivious of, the outcomes of our genocidal policies. Churchill was not only presenting an alternative narrative about the terrorist attacks; he had constructed a subversive counterframe that both inverted and transgressed the morality tale America had so ardently embraced. No longer were the attacks and their aftermath to be understood as an epic contest between the good and moral us and the evil other, nor was America the blameless and morally exceptional community so hideously wronged by evildoers intent on destroying the virtues of freedom and democracy we represented. We were attacked not because of the ideals for which we stood but for the wrongs we had committed. We were, in fact, the perpetrators of evil deeds, and the events of 9/11 were simply payback time: “When you push people around,” Churchill declared, “some people push back. And they should. As they must. And as they undoubtedly will. There is justice in such symmetry.”23 Rather than dismissing this as a poorly written, puerile screed whose ranting was beneath contempt, the wire services, cable news networks, talk radio, regional newspapers, and television stations—as well as a number of New York and Colorado state officials and members of the two college communities—instead chose to elevate the Churchill polemic to an important news item worthy of intense coverage and commentary. The Churchill affair became the lead story on Fox News’s The O’Reilly Factor and MSNBC’s Hardball, MSNBC Reports, and Scarborough Country the evening the story first broke, and by the next day, the wire services and major Colorado print and broadcast media issued their initial reports. A search of the Nexis Major Papers and News Wires databases through the first full month of the controversy found that the keywords Ward Churchill appeared in 226 separate news and op-ed items in the major national and regional U.S. newspapers. The story was also the subject of 155 wire service stories and was featured in 112 programs on the cable news networks between late January and the end of February. A fullblown, media-driven firestorm had erupted, and its flames were driven not just by journalists but by incensed state politicians and members of the public as well.24 Media outlets across the board immediately reduced the story to two words—little Eichmanns—Churchill’s inflammatory characterization of Americans as complicit Nazis and the September 11 victims as deserving of their fate. Almost nothing was mentioned about Churchill’s core argument that current and past U.S. foreign policy actions had prompted

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the terrorists’ response, a thesis that Churchill had borrowed from other critics of our policies. The focus was exclusively on Churchill’s discursive violation of the 3,000 innocent victims of 9/11 and the expressions of political and public fury his cruel words provoked. Quotes from numerous public and private individuals and commentary from the journalists themselves extolled the victims’ sacrifice, emphasized their innocence, and excoriated the perpetrators of 9/11 and anyone who would defend them. Colorado state political leaders were especially anxious to enshrine the victims’ iconic status, as perhaps best exemplified in a unanimously passed resolution from the Colorado House of Representatives that stated, in part, “Whereas, the victims at the World Trade Center were innocent in every sense of the word and should always be remembered as innocent victims of an unprovoked attack on America; now, therefore, be it resolved…that the General Assembly commemorates the lives lost.”25 Other Colorado political leaders stepped forward to add their individual voices to the resolution, and newspaper reports were filled with their statements of support for the victims and outrage toward Churchill. In a letter to the University of Colorado College Republicans, Governor Bill Owens (R-CO) also leapt to the victims’ defense; in the space of one brief paragraph, he twice mentioned that the victims were “murdered” and proclaimed their innocence no fewer than three times. Indignant quotes from governors, state legislators, and members of the general public across the country added to the growing media outcry. And even the University of Colorado’s Board of Regents issued a widely reported formal apology for Churchill’s “disgraceful comments,” addressed to “all Americans, especially those targeted in the 9/11 attacks and those serving in our armed forces.”26 At a time when criticisms of the Bush narrative of Iraq as the central front in the war on terror were growing, the Churchill controversy served to underscore the continued resonance and relevance of Bush’s master terror narrative—especially its depiction of the victims of the terrorist attacks as murdered innocents who embodied all that is good and noble about the American political community. As King and DeYoung have demonstrated, by targeting the sacred core of Bush’s 9/11 narrative—the innocent victims—Churchill provided an opportunity for the media and state political leaders to reaffirm the basic tenets of Bush’s discourse of terror: the need for America as a morally exceptional and virtuous victim to defend herself against the onslaught of evil others who despise us for who we are and the good we represent.27 In the face of mounting challenges to our course of action in Iraq and increasing questions about whether we had lost our way in that conflict, Churchill’s offensive little Eichmanns

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trope served to remind Americans that we were a just and idealistic country forced to remain eternally vigilant against those who would destroy us. And the blowback against the Churchill essay came not from the Bush administration (which remained essentially silent throughout the whole controversy) or the leading organs of the elite media (the New York Times, Washington Post, and the broadcast networks carried few stories of the Churchill imbroglio) but from state officials, the wire services, regional media outlets, and the cable news networks, an important indication of just how fully embedded in our national consciousness the Bush narrative of terror and America as terrorism’s innocent victim had become. Here was an example not of Entman’s concept of cascading activation, where a narrative descends from the White House to other national leaders and then to the media and the public, but of the rarer instance of media organizations and state leaders acting as spontaneous frame enforcers as they worked to solidify a master narrative in need of some strategic shoring-up.28 But even as it helped to burnish Bush’s master terror narrative, the Churchill reportage did nothing to enhance the White House’s frame of why we were fighting in Iraq and how the war was progressing. The media and state political figures leaped upon Churchill’s depiction of the victims of 9/11 as a transgression of Bush’s compelling melodrama of ascendant terrorism and innocence lost, but in their fervent denunciations of Churchill, they essentially ignored Bush’s coupling of the struggle against terrorism to the war in Iraq. So while America paused in the early spring of 2005 to pay homage to the victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks and to affirm our commitment to the global war on terror, public approval of the conflict in Iraq and the president who so assiduously promoted it continued to plummet. Rumblings of Disengagement in Iraq Several weeks prior to the January 30 transitional national assembly elections, a New York Times article titled “Hot Topic: How U.S. Might Disengage in Iraq” reported that “conversation had started bubbling up in Congress, in the Pentagon and some days even in the White House about when and how American forces might begin to disengage in Iraq.” All over Washington, the news story continued, there was talk about “new ways” to define when the mission was accomplished—“not to cut and run, but not to linger, either.”29 The topic of our exit strategy and the general endgame in Iraq had begun to permeate the corridors of official Washington, but neither the administration nor Congress could reach any consensus about how and when troop reductions might occur, and even military officers and their civilian counterparts in the Pentagon were

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unable to present a united front when it came to discussions of U.S. withdrawal both in the lead-up to and aftermath of the January elections in Iraq. And as a portent of negative news yet to come, a handful of wellknown and highly regarded Republican senators, including John Warner of Virginia, the ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee, and John McCain of Arizona, its next most senior Republican member, were waxing skeptical about how we were going to manage to bring about troop reductions given all the problems we were facing with training and equipping Iraqi troops. “In my judgment,” Warner said in early January, “a great deal of work needs to be done to achieve the level of [trained Iraqi] forces that will allow our country and other members of the coalition to reduce force levels,”30 a censorious observation no president could be pleased to hear from a leading figure in his own party. And the White House would wait in vain for these Republican critics to publicly emphasize the linkage between Iraq and the war on terror. The Washington echo chamber may have been filled with intense bipartisan discussions of whether and how we might extricate ourselves from Iraq, but President Bush maintained his sanguine, above-the-fray posture as he headed to Europe, his freedom agenda securely in tow. Exhorting our European allies to join with us in our calling to spread freedom around the globe, and drawing inspiration from the broad brush of history, Bush noted that the Western democracies had a critical mission yet to perform: “We also have a call beyond our comfort: We must raise our sights to the wider world. Our ideals and our interests lead in the same direction: By bringing progress and hope to nations in need, we can improve many lives, and lift up failing states, and remove the causes and sanctuaries of terror.”31 To members of the First Armored and First Infantry Divisions gathered at the Wiesbaden airfield base, he also called forth their glorious history of fighting for freedom in World War II, the cold war, Vietnam, Bosnia, Kosovo, and the Gulf War, and reminded the troops of the new responsibilities our nation now faced in combating the menace of terrorism and defending freedom.32 In these and other statements in a variety of venues throughout the spring, President Bush maintained his steadfast discourse of terror, security, the spread of freedom, and Iraq as central to our efforts. To an audience at the National Defense University in early March, he again painted our actions in the softest and most glowing hues: Three and a half years ago, the United States mourned our dead, gathered our resolve, and accepted a mission. We made a decision to stop threats to the American people before they arrive on our shores, and we have acted on that decision. We’re also determined to seek and support the growth of

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democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world. This objective will not be achieved easily, or all at once, or primarily by force of arms. We know that freedom, by definition, must be chosen and that the democratic institutions of other nations will not look like our own. Yet we also know that our security increasingly depends on the hope and progress of other nations now simmering in despair and resentment. And that hope and progress is found only in the advance of freedom.33

To include such trivial details as plans for troop withdrawals in this inspirational rhetoric would have seemed misplaced indeed, and Bush carefully avoided mundane specifics in his prepared texts. But the media and Congress were becoming ever more intent on extracting just this sort of information from the administration. And in the second press conference of his new term, reporters sought to pin the president down on the problems with our coalition partners in Iraq and to get him to commit to a timetable for troop withdrawal. By now an experienced hand at avoiding direct answers, Bush refused to admit that a coalition which had fallen from thirty-eight to twenty-four members was crumbling—“No, quite—quite to the contrary, I think the coalition is—has been buoyed by the courage of the Iraqi people,” he insisted, at the same time noting that we and our coalition partners would be anxious to get out and our troops would come home “when Iraq is capable of defending herself.”34 And even when challenged on the practice of “rendition”—transferring detainees to other countries for interrogation and possible torture— the president sidestepped the issue by emphasizing that his overarching task was to safeguard the nation and its allies from terrorist assault: “In the post-9/11 world, the United States must make sure we protect our people and our friends from attack. That was the charge we have been given. And one way to do so is to arrest people and send them back to their country of origin with the promise they won’t be tortured. That is the promise we receive. This country does not believe in torture. We do believe in protecting ourselves.”35 In his radio address on the second anniversary of the start of hostilities in Iraq, Bush was no less optimistic—and no less nebulous about how and when we might extricate ourselves from Iraq. Noting that the Iraqi people were taking charge of their own destiny as they convened the transitional national assembly for the first time, the president claimed that we had now entered a new phase of our work there—training Iraq’s security forces. As these forces became more self-reliant and took on greater security responsibilities, America and her coalition partners would “increasingly assume a supporting role,” Bush insisted. And when Iraqis could

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defend their own country—but not before that critical moment—“our troops will return home with the honor they have earned.” Anyone seeking a more precise timetable or clearer definitions of success would have a long and frustrating wait indeed. But perhaps that person could take comfort in the president’s assurances that “because of our actions, freedom is taking root in Iraq, and the American people are more secure.”36 No Good News on the Horizon If the images of Iraqis proudly raising their ink-stained fingers and the stories of a heretofore oppressed people participating in their first free elections had dominated the headlines for more than just a few days, Bush’s rhetoric of optimism and idealism might have achieved greater resonance with the American public. But by 2005, the main story of Iraq was not the uplifting tale of freedom on the march but the dismal story of continued death and destruction on an enormous scale. No amount of soaring, freedom-infused oratory could mask grim casualty figures such as these: 106 U.S. troops had been killed in January prior to the Iraqi national elections, the third-largest toll since the war had begun; in late February, more than 120 Iraqis were killed and an even greater number wounded by a massive car bomb in Hilla, sixty miles south of Baghdad, the worst such incident since the U.S. invasion; and on March 3, a tragic milestone was reached when the U.S. troop death toll hit 1,500. Nor was the political news about Iraq any more encouraging as U.S. inspectors called off the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in January, stating that the intelligence reports that Saddam Hussein was developing and stockpiling weapons of mass destruction were erroneous. In a scathing report issued at the end of March, a presidential commission concluded that “the intelligence community was dead wrong in almost all of its prewar judgments” on Iraq’s arsenal of weapons.37 And the news would only get more negative as the year progressed. Adhering to their contemporary reportorial norms of interpretation and analysis situated within an objective framework, elite media outlets proceeded on a dual track in their coverage of Iraq: on the one hand, news reports did present the sanguine words of President Bush and his senior lieutenants, but, on the other, they also engaged in significant amounts of news analysis and editorializing about the deteriorating situation in Iraq and the rising tide of U.S. political and public discontent. An example from mid-April is illustrative. On April 12, President Bush traveled to Fort Hood, Texas, and, in a sixteen-minute speech to an audience of 25,000 troops and their families, marked the two-year anniversary of the

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liberation of Baghdad. Recalling one of the war’s iconic moments, Bush declared that “the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue in Baghdad will be recorded, alongside the fall of the Berlin Wall, as one of the great moments in the history of liberty.” Thanking the troops for their service and sacrifice, he once again carefully placed the conflict in Iraq within the global war on terror, noting that although “the terrorists have made Iraq a central front in the war on terror…we are defeating them where they live, so we do not have to face them where we live.”38 Media accounts of the president’s Fort Hood speech contained little commentary; they merely summarized its contents and highlighted his major theme that the establishment of a free Iraq would be “a crushing defeat to the forces of tyranny and terror, and a watershed event in the global democratic revolution.”39 But such “good news” about Iraq was not the norm by the spring of 2005, and the news stories and commentary in the days before and after Bush’s speech emphasized the political and military shoals upon which our efforts were foundering, with stories of killings of Iraqis, the deaths of American troops, political tensions in Iraq, and the revelation of yet another damning piece of evidence—this time in the form of a previously secret 2002 British government memorandum indicating that the White House had been less than fully forthcoming about its justification for war against Iraq—constituting the majority of the elite media coverage. As the year wore on, Bush’s grand design for spreading freedom and combating terrorism would rarely receive positive press other than when he or his senior officials were directly quoted or carefully paraphrased. Although the president still could control the bully pulpit with his soaring rhetoric of democracy and security, the steady drip of negative information and the rising chorus of dissenting voices in Congress would work to mute the magnitude of the presidential megaphone. The year 2005 was also the year that President Bush lost the battle for the hearts and minds of the American public. As George Edwards has documented, Bush began his second term with less popular support than other recent presidents who have won reelection, and the mediocre approval he was able to command at the beginning of the year would undergo even further erosion over the ensuing months. To the generic Gallup poll approval question, “Do you approve of the way that President Bush is handling his job as President?” a scant majority responded in the affirmative in January; by March, disapproval had drawn equal with approval; by late spring, the number of respondents who said they disapproved had risen above 50 percent; and by the fall, the number expressing disapproval ranged between 52 and 60 percent.40 Bush also fared poorly on public support for war with Iraq, as every Gallup poll in 2005 showed

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approval falling below 50 percent and disapproval increasing to a range between 50 and 60 percent. And even on the president’s signature reelection issue—his handling of terrorism—signs of erosion in public support were evident, with steadily declining public approval dipping slightly under 50 percent for the first time in November. The chief culprit in the public mind seemed to be Iraq, as almost half of the Gallup respondents in the summer of 2005 said that the Iraq War had hurt the war against terrorism, and a similar number felt that that it had enhanced the chances of terrorist attacks in this country. And even though Bush’s ratings on terrorism would again bump up as the year came to a close, the general pattern of decline would continue into 2006.41 It should also come as little surprise that media organizations, many of which had commissioned their own public opinion polls, highlighted Bush’s negative ratings in their news stories and commentaries and would make his deteriorating public approval a key component of an emerging media narrative of a commander in chief under siege from an increasingly skeptical public and a Congress ever more frustrated over a war that was spinning out of control. Is It Really the War on Terror? Ever ready to mount a strong rhetorical offensive, the White House public relations operation confronted the rising chorus of disapproval with several major presidential addresses on the subject of security and terrorism in the early summer of 2005. Since he had won reelection, Bush’s master narrative of war against ascendant terrorism had been relegated to a supporting role as he trumpeted his theme of freedom on the march. But as Bush’s approval ratings began to descend below 50 percent, the global war on terror made a triumphant discursive comeback. At the end of May, our fight against terrorism took center stage in Bush’s foreign policy address to the graduating class of the U.S. Naval Academy. Reminding his audience how much the world had changed since he last spoke to the Class of 2001, the president noted that “none of us imagined that a few months later we would suffer a devastating surprise attack on our homeland, or that our nation would be plunged into a global war unlike any we had known before.” In the course of his thirtyminute speech, Bush made eight references to the war on terror, sixteen references to terrorism or terrorists, four references to specific terrorists— including the recently rhetorically invisible Bin Laden and al Qaeda— and four references to the attacks of 9/11.42 In a speech to the Ohio State Highway Patrol Academy almost two weeks later, the president affirmed the importance of the PATRIOT Act in keeping America secure, and, in

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so doing, mentioned the war on terror three times, terrorism or terrorists twenty-one times, and the September 11, 2001 attacks four times. At the end of June, Bush made a televised prime-time address to the nation on the subject of Iraq as essential to the war on terror, a speech in which our global fight against terrorism, the terrorists who still wished to destroy us, and the hallowed date of 9/11 received four, twenty-seven, and five mentions, respectively.43 And this was but a sample of the numerous public appearances over the course of the summer in which the president made our war against terrorism the centerpiece of his remarks. This discursive shift did not go unnoticed by the media, as a Washington Post headline the day after Bush’s June 28 address to the nation read, “‘Lessons of Sept. 11’ Again Take Center Stage,” and the accompanying article by reporter Dan Balz stated that Bush’s clearest message was “to argue anew that Iraq is the critical battle in a war against terrorists that began with the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.”44 The Post story also went on to note that “Sept. 11 remains Bush’s most reliable argument with the public when he faces political headwinds; it gave him the highest-rated moments of his presidency and helped sustain him through a difficult reelection campaign. Surprisingly, given how effectively he has used the collective emotion of that day in the past, Sept. 11 has been largely missing in the administration’s discussions of Iraq this year.”45 The administration’s terrorism discourse was definitely on the upswing, but by midsummer it was undergoing an intriguing modification, as a couple of articles in the New York Times were able to clarify. On July 26, the Times quoted senior White House and Pentagon officials to the effect that earlier in the year the administration had been working to retool the slogan for the fight against terrorism to reflect the idea that the long-term struggle was “as much an ideological battle as a military mission,” and, to that end, the conflict would be recast as “a global struggle against violent extremism” rather than “the global war on terror.”46 As evidence of the shifting language, the Times noted that Secretary Rumsfeld had recently framed the conflict as “the global struggle against the enemies of freedom, the enemies of civilization,” a narrative that fit well into Bush’s new freedom agenda. And the Times article also included a statement from National Security Advisor Steven Hadley that the conflict was “more than just a military war on terror. It’s broader than that. It’s a global struggle against extremism. We need to dispute both the gloomy vision and offer a positive alternative.”47 True to its interpretive ideals, the Times was quick to note that, with opinion polls revealing a public increasingly pessimistic about the mission in Iraq, the new emphasis might allow the administration “to put into broader perspective the daily mayhem in Iraq and the American casualties” while simultaneously

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reassuring those in uniform who had begun complaining only they were being asked to sacrifice that the effort to combat terrorism was not just military.48 Uncomfortable with the attempts to frame our conflict against terrorism in a more nuanced fashion—as well as with the unwelcome media analysis the discursive shift was drawing—President Bush publicly overruled his subordinates’ foray into linguistic heresy by declaring in an August 3 address to a group of state legislators meeting in Texas, “Make no mistake about it, we are at war,” and, as the New York Times reported, he proceeded to use the phrase war on terror no less than five times and the word war an additional thirteen times.49 The Times went on to report that to underscore its return to the discourse of terror and war, the White House sent e-mail messages to journalists with excerpts of a speech by Secretary Rumsfeld in which he cast off the language of a struggle against extremism and warmly embraced the familiar cant of war: “Some ask, are we still engaged in a war on terror? Let there be no mistake about it. It’s a war. The president properly termed it that after Sept. 11. The only way to defend against terrorism is to go on the attack.”50 As we shall see, this framing decision would prove crucial to the course of the Iraq endgame debate. THE WAR

IN

CRAWFORD, NEW ORLEANS,

AND

WASHINGTON DC

As the White House vigorously worked to reset the agenda of war and terror and reclaim control of the public discourse on Iraq in late summer of 2005, events both in Iraq and in some unexpected quarters in this country would render the administration’s discursive task ever more difficult. We need not elaborate upon the litany of problems on the ground in Iraq as the insurgency’s toll continued to climb, the Iraqis failed to reach basic agreement about their constitutional structure, and more members of Congress began to call if not for a specific withdrawal timetable then at least for some sort of benchmarks against which to measure progress toward our eventual departure from Iraq. An unanticipated—and from the president’s perspective a most unwelcome—August event was a very public protest outside of Bush’s ranch in Crawford while he was vacationing in Texas. Mounted by Cindy Sheehan—a California woman whose son had been killed in action in 2004 while serving his country in Iraq— this grieving mother’s vigil attracted like-minded protestors from around the country and also drew the attention of reporters from around the world as the media used this highly emotional and dramatic episode both to encapsulate the tragic but often overlooked human toll of our policies in Iraq and to provide a human interest backdrop for the intense political debate underway in Washington. The tale of Cindy Sheehan was widely

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reported and was mentioned, according to the Lexis-Nexis database, in 117 New York Times and Washington Post news reports and commentaries, 153 Associated Press stories, 70 Fox News and CNN programs, and 51 pieces on the three broadcast networks during the month of August. Although some of those reports and commentaries contained negative material and opinions about Sheehan and her fellow protestors, the overwhelming majority consisted of material critical of Bush’s war policies and his refusal to personally meet with Sheehan.51 The White House response to Cindy Sheehan was at first to ignore her presence and her antiwar message, but, within the week, Bush did appear outside his home surrounded by his top national defense and foreign policy advisors—far removed, however, from the growing band of protestors stationed across from his ranch—to issue a brief statement on the war on terror and Iraq and respond to a few questions from reporters. The president insisted, once again, that Iraq was a critical piece of our global war on terrorism, and lest anyone have developed sudden amnesia, Bush uttered his familiar refrain that the recent violence in Iraq was yet another “grim reminder of the brutal enemies we face in the war on terror. And we are a nation at war. The war arrived on our shores on September the 11th, 2001. And since that day, the terrorists have continued to kill.”52 A free Iraq would deliver a “serious blow” to the hateful ideology of terrorism and thereby help insure that America would remain safe from further terrorist attacks. In this new iteration of his terror discourse, a democratic Iraq was still necessary to fulfill the president’s freedom agenda, but under the White House’s renewed emphasis on the war on terror, Iraq’s primary role had morphed from spreading the gospel of democracy to keeping America secure. In responding to a reporter’s query, Bush did mention Sheehan, but it was merely in passing as the president acknowledged that “she has every right in the world to say what she believes,” and that while he did sympathize with her loss, her position that we should “get out of Iraq now” would simply be “a mistake for the security of this country and the ability to lay the foundations for peace in the long-run.” Winning the war on terror was Bush’s message, and even a growing throng of protestors and reporters would not cause him to deviate from his “commitment to the American people that this nation will not wait to be attacked again.”53 Unfortunately for the Bush administration, not only had war arrived on our shores, but in the same month as Cindy Sheehan’s vigil, so, too, would a horrific natural disaster that bore the name of Hurricane Katrina. And the negative reviews that the White House had thus far received for its policies in Iraq would pale in comparison to the deluge of

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condemnation it would face for its failure first to recognize and then to manage a homefront disaster of historic proportions. In his first public statement on Katrina on August 28, President Bush briefly noted that he had signed a disaster declaration for the states of Louisiana and Mississippi; two days later, he stated—in an equally fleeting fashion at a 60th anniversary celebration of V-J Day in San Diego—that “our hearts and prayers are with our fellow citizens along the Gulf Coast” and that federal, state, and local governments were working to do all they could “to help people get back on their feet.”54 The words Hurricane Katrina appeared exactly three times in these two presidential statements; the focus of both was not the unfolding crisis in the Gulf of Mexico but the war on terror and Iraq as its central front. Continuing as always to reserve his loftiest rhetorical flourishes for our worldwide struggle against terrorism, the president had only the most banal and cursory remarks for the suffering of millions of his fellow citizens, an astounding act of callousness, indifference, and political miscalculation he would quickly come to regret as the media extended their narrative of the administration’s incompetence and malfeasance in Iraq to encompass this latest instance of its failings on the homefront. And by the time the White House took a number of steps to correct the public relations morass over Hurricane Katrina, the media’s tale of the administration’s monumental debacle had already been written.55 ISLAMO-FASCISM REARS ITS EVIL HEAD

A catastrophe at home, a spike in violence in Iraq, and a nation increasingly hostile to his once-compelling rationale for war seemed only to spur President Bush to greater bursts of rhetorical fervor as he sought, in the hurricane’s aftermath, to shift the public debate to the global menace that threatened us all. And he applied the powers of the bully pulpit to three discursive tasks: reminding his audience of the ever-expanding terrorist menace, reiterating Iraq’s centrality to America’s worldwide struggle against terrorism, and clarifying our strategy for victory in Iraq and the war on terror. The concept of evil, so prominently displayed in the president’s post9/11 rhetoric but largely absent since the invasion of Iraq, reappeared as Bush noted that the fourth anniversary of the “great evil” of the terrorist attacks should inspire us to “confront this mortal danger to all humanity” that still waited to destroy the civilized world. Deadly attacks around the world, most recently the bombings in London, Sharm el-Sheikh, and Bali, provided vivid evidence of the murderous intent—and global reach—of these “evil men.” The new face of evil was not, the president

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was careful to note, the religion of Islam but what he now termed militant jihadism or Islamo-fascism, a dangerous form of radicalism that exploited Islam to serve an extremist political vision and waged its “global campaign of fear” through the most violent of terroristic means.56 What we were now confronting, Bush insisted, were not “random and isolated acts of madness” but a worldwide “militant network” of Islamic extremists with a “clear and focused ideology”—“a set of beliefs and goals that are evil, but not insane.” Filled with “endless ambitions of imperial domination,” their vision was nothing less than a “radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia.”57 The “global, borderless terrorist organizations” and their evil leaders were clearly identified as the White House used their threatening words and actions to lend urgency to our fight against this looming danger. Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, so invisible in Bush’s rhetoric throughout most of the previous three years, now reemerged with a vengeance, as did two leading bin Laden deputies, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Ayman al-Zawahiri. Quoting at considerable length from the terrorist leaders’ recent missives, and noting the similarities between their grim totalitarian vision and communism’s contempt for human life, the president declared that “we’re facing a radical ideology with inalterable objectives: to enslave whole nations and intimidate the world.”58 These terrorists, Bush warned, were not just engaging in idle speech or spewing empty threats; they were actively seeking to inflict great harm both here and abroad. The president went on to announce—and repeat, almost verbatim, in a number of speeches and statements over the final months of 2005—that we and our coalition partners “have disrupted at least ten serious al Qaeda terrorist plots since September the 11th, including three al Qaeda plots to attack inside the United States. We’ve stopped at least five more al Qaeda efforts to case targets in the United States, or infiltrate operatives into our country.”59 Having laid out the disturbing parameters of this “global ideological struggle,” the White House then took up its second theme: Iraq as ground zero in our fight against the new incarnation of evil. As the president noted time and time again, “the terrorists regard Iraq as the central front in their war against humanity. And we must recognize Iraq as the central front in our war on terror.”60 Since al Qaeda had pinpointed Iraq as “the place for the greatest battle” in their global terrorist campaign, our path to victory in the war on terror would of necessity run through that beleaguered country. To insist on a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq would thus be tantamount to ceding victory at the very moment Iraqi democracy was taking hold and sowing the first seeds of the terrorist ideology’s

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destruction. And to the antiwar critics in Congress and elsewhere who were seeking to “rewrite the history of how that war began” through claims that the White House manipulated the prewar intelligence and misled the American people, the president issued a stern rebuke: The stakes in the global war on terror are too high, and the national interest is too important, for politicians to throw out false charges. These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America’s will. As our troops fight a ruthless enemy determined to destroy our way of life, they deserve to know that their elected leaders who voted to send them to war continue to stand behind them. Our troops deserve to know that this support will remain firm when the going gets tough. And our troops deserve to know that whatever our differences in Washington, our will is strong, our nation is united, and we will settle for nothing less than victory.61

The final strand of President Bush’s argument in the early fall of 2005 was that he had a comprehensive, five-pronged strategy for victory both in Iraq and the wider war on terror. First noting that we had disrupted a number of serious al Qaeda plots and were making steady progress in killing or capturing those who were behind the 9/11 attacks, the president went on to outline the other elements of our strategy: disrupting WMD operations and shipments to outlaw regimes and their terrorist allies; denying radical groups the support and safe haven of outlaw regimes; denying the terrorists control of Afghanistan and Iraq as a home base; and denying the militants future recruits by “replacing hatred and resentment with democracy and hope across the broader Middle East.”62 And in each of his speeches and statements from October to mid-November, the president intertwined the rather somber note of a long and arduous journey with his familiar optimistic refrain of ultimate triumph: “We don’t know the course our own struggle will take, or the sacrifices that might lie ahead. We do know, however, that the defense of freedom is worth our sacrifice, we do know the love of freedom is the mightiest form of history, and we do know the cause of freedom will once again prevail.”63 For the remainder of 2005, as events both in Iraq and at home careened from bad to worse, the president and his team would repeat, with unwavering consistency, the mantra of Iraq as the central front in the battle against terrorism and the frontline in the ongoing struggle to protect this country from all those who wished to destroy who we were and what we represented. By this point, however, Congress seemed more inured than ever to the president’s calls for victory in Iraq, and in September more members began to go public with their concerns about how we might extricate

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ourselves from this disastrous misadventure. Ignoring Bush’s impassioned claims that Iraq was one with the war on terror, congressional critics focused narrowly on the endgame in the country once ruled by Saddam Hussein. The legislators who received the greatest media attention on this issue were those whom presidential and congressional scholar Stephen Hess has labeled experts-cum-insiders, the members of the congressional committees most responsible for foreign and national security policy.64 A leader among this group of authoritative sources was Joseph Biden, the senior senator from Delaware and foreign policy expert who had long harbored doubts about our engagement in Iraq and was now becoming increasingly vocal with his concerns about our exit strategy. In an editorial piece in the September 14 edition of the Washington Post, Biden opened with the stark declaration that “the Bush administration’s mishandling of Iraq has brought us to the brink of a national security debacle. To salvage the situation, the administration must fundamentally change course inside Iraq, in the region and at the international level.”65 While not advocating a date certain for withdrawal of American troops, Biden did call for the White House to establish a “reasonable timetable” for meeting concrete goals of training Iraqi security forces, building a political system that enjoyed legitimacy, and rebuilding basic services. Democratic senators John Kerry and Carl Levin, similarly regarded as highly credible national security sources, also offered proposals for a phased pullout of American forces, and yet another authoritative and knowledgeable source, Rep. Ike Skelton (D-MO), the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, outlined a similar plan.66 Nor did all Republican members of Congress blindly fall in line behind their president, as illustrated by Senator Chuck Hagel’s (R-NE) criticism of our Iraq policy and his forceful defense of Iraq War critics. In a June interview, Hagel, an often maverick Republican who had emerged as a skeptical voice on the administration’s handling of the war, declared that “the reality is that we’re losing in Iraq”; in August, he said that we were “getting more and more bogged down” in the war; and in a November speech, he made the pointed comment that “the Bush administration must understand that each American has a right to question our policies in Iraq and should not be demonized for disagreeing with them.”67 Hegel’s restiveness was not unique; in mid-November, seventy-nine members of the Senate approved a Republican-sponsored proposal that required the administration to provide extensive quarterly reports to Congress on subjects such as bringing in other countries to help stabilize Iraq. With the exception of omitting a troop withdrawal timetable, it was very similar to what the Democrats had proposed. And as congressional scholar Michael

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Bressler notes, additional Republican expressions of dissent began to be heard by late fall, and half of all GOP members of Congress who went public on the issue of Iraq during that time were either critical of Bush or negative in their assessments of the conditions in Iraq.68 But as the year drew to a close, one Democratic voice in the House of Representatives would come to embody all the festering public and congressional discontent with Iraq and place the issue of our exit from Iraq front and center on the national agenda. And in the ensuing endgame debate, the White House frame of Iraq-as-war-on-terror would confront an opposing narrative that not only drew a clear distinction between the two conflicts, but claimed the fight we were waging in Iraq was so detrimental to our national interests that we had no recourse but to redeploy our forces as rapidly as possible.

CHAPTER 4

Challenging the Iraq Victory Narrative “A Flawed Policy Wrapped in Illusion” On November 18, 2005, E. J. Dionne, Jr., of the Washington Post penned an opinion piece in which he predicted that “this will be remembered as the week when President Bush lost control over the Iraq War debate.”1 On the previous day, sixteen-term Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), decorated Vietnam War veteran and strong supporter of the military, ranking member on the House Appropriations Committee and the senior Democrat on its defense panel on military spending matters, issued an official statement that fired a volley into the heart of the Bush narrative of the Iraq War and its outcome: The war in Iraq is not going as advertised. It is a flawed policy wrapped in illusion…The United States and coalition troops have done all they can in Iraq, but it is time for a change in direction.…It is evident that continued military action in Iraq is not in the best interest of the United States of America… The threat posed by terrorism is real, but we have other threats that cannot be ignored.…Our military in Iraq has been fighting a war in Iraq for over two and a half years. Our military has accomplished its mission and done its duty.…But the war continues to intensify.…I said over a year ago, and now the military and the Administration agree, Iraq can not be won “militarily.” Our military has done everything that has been asked of them, the U.S. cannot accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily. IT IS TIME TO BRING THEM HOME.2

Murtha then introduced a Joint Resolution in the House of Representatives, which read, in part, “the deployment of United States forces in Iraq, by direction of Congress, is hereby terminated and the forces involved are to be redeployed at the earliest possible date.”3

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Murtha’s news conference and the introduction of his joint resolution were equivalent to at least a moderate political earthquake in Washington. Not surprisingly, criticism of Murtha was swift, intense, and personal, as illustrated by the widely reported and soon-to-be-infamous floor comments of the newest member of the House of Representatives, Jean Schmidt (R-OH). In reference to a call from a constituent, Rep. Schmidt directed the following remarks at Murtha: “He asked me to send Congress a message: Stay the course. He also asked me to send Congressman Murtha a message—that cowards cut and run, Marines never do” (emphasis added).4 These comments immediately sparked an uproar from those Democratic members in attendance whose shouts of “take her words down” prohibited the congresswoman from finishing her remarks and required one angry Democratic member to be physically restrained by his colleagues.5 As we shall see, sharp rebukes to Murtha from Bush surrogates would not be limited to low-profile Republican members of Congress. While “Mean Jean,” as the local Ohio press had dubbed Rep. Schmidt, would later admit she had not realized that John Murtha was a Marine veteran, her comments set the stage for an often-bitter debate between the Bush administration and its surrogates and John Murtha and his supporters over the endgame in Iraq. And in the Bush frame—and widely repeated in media reportage and commentary—the shorthand for these two viewpoints became cut and run versus stay the course. We Must Stay the Course, Not Cut and Run Making a rapid appearance was the White House’s intense defense of its strategy for victory in Iraq, which it coupled with a direct attack on Murtha’s withdrawal proposal (and an indirect rebuke of the Senate’s troop redeployment supporters as well). The administration’s first official response was to portray Murtha’s views as outside the political mainstream, as this brief press release from press secretary Scott McClellan demonstrates: “Congressman Murtha is a respected veteran and politician who has a record of supporting a strong America. So it is baffling that he is endorsing the policy positions of Michael Moore and the extreme liberal wing of the Democratic party. The eve of an historic democratic election in Iraq is not the time to surrender to the terrorists. After seeing his statement, we remain baffled—nowhere does he explain how retreating from Iraq makes America safer.”6 Seeking to place Murtha and other war critics on the defensive, the administration’s GOP allies quickly sponsored a substitute House resolution calling for an immediate termination of the deployment of U.S. forces in Iraq (Murtha’s resolution had called for redeployment “at the

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earliest possible date”). Knowing that Democrats, including Murtha, would resist being maneuvered into supporting the politically untenable resolution, the Republicans were aware that their measure would never pass, and it was indeed defeated by a wide margin. The White House then released a statement claiming that “Congress in a strong bipartisan fashion rejected the call to cut and run,”7 which received much play in press accounts (emphasis added). With their tactical success of forcing Democrats to vote against the Republican version of the cut-and-run strategy in hand, the administration proceeded to build its public case for staying the course in Iraq. President Bush was traveling in Asia during mid-November when the Murtha-inspired debate erupted. But as he had done since the terrorist attacks in 2001, Bush immediately stepped forward to become the advocate in chief for his administration’s national security policies. At a press conference in Beijing, more than half of his prepared remarks to the traveling press corps were devoted to Murtha’s withdrawal proposal. After a few obligatory comments regarding his Chinese hosts, the president proceeded methodically to set forth his critique of Murtha’s plan and defend the rationale of his Iraq policy. While taking care to praise Murtha’s character and service to the nation, Bush nonetheless took direct aim at his plan. “I disagree with his position,” the president began. Murtha’s call for withdrawal would “strengthen the terrorists’ hand in Iraq, and in the broader war on terror” and have “terrible consequences, for our own security and for the Iraqi people.” For these reasons, Bush argued, Murtha’s proposal simply was not a “credible alternative.” As for why we must stay the course in Iraq, the president reiterated his belief that we were “making good progress” and that the only choice we had was to “prevail.” Noting that the war was a subject of serious and legitimate debate at home, he reminded those present that we were fighting al Qaeda terrorists who wanted to create “a safe haven for terror, a place where they can plot and plan attacks against America and freedom-loving countries around the world.” The president also mentioned the importance of a successful and democratic Iraq as an example to reform-minded leaders in the Middle East. However, Bush once again provided little indication of how long the military struggle in Iraq might last, except for the vague assurance that “we’ll stay as long as necessary, but not one day more.” But, as he was quick to remind his audience, a premature withdrawal from Iraq is “not going to happen so long as I’m the President.”8 As he had on previous occasions, during his Asian trip Bush employed triumphalist and culturally resonant imagery from the cold war to provide a legitimizing analogy with the war on terror: “Free people did not falter in

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the Cold War,” he declared, “and free people will not falter in the war on terror.” Success in this defining conflict would be assured because “like the ideology of communism, the ideology of Islamic radicalism is destined to fail—because the will to power is no match for the universal desire to live in freedom. Like the ideology of communism, Islamic radicalism teaches that the innocent can be murdered to serve their brutal aims.”9 Thus, even before President Bush returned home from his diplomatic excursion, the parameters of his stay-the-course mantra were taking shape: Iraq was vital to American security because it had become the central front in the global war on terror, and America would never back down in our pursuit of victory in that fateful conflict. Furthermore, the cut-and-run withdrawal strategy advocated by Murtha and his supporters was tantamount to surrender in the war on terror, with potentially devastating consequences for U.S. security and the regional stability of the whole Middle East. In short, Bush insisted, Murtha’s proposal was defeatist and dangerous. And as the president liked to remind Americans, this epic struggle for freedom and democracy could best be understood through the historical analogies of America’s past foreign policy triumphs. Finally, it was essential for all Americans to remember that victory in Iraq, while certain, would take time and patience. These themes were not new, of course, but the White House was now confronting the harsh political reality that its narrative of the war’s endgame—especially the victory frame component—was now undergoing a significant and highly publicized challenge. Given the rising violence on the ground in Iraq and the intense media attention to the Murtha counterframe, the administration had little choice but to launch a public relations offensive designed to bolster the official Iraq frame and blunt his latest opponent’s charges. The core of the White House “going public” strategy consisted of the president delivering four major speeches and one prime-time address to the nation on his Iraq policy in the month following Murtha’s announcement. In these speeches, Bush emphasized, over and over, the necessity of victory in Iraq and his uncompromising commitment to achieve it. In his first speech, for example, Bush reprised his earlier pledge that “America will not run in the face of car bombers and assassins as long as I am your commander in chief.” However, even as he insisted that success in Iraq was assured, he cautioned that “victory will require continued sacrifice.”10 Coinciding with Bush’s first speech, the administration released a thirtyfive-page document titled National Strategy for Victory in Iraq, which White House officials touted as setting forth Bush’s blueprint for winning the war. Under the “Victory in Iraq Defined” section, the document explained that “as the central front in the global war on terror, success in Iraq is an essential

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element in the long war against the ideology that breeds international terrorism. Unlike past wars, however, victory in Iraq will not come in the form of an enemy’s surrender, or be signaled by a single particular event—there will be no Battleship Missouri, no Appomattox.”11 The National Strategy further noted that victory would occur in stages and take time, but echoing a familiar theme, it highlighted the devastating consequences of defeat and clearly stated that failure in Iraq was not an option. Not surprisingly, during this period many of Bush’s Iraq endgame talking points overlapped with the analysis in this document. Neglecting few public relations opportunities in this media campaign, even the “Plan for Victory” visual backdrop of the president’s speeches served a none-toosubtle purpose to remind viewers of the Bush victory frame. In his second post-Murtha speech, Bush spoke on the anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and compared December 7, 1941, to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, saying that both of these heinous events had aroused the country to “fight for victory.” Once again, Bush had returned to the well-used rhetorical strategy employed to legitimate the victory frame—drawing comparisons between the current war in Iraq and the twentieth-century conflicts of World War II and the cold war. Implicitly challenging Murtha later in the speech, the president declared: “Recently, one Democratic leader came out in support of an artificial deadline for withdrawal, and said an immediate withdrawal of our troops would, ‘make the American people safer, our military stronger, and bring some stability to the region.’ That’s the wrong policy for our government. Withdrawing on an artificial deadline would endanger the American people, would harm our military, and make the Middle East less stable. It would give the terrorists exactly what they want. I reject the pessimists in Washington who say we can’t win this war.”12 For his third speech, the president chose the city of Philadelphia and the birthplace of American democracy as the appropriate site to hail the upcoming Iraqi elections. Bush praised the Iraqi commitment to democracy and compared the fledgling Iraqi democracy with the early struggles in the development of the American republic.13 In the last of his four speeches, Bush said “cutting and running” would send the wrong message to Iraqis, terrorists, U.S. soldiers, and the wider Middle East region, and once more reiterated that we “will never accept anything less than complete victory.”14 And one month after Murtha’s redeployment proposal, the president delivered a Sunday evening prime-time address to the nation focusing on the themes of victory and freedom in Iraq. “Do not give in to despair and do not give up on this fight for freedom,” Bush pleaded, and, in a direct rebuttal to advocates of withdrawal, he asserted,

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“to retreat before victory would be an act of recklessness and dishonor I will not allow.…Not only can we win the war in Iraq—we are winning the war in Iraq. There are only two options for the United States—victory or defeat.”15 For Bush, staying the course was the only strategy for victory in Iraq, and since his frame consistently conflated the war in Iraq with the larger war on terror, the stakes for American national security could not have been higher. And as Bush and other administration spokespersons continuously argued, Murtha’s call for redeployment implied certain defeat in the central front of the defining challenge of our age. President Bush also enlisted the assistance of the vice president and other top administration officials in the campaign to bolster sagging public support for staying the course in Iraq. In a speech before the American Enterprise Institute a few days after Murtha’s plan was unveiled, Vice President Cheney echoed his commander in chief by declaring that “a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq would be a victory for the terrorists, an invitation to further violence against free nations, and a terrible blow to the future security of the United States of America.” Furthermore, Cheney maintained, “we will not retreat in the face of brutality, and we will never live at the mercy of tyrants or terrorists.” Taking an obvious swipe at Murtha’s “flawed policy wrapped in an illusion” phrase, the vice president said, “It is a dangerous illusion to suppose that another retreat by the civilized world would satisfy the appetite of the terrorists and get them to leave us alone” (emphasis added).16 And in a concerted response to the Murtha redeployment proposal, other high-ranking officials, including the secretaries of defense and state and the national security advisor, appeared on news talk shows and delivered speeches before various audiences in an attempt to deflect criticism and defend the president’s Iraq policy. In response to a November 20 Murtha appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press, for instance, Secretary Rumsfeld managed to make the rounds on four Sunday morning news shows to offer a spirited rebuttal. Thus a major component of the White House’s strategy to counter the Murtha endgame challenge was the frequent and well-choreographed public appearances of Bush’s senior lieutenants, providing, yet again, a harmonic backdrop to the president’s public statements. From War Hawk to War Critic Although well known to southwestern Pennsylvania, John Murtha had not been a figure of national prominence prior to his call for a rapid troop redeployment. Although Murtha locally had a reputation as a powerful legislator, it was largely as a behind-the-scenes deal maker who tended to shun the limelight. Thus, at first glance, the significance and impact of

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Murtha’s challenge to the Bush narrative might seem out of proportion to his lack of national stature, especially compared to the more nationally well-known Democratic critics of the war such as senators Kennedy, Biden, and Kerry. But Washington insiders knew of John Murtha as one of the most influential power brokers in Congress. An imposing man physically at six feet three inches, Murtha held—and still holds—court in what is known as the “Pennsylvania Corner” of the House of Representatives. While there are no reserved seats in the House, it is alleged that no one dares sit in the seat informally reserved for Murtha. His source of legislative power has been his position as the ranking Democratic member on the House Appropriations subcommittee for defense spending that oversees about 50 percent of all discretionary spending in the federal budget.17 Having forged over the years a good working relationship with the ranking Republican on this committee, Murtha’s power has been seemingly undiminished regardless of which party is in control of the House. Murtha has tended to vote with Republicans more often than all but a handful of his Democratic colleagues, and his mastery of the appropriation technique known as earmarking has allowed him to direct millions of defense-related dollars to his own district as well as reward his legislative allies and punish congressional foes. It is this deal making—trading votes for earmarks—that has earned Murtha the unflattering reputation as the “king of pork.” Ethical questions have surrounded Murtha’s career since the 1980s with his involvement in the Abscam scandal, an FBI sting operation where bribes were offered to members of Congress by individuals posing as representatives of Saudi business interests. Although not indicted, Murtha appeared on the FBI videotape to have considered accepting a bribe. Thus, while Murtha’s behavior perhaps did not rise to the level of an indictable criminal offense (he was named as an unindicted coconspirator), he was never fully exonerated in the realm of public trust. However, Murtha possessed an almost impeccable record when it came to support for the U.S. military. The first Vietnam-era combat veteran elected to Congress in 1974, Murtha left college to join the Marines in 1952 and was a decorated veteran of the Korean and Vietnam conflicts, earning a number of combat citations and medals along the way. After his discharge from active duty, he remained in the Marine reserves and retired at the rank of colonel in 1990 following a thirty-seven-year career of military service. Since his election to Congress, Murtha has had a reputation as a defense hawk and strong supporter of the Pentagon. He backed the first President Bush during the Gulf war in 1990 to 1991 and also the younger Bush by voting to authorize the use of military force against Iraq in 2002. Among his peers in Congress, Murtha remained a respected and

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influential voice on defense policy, known to have strong personal ties with many members of the uniformed military at the Pentagon. Consequently, despite his low national public profile, Murtha’s strong defenserelated institutional position of power in the House, his bipartisan voting record, and his close ties to the military brass placed him well within Hess’s category of congressional expert-cum-insider and in a unique position to challenge the president’s policy on Iraq. Even though Murtha had voted in favor of the October 2002 resolution authorizing the use of military force against Iraq, his November 2005 statement was not the first time that he had found fault with Bush’s Iraq War policy. Believing it too intrusive and lacking privacy safeguards, Murtha opposed the Pentagon’s electronic surveillance program known as Total Information Awareness in early 2003 by observing, in his trademark blunt language, that “they’ve got some crazy people over there [the Pentagon].”18 That fall, he publicly criticized the Pentagon for its failure to properly equip our troops in Iraq and called for the firing of unspecified top defense department advisors to the president. It was widely assumed that Murtha was suggesting Defense Secretary Rumsfeld was among the key advisors he had in mind. Furthermore, Murtha alleged he had been misled into voting for the war by misinformation from top administration officials and that President Bush had been misled as well by his advisors. After traveling to Iraq in the fall of 2003 to assess the military situation, Murtha wrote Bush a letter detailing his concern that “we have severely miscalculated the magnitude of the effort we are facing.”19 Murtha would later report, with considerable displeasure, that he did not receive a reply to his letter for seven months, and even then, the reply was from a lowerlevel defense department official, assuring the congressman that all his concerns were being addressed by the military. “I deserve more respect than that,” Murtha would later recall.20 In March of 2004, Murtha voted against a Republican-sponsored Iraq War anniversary resolution affirming “that the United States and the world have been made safer with the removal of Saddam Hussein and his regime from power in Iraq.”21 Just a month later, he would warn that the war was unwinnable unless additional troops were sent to Iraq and criticize the abuse at Abu Ghraib as “outrageous” and seriously damaging to the U.S. image in Iraq and the Middle East. While Murtha’s doubts regarding the conduct of the war and occupation had continued to fester in 2003 and 2004, as late as the spring of 2005, he still publicly opposed a withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq based on a timeline or timetable. But his November 2005 statement entailed a dramatic shift from a discussion

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of the merits of the original decision and subsequent conduct of the war in Iraq to one concerning the war’s endgame and the American exit. Could Murtha’s challenge to the Bush narrative of the war’s outcome provide a potentially unifying oppositional counterframe for the Democrats? His outspoken remarks certainly prompted intense reactions— both favorable and unfavorable—from Capitol Hill. Perhaps reflecting their deepening frustration over the conduct of the war, members of the Democratic caucus gave Murtha a standing ovation when he informed them of his planned announcement, and noncongressional liberal critics of the war would also greet his remarks with great enthusiasm. But not all members of Congress were equally effusive. Some Democratic leaders, concerned about the electoral implications of a rapid drawdown, remained warily on the sidelines and refused to embrace or even comment on Murtha’s proposal. The media, however, responded with alacrity to his impassioned words, and Murtha’s announcement became a major news story, capturing the headlines of numerous mainstream media outlets and catapulting across the blogosphere. As we have seen, the Bush administration and other Republicans immediately denounced Murtha’s call for withdrawal and labeled it a defeatist cut and run policy. Especially worrisome to the White House must have been the knowledge that Murtha maintained close ties to the uniformed military and was often a public voice for the private views of many active duty officers. David Broder of the Washington Post informed his readers of a phone call he received shortly after Murtha’s redeployment announcement: “The unsolicited caller from the Pentagon identified himself by name and rank, and then said, ‘This a private call, I am not speaking officially. But I read your column, and I think it is important for you to know that Jack Murtha knows us very well and speaks for many of us.’”22 Thus there is little doubt that in the late fall of 2005, John Murtha, an authoritative, credible—and usually hawkish—voice on military affairs in Congress, posed a particularly serious threat to the Bush administration’s Iraq War narrative that military victory was both attainable and essential to winning the war on terrorism, and presented a challenge that could be neither readily marginalized nor dismissed. The Murtha-Bush Debate under the Media Microscope Because Representative Murtha was so little known to the American public, the extent to which the media highlighted his redeployment proposal and the manner in which they chose to frame the issue of the Iraq endgame and Murtha himself are critical to understanding the course of

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the increasingly rancorous debate over why, how, and when we should extricate ourselves from the conflict. To that end, we conducted an indepth qualitative content analysis of the New York Times, Washington Post, Associated Press, and NBC News coverage of John Murtha’s challenge to the Bush Iraq War frame during the first two months after his statement calling for the troops to be brought home.23 Media depictions of Murtha’s endgame challenge during this period were quite extensive and far outpaced the Iraq-related reportage on any other member of Congress. Even members of the Senate, who usually garner more media attention than their House colleagues, received distinctly fewer mentions for their proposals to institute troop drawdowns. As would be expected, news attention was heaviest during the months of November and December, when the controversy over Murtha’s comments was at its most intense, but significant coverage of the Murtha-generated endgame debate would also persist well into 2006. Not surprisingly, two dominant themes emerged in mainstream media portrayals of this controversy: the Bush administration’s efforts to shore up the victory endgame in Iraq and the Murtha counternarrative of the impossibility of military success in the conflict. As we shall see, both were intertwined with significant coverage of the identity and credibility of the redeployment proposal’s author as the Bush team sought to cast doubt upon Murtha as an authoritative source while his supporters adamantly defended his competence and his integrity. Two subthemes also appeared—the obligation to support the troops in the field and the expectation that significant numbers of U.S. forces would be withdrawn from Iraq by the end of 2006. FRAMING JOHN MURTHA

While the Bush administration’s efforts to shore up the dominant victory frame were the focus of much media attention, so too was John Murtha as the messenger for the opposing frame that military success in Iraq was not possible. Brian Williams, the anchor of NBC Nightly News, began his lead-in to the breaking Murtha story on November 17, 2005, with the following glowing account of Murtha’s persona: “When one congressman out of 435 members of Congress speaks out against the war in Iraq, it normally wouldn’t be news, but it was today because of who he is. Congressman Murtha, a Vietnam veteran, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, is a 37-year veteran of the Marine Corps who voted for both Gulf wars. Vice President Cheney once called him one of his strongest allies in Congress when Cheney ran the Pentagon. Today, John Murtha said the US must

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get out of Iraq.”24 And although the media gave considerable attention to the specifics of Murtha’s redeployment plan, much of their coverage focused on the congressman’s background and identity. As noted earlier, intense personal attacks against Murtha followed almost immediately upon the release of his redeployment statement, and these attacks did not go unanswered in the media. In fact, Murtha was not bashful about striking back at his critics, and of course this made for dramatic news copy. Warned by his friend Nancy Pelosi that Republicans would come after him, Murtha’s terse reply came in the form of a most appealing sound bite: “I can handle it. I am ready for anything.”25 In one of the more widely reported exchanges directed at Vice President Cheney, Murtha provided the following newsworthy response: “I like guys who’ve never been [in combat] that criticize us who’ve been there. I like that. I like guys who got five deferments and never been there and send people to war and then don’t like to hear suggestions about what needs to be done.”26 The national media immediately highlighted Murtha’s colorful and folksy personality, choosing to characterize this relatively unknown congressman in quite dramatic and evocative language. For example, in one Washington Post news article, Murtha was described by the reporter as a “gruff ” and “burly” seventy-three-year-old lawmaker who has a reputation as a “soldier-legislator—a John McCain type without the swagger or upward ambition.”27 The Associated Press saw the former car wash owner and military veteran as a “battle-tested congressman.”28 While the media might not have been necessarily “mad for Murtha,” as one scholar has suggested,29 they certainly found Murtha’s personal biography and his war hero image a compelling story in its own right, and this in part helps to explain why they chose to focus more intensively on Murtha’s challenge to the Bush Iraq narrative than on other critics of the war. Murtha’s status as a former Marine and his military service record during Vietnam thus became prominent themes in all media news coverage, and positive references to his military background far exceeded the negative. Murtha’s close ties to the military were a frequent press storyline, and news accounts often characterized him as a foreign policy hawk and strong on national defense issues. The AP, Times, Post, and NBC News all published or aired what were mostly favorable background stories on the political reaction in Murtha’s hometown of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. While all the background pieces noted that not everyone there agreed with Murtha’s Iraq position, they mentioned that he still enjoyed great popularity and respect in the region. News articles also routinely emphasized his frequent visits to wounded veterans at Washington DC area hospitals and his long record of support for veteran affairs, and it

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certainly did not hurt Murtha’s credibility when Rep. Jean Schmidt was lampooned on NBC’s Saturday Night Live. Both the Times and the Post also prominently mentioned the local and national leaders who stepped forward to defend Murtha. When interviewed by the Post, Republican colleague Curt Weldon (R-PA) was quoted as saying, “Jack Murtha is one of kind…He is an example for all of us in this body, and none of us should ever think of questioning his motives, his desires, or his support for American troops.”30 Also praising Murtha’s integrity and character in the pages of mainstream newspapers were many prominent Democrats, including House Minority Leader Pelosi and Senator Kerry. The AP reported Kerry’s flattering observation that “there is no sterner stuff than the backbone and courage that defines Jack Murtha’s character and conscience.”31 In the midst of the endgame debate, Murtha also joined forces with Senator John McCain to cosponsor an anti-torture proposal opposed by the Bush administration. This widely reported bipartisan alliance certainly helped to enhance Murtha’s profile on defense and foreign policy issues, and there were numerous references in the press about the high degree of prestige Murtha possessed among his colleagues on defense matters. The following from an AP reporter is a typical example of the media’s assessment regarding Murtha’s stature on defense issues: “Known as a friend and champion of officers at the Pentagon and in the war zone, it is widely believed in Congress that Murtha often speaks for those in uniform and could be echoing what U.S. commanders in the field and in the Pentagon are saying privately about the conflict.”32 The press also took notice of the dearth of military veterans, and especially combat veterans, in Congress and suggested congressional combat veterans such as Murtha were afforded considerable influence on defense issues as a consequence of their military service. One Times article quoted sociologist Charles Moskos’s reference to the current era of few military veterans in Congress—and also the paucity of members with children in the military—as “patriotism lite” on Capitol Hill.33 Because of Murtha’s background and standing on defense issues, one analyst cited by the AP declared, “John Murtha is the perfect storm of credibility and quotability.”34 The Bush administration mounted a vigorous campaign to discredit Murtha and his redeployment plan and its efforts were reflected in the news articles and broadcasts. Both the Times and Post also took notice of the aggressive administration tactics toward its adversaries. As David Sanger of the Times observed, “For the first time, Mr. Bush and his aides have taken their critics by name, declared their motives to be entirely political, and suggested their approach would give aid and comfort to the

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terrorists.”35 Similarly, Michael Fletcher of the Post reported on the White House effort to revive “tested campaign techniques” such as “aggressive opposition research and blistering partisan invective” to counter Bush’s war critics.36 The news media also highlighted the doubts that a number of Murtha’s GOP colleagues expressed about his judgment and expertise on foreign policy matters. While Rep. Schmidt would later apologize for her “coward” statement, other allies of the White House continued to offer scathing comments about Murtha, and these quickly found their way into news reports. For example, at one Republican press conference House Speaker Dennis Hastert was quoted as saying of Murtha’s proposal, “They want us to retreat. They want us to wave a white flag of surrender to the terrorists of the world.”37 Rep. Geoff Davis (R-KY) was also quoted as characterizing Murtha’s statement as “shameful” as he accused Democrats of cooperating with and “emboldening our enemies.”38 But the administration soon discovered that questioning Murtha’s patriotism or attempting to link him with the left wing of the Democratic party could produce a negative backlash in the mainstream media, as exemplified by Post reporter Dana Milbank’s comment one day after Murtha’s announcement that all the bitter GOP criticism was “enough to qualify Murtha for a third Purple Heart.”39 Consequently, the personal attacks directed at Murtha, notably by individuals close to the administration, began to soften after a few days. But other critics, especially on newly established Web sites, were extraordinarily harsh in their depictions of Murtha. The media watchdog organization SourceWatch listed over ten anti-Murtha Web sites on its Swiftboating John Murtha Web page. These Web sites and Internet bloggers raised questions regarding Murtha’s military service during the Vietnam War and whether he was entitled to his combat medals. Questions also began to resurface surrounding the ethical issues that had ensnarled Murtha in controversy earlier in his congressional career. The invective from some on the political Right was far removed from any accepted standard of civil discourse. Expanding on comments from her column where she had referred to Murtha as a “rumored Marine” and that he was the “reason soldiers invented fragging,” conservative author and commentator Ann Coulter told Fox’s Hannity & Colmes that if “Murtha did get fragged he would finally deserve one of those Purple hearts.”40 Democratic allies vigorously came to Murtha’s defense in the mainstream press to condemn the tactics that some of his critics had employed, and media coverage also marginalized the more vitriolic of his critics by linking them to the “swiftboating” tactics associated with John Kerry’s

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presidential campaign. The Post published a news article highlighting the questionable tactics of some conservative bloggers and Internet sites while the Times featured an opinion piece by the future Virginia senator and Vietnam veteran, James Webb, who strongly criticized what he saw as a pattern of Republican efforts to smear Democrats with what he termed “bogus allegations.”41 Discovering that charging Murtha with being unpatriotic or cowardly was generally an ineffective tactic, the Bush administration essentially settled on a media message that Murtha’s withdrawal plan was, at best, unsound and most likely dangerous. This view was reinforced by the unwillingness of most Democratic leaders in Congress, with the notable exception of House Minority Leader Pelosi, to back Murtha’s call for a quick withdrawal of forces from Iraq. In short, the efforts by Murtha’s critics to portray him as liberal, cowardly, or unpatriotic were given considerable space in the mainstream media, but, at the same time, these charges were frequently dismissed as unfair and lacking credibility. In contrast, many news articles went to considerable lengths to emphasize Murtha’s distinguished personal military service and his consistent pro-defense voting record as a member of Congress. Thus Murtha was judged a credible messenger by the media; but what did the press have to say about the legitimacy of his message, the second major theme in media reportage? FRAMING MURTHA’S ENDGAME NARRATIVE

In contrast to the Bush victory frame, Murtha’s counterframe was one of inevitable U.S. military failure in Iraq, and since he believed the presence of American troops only inflamed the insurgency, he argued that we had to withdraw combat forces as quickly as possible. For Murtha, this country’s dilemma in Iraq was that we now found ourselves mired in an unwinnable quagmire, and only a rapid redeployment of troops would start to stem the violence and reduce unnecessary American casualties. Media coverage of the endgame controversy gave legitimacy to the substance of Murtha’s argument in several ways, but it was often more supportive of his charge that we were in an unwinnable war than his call for a speedy U.S. withdrawal. The New York Times was editorially favorable to both aspects of Murtha’s proposal and published several opinion pieces in support of Murtha’s call for a rapid troop drawdown. While the Washington Post editorial pages tended not to agree with Murtha’s call for an immediate redeployment, they were equally unkind to Bush’s staythe-course policy as their editorial and opinion writers contended that neither Bush nor Murtha had a viable endgame strategy. Thus Murtha’s counterframe basically fared as well in the editorial pages of the Post as the

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administration’s frame and far better than the White House narrative in the op-ed pieces in the Times. The military soundness of Murtha’s position was highlighted both in opinion pieces suggesting that he spoke on behalf of uniformed officers and in news articles depicting his personal knowledge of and experience with defense issues. Murtha’s lengthy career in the Marines and his frequent visits overseas to combat areas as well as his regular contact with senior military officers in the Pentagon were all prominently noted and undoubtedly lent credibility to his view on Iraq. But the media also reported when authoritative sources attempted to cast doubts on his plan. For example, an article from the Post emphasized that military commanders preferred a slower withdrawal plan and saw security dangers of a rapid redeployment, noting that “U.S. military commanders, too, continue to favor a gradual, phased reduction, saying too rapid a departure would sacrifice strategic gains made over the past 30 months and provide a propaganda windfall to insurgents.”42 But despite an administration effort to encourage senior military officials to criticize Murtha publicly, only General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was quoted in the press with comments critical of Murtha, and he offered merely a mild rebuttal that the congressman’s statements were hurting military recruiting efforts.43 Nancy Pelosi was the only high-profile elected Democratic leader who publicly endorsed Murtha’s plan, but the media reported her estimate that at least half of the Democrats in Congress privately supported his call for a quick withdrawal. A further indication that Murtha had more than a modicum of congressional support came from news reports that some Democrats embraced the idea we should at least begin troop redeployments from Iraq.44 As the AP reported, Senator Biden said he “wouldn’t go as far as Murtha, but would like to see a gradual transition out of Iraq over the next two years,” a position echoed by many leading Democrats. The media also reported that some of those same Democrats did publicly agree with Murtha’s contention that the war was lost, and Democratic party chair Howard Dean was quoted in several news outlets referring to Iraq as an unwinnable quagmire equivalent to Vietnam.45 Nonetheless, because so many of Murtha’s House and Senate colleagues refused to offer a public endorsement of his proposal, a dominant news frame was that congressional Democrats were divided and lacked a unified position on Iraq. The media also emphasized Murtha’s frequent contention that public opinion supported his position. The congressman made the oft-quoted argument that the public was out in front of him on the war and had long ago lost confidence in the Bush administration’s approach to Iraq.

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Referring to his redeployment announcement, Murtha said, “The public turned against this war before I said it. The public is emotionally tied to finding a solution to this thing, and that is what I hope this administration is going to find out.”46 Several news sources, including the Times, highlighted Murtha’s claim that of the 16,000 calls and e-mails he had received, over 14,000 had been supportive of his position.47 The media even reported that Murtha had received a standing ovation at a Dallas Starbucks coffee house. Thus the media reportage strongly suggested that Murtha was indeed tapping into a strong current of public opposition to and frustration with the war, a perception backed up by evidence from numerous media-sponsored public opinion polls. But at the same time, media outlets noted that while a majority of Americans favored some sort of withdrawal timetable, as of late 2005, they were not positively predisposed toward an immediate or even a quick pullout of American troops, a position which supported the White House narrative.48 The national mainstream media also provided significant coverage of Murtha’s responses to his critics as well as his justifications for withdrawal of U.S. forces. As Murtha consistently insisted, “We cannot win this militarily. Our tactics themselves keep us from winning.”49 In an interview with Katie Couric on the NBC Today show, Murtha provided a critique of the White House policy on Iraq and his rationale for a rapid U.S. withdrawal: First of all, the way they—they lump terrorism in with insurgency. Terrorism started in Afghanistan. We had every legitimate right to go into Afghanistan. Bin Laden says he attacked Saudi Arabia because we had troops still in—in Saudi Arabia. That’s terrorism. London terrorists, Spain. But insurgency is what we are facing in Iraq, and that is the thing that bothers me. They don’t discriminate between the two.…Al-Qaeda is a world-wide police intelligence problem, but insurgency is what we are fighting. And when you fight an insurgency, you got to win the hearts and minds of the people. We’ve lost the hearts and minds of the people.50

Our problem in Iraq was not with the performance of American troops, Murtha proclaimed: “The troops have done everything. I’m so proud of the troops. But this mission is not something they can accomplish.”51 He went on to note in the Couric interview that he believed our exit from Iraq would in fact decrease the levels of violence and terrorism in that country and thus achieve our objectives far better than if we were to continue to fight. The media also indirectly legitimated Murtha’s endgame narrative by citing political leaders and other experts who criticized the president’s policy without necessarily endorsing Murtha’s position. In a typical example,

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Peter Slevin of the Post quoted Senator Barack Obama’s (D-IL) contention that Bush’s policy in Iraq was “a war without end—a war where our goals and strategies drift aimlessly, regardless of the cost in lives or dollars spent.”52 Additional criticisms of the president’s policy were voiced on the news pages and through the airwaves by senators Harry Reid, Edward Kennedy, Jack Reed, John Kerry, and others. In another indirect boost to the Murtha counterframe, an article from the Post by Dan Balz highlighted the difficult challenges ahead for the Bush administration in Iraq and cited the views of well-respected analysts John Mueller, Steven Kull, and Andrew Kohut, all of whom offered pessimistic assessments concerning the prospects for success in Iraq.53 The Times commented that the unpopularity of the war in Iraq was not only taking its toll on the Bush administration and Republicans in Congress, but that other factors had also “knocked Republicans badly off course.” Among the problems were the failed response in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, high energy prices, the indictment of Representative Tom Delay, and federal charges pending against vice presidential aide Lewis Libby.54 And finally, the media legitimated the Murtha challenge by liberally employing the historical analogy of Vietnam. Unlike Bush’s triumphalist imagery of World War II and the cold war, the media’s reportage of Murtha’s withdrawal proposal made use of a more defeatist parallel with Vietnam. A Lexis-Nexis search in the four media outlets of the phrase Iraq and Vietnam indicates a consistent utilization of the Vietnam experience as a point of reference for understanding the Iraq War. For each year between 2004 and 2007, there were approximately 700 to 1,000 mentions of Iraq in the context of Vietnam. Frequently the references to Vietnam were direct, as when some in the media referred to Murtha’s call for redeployment as a moment comparable to Walter Cronkite’s iconic on-air rebuff to Lyndon Johnson on Vietnam. Just as Cronkite’s public doubt about Vietnam signaled that Johnson had lost the support of middle America, the argument went, Murtha’s criticism demonstrated that Bush had lost the average American’s support for his Iraq policy.55 The comments by Mueller, Kull, and Kohut in the previously mentioned Post article likewise contained a number of comparisons between the downward trends in public opinion during the Vietnam War and the Iraq conflict. As that news report grimly concluded, once public support for war is lost, it is nearly impossible to recover.56 And the emotionally laden Vietnam-era term quagmire also appeared in media reportage and commentary as journalists not only presented Senator Kennedy’s and Democratic National Committee chair Dean’s explicit references to Iraq as analogous to the quagmire of

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Vietnam, but also chose to employ the term in their own discussions of the Iraq endgame debate.57 Murtha himself frequently made the linkage between the two conflicts in his public statements. As the AP reported, Murtha explained that the motivation for his proposal was simply that “I’m trying to prevent another Vietnam.”58 In an extended interview with Tim Russert on NBC’s Meet the Press, Murtha made numerous references comparing Iraq to Vietnam, including the following remark when asked if the media were distorting the good news about Iraq: “Well, they said the same thing about Vietnam. They said the same thing over and over about Vietnam. They said, ‘We’re winning the war in Vietnam.’ That—you could go back and get quotes from Vietnam, and you’d see the same kind of reports, ‘The media’s the one that’s distorting; everything going fine in Vietnam.’ Well, everything is not going fine in Iraq.”59 Other references to Vietnam were not quite as specific, but, nonetheless, the links between Iraq and Vietnam were firmly established in the media’s Murtha narrative, especially in regard to how Murtha’s Vietnam experience helped to shape his approach on Iraq. And as indicated previously, the media’s frequent references to his status as a decorated Vietnam veteran provided a strong association between the Murtha endgame frame and the historical lessons of the Vietnam War. FRAMING

THE

BUSH NARRATIVE

Elite media depictions of Murtha’s withdrawal proposal were intertwined with commentary on President Bush’s many efforts to buttress his Iraq War narrative, and the press paid close attention to the president’s speeches and news conferences throughout this two-month period. The four outlets we examined quoted Bush in nearly one-third of their Murtha-related news stories and broadcasts, but while they were careful to emphasize his major points of Iraq as central to the war on terror and our need to persevere in Iraq, the reportage contained numerous critical judgments from both the journalists themselves as well as members of Congress. Following the president’s first speech, a reporter for the Washington Post observed that “Bush did not express the unbridled confidence that he demonstrated… just over six months ago.” The paper’s analysis also included criticisms of the speech from prominent Democrats and noted that it came at a time when the president’s approval ratings had dropped to new lows.60 Similarly, in his analysis of Bush’s December 7 speech, the Post’s Peter Baker wrote that the president was yet again “refusing to set a timetable for pulling out U.S. troops.” And some of the deference usually afforded a presidential speech could well have been lost as Baker described the setting for the president’s remarks: “Only a few hundred members [of the

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Council on Foreign Relations] showed up for the hastily organized event at a Washington Hotel and empty chairs were removed from the back before Bush arrived. The audience interrupted Bush for applause only once during the speech and even then, many, if not most, did not clap.”61 While the press extensively reported on the president’s four speeches, some in the national media also noted the absence of anything really new in the president’s narrative and the repetitiveness of the message. As Dana Milbank wrote in the Post of Bush’s fall public-relations initiative, “His four Iraq speeches, though different in emphasis, were full of numbing repetition. A computer analysis of the four Iraq speeches found dozens of phrases repeated in all four. Bush invoked ‘democracy’ 83 times, ‘freedom’ 68 times, and ‘security’ 75 times. The president invoked ‘victory’ 10 times in the 30-minute address—more than the 6 victory mentions on Monday but fewer than the 11 on Dec. 7 and the 15 on Nov. 30.”62 A critical AP analysis of Bush’s December prime-time address to the nation, a speech in which he had employed particularly soaring rhetoric regarding the themes of freedom and victory in Iraq, pointed out that “there is skepticism on Capitol Hill about the U.S. military’s ability to sustain forces in Iraq indefinitely and about the ability of the Iraqis to carry the load” and that the president was “struggling to build confidence in his policy” while his “popularity has plummeted and about half of Americans think the war is a mistake.”63 Nor did Vice President Cheney escape negative reviews from the press. After he had delivered strong words of rebuttal directed at administration critics, especially John Murtha, at the American Enterprise Institute, Milbank’s analysis noted the speech’s setting and the subdued response it drew from even a supposedly friendly audience: If Cheney still has friends in Washington they are to be found at the AEI, with which his wife, Lynne, is still affiliated. Norm Ornstein and the other AEI fellows in the first two rows led a standing ovation for Cheney when he entered. Introducing Cheney, AEI President Christopher DeMuth was lavish: “We have greatly admired and hereby heartily salute the leadership and fortitude of our esteemed former colleague, who is in the arena to America’s great good fortune.” Cheney had little time for such folderol. In his 19-minute speech—aides made clear there was not even the possibility of him taking questions—he doled out the bare necessity of thanks, then stuck closely to his written text, stealing only quick glances at his largely silent audience.64

As numerous media stories reported, the Bush administration and its supporters immediately adopted the cut and run frame for Murtha’s proposal and equated his redeployment idea with defeatism and surrender.65

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A Media Matters analysis found that broadcast and cable TV news reports also adopted that label for the Senate Democrats’ November troop drawdown proposal.66 But while media reports evinced some skepticism toward Murtha’s and the Senate’s withdrawal plans and privileged the administration’s descriptor of its opponents’ perspective, national mainstream journalists were equally unconvinced that the Bush strategy of stay the course could achieve victory in Iraq. SUPPORT

FOR THE

TROOPS: THE UNASSAILABLE COMPONENT

OF THE IRAQ

ENDGAME

One final dimension of the media’s coverage of the endgame controversy merits discussion. For both the Bush victory frame and the Murtha withdrawal narrative, an unassailable element of any credible exit strategy was support for the troops. This was a highly contested and important component of the endgame coverage, as the Bush administration and its supporters sought to portray their position as supportive of the troops and Murtha’s position as serving to undermine the soldiers in the field. Typical of this sort of charge was Speaker Hastert’s reference to Murtha’s proposal as “the highest insult” to the troops.67 Additional critical comments by administration officials and members of Congress referred to Murtha’s plan as shameful and irresponsible. Majority Leader Roy Blunt (R-MO) cautioned Murtha that his proposal “only emboldens our enemies” and charged that “Democrats undermine our troops in Iraq from the security of their Washington, D.C., offices.”68 But Murtha’s strong support for the troops was a repetitive media theme as well, significantly competing with the reports of his critics. Murtha’s long pro-military legislative record, his regular visits to Walter Reed hospital, and especially his decorated Vietnam veteran status were chronicled in multiple news items. In contrast to Speaker Hastert’s comments, the press recounted the emotion surrounding Murtha’s redeployment announcement, as dramatically described by the AP: “The imposing Vietnam veteran and one of Congress’ most hawkish and influential Democrats gripped the edges of the lectern. Rep. John Murtha voice cracked and tears filled his eyes as he told of his visits with wounded U.S. troops—and called for the immediate withdrawal of their comrades in Iraq.”69 For Murtha, the most important action that could be taken on behalf of the troops in the field was to remove them from harm’s way, and that made for an enticing media storyline. Thus, Murtha possessed a compelling counterpoint to the charge that his withdrawal plan would undermine the troops in the field. The Bush and Murtha endgame narratives shared one key expectation— that major troop withdrawals would occur in 2006. The centerpiece to

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Murtha’s ambitious plan was the withdrawal of all American combat forces from Iraq within six months, with a residual rapid strike force remaining in the Middle East. Citing 2006 election pressures on Congress combined with a “broken, worn out army,” Murtha predicted, on several occasions, that most U.S. forces would be redeployed from Iraq within a year at the latest. Senators Kennedy and Kerry both called for a phased withdrawal of U.S. forces to commence after the December 2005 Iraqi election, and most leading Democrats supported the call for a timetable for the withdrawal of our forces from Iraq. And even Senator Biden, who did not support a timetable or deadline for removal of U.S. troops, predicted, nonetheless, that “50,000 troops [would] be redeployed from Iraq by the end of 2006 with the remaining 100,000 out of the country by January 2007.”70 Democrats might not have been united on the pace or timing of withdrawal, but 2006 was expected in nearly all Democratic quarters to be a year which witnessed a significant drawdown of U.S. forces. But the Bush administration’s narrative of stay the course also explicitly anticipated significant troop reductions in 2006. While the administration resisted what it referred to as “artificial” timetables for withdrawal, the Bush victory frame maintained that continued progress in Iraq would enable troop withdrawals because our forces could stand down as Iraqi forces were able to take over. The logic of the Bush narrative of winning by staying the course suggested fewer troops in Iraq during 2006, not more. Consequently, in December 2005, the New York Times could report that U.S. commanders had briefed President Bush on various scenarios for Iraq in 2006, including “drawing American troops down to about 100,000 before America elections in November.”71 Thus, at year’s end, both Democrats and Republicans would join in supporting a vague resolution identifying 2006 as a year of “significant transition in Iraq.” For the Republicans in 2006, however, staying the course would pose grave political risks in the event that progress in Iraq failed to materialize. As one senior administration official confided to the Times, “We’ve either built ourselves an exit ramp or we’ve built ourselves a box.”72 The Iraq Endgame Frame Contest As Robert Entman has noted, for a frame challenge to achieve parity with a dominant frame, both interpretations must receive roughly comparable play in the news media.73 Our analysis of mainstream media coverage of the Murtha-Bush endgame controversy indicates that both competing narratives received relatively equal amount and tone of treatment, although we would agree with the Media Matters analysis that the administration’s talking points, especially the framing of the Murtha-led

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position as cut and run and the administration’s position as stay the course, worked to its advantage during the initial stages of the endgame debate as media organizations tended uncritically to adopt the White House’s preferred label.74 Also redounding to the administration’s advantage was the congressional Democrats’ inability to reach consensus on how and when to extricate our troops from Iraq and the consistent media depictions of a party in disarray on this pressing issue. But as we have seen, the Murtha proposal, and especially Murtha himself, received significant amounts of positive coverage in both broadcast and print outlets in the weeks following the congressman’s announcement. Thus, our analysis points to significant support for an Entman-style frame contest as a useful interpretive model for understanding the nature of the media’s coverage. National outlets presented substantial reportage and commentary on the administration’s attempts to shore up its faltering victory frame in response to the Murtha counternarrative. Since this effort was led by some of the most senior members of the administration, most notably the president himself, it is hardly surprising that the media were highly attentive to this story. The often contentious and emotional nature of the story (personal insults traded between political elites) also made for dramatic news copy, and in addition to reporting the Bush administration’s rationale for staying the course, the media provided significant coverage of the criticisms leveled both at Murtha personally and at his plan for redeployment. At the same time, however, media decisions about how to depict the Murtha challenge created a more or less equal contender to a central theme of the dominant narrative, especially insofar as his redeployment proposal was intertwined with positive coverage of the identity and credibility of John Murtha himself. His personal biography as a Vietnam combat veteran and staunch supporter of the military, in combination with his down-home style and propensity to utter blunt and colorful— and eminently quotable—remarks certainly fed the media appetite for personalized and entertaining news.75 He presented a surprising and intriguing new face for the congressional opposition to the war, and his redeployment message was delivered in just the sort of direct and electrifying terms that met all of the contemporary media’s imperatives for controversy and excitement. Nor did the media view him merely an antiwar congressional gadfly in the mode of Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), for Murtha’s position on the powerful appropriations committee and his decades-long support of and ties to the military provided ample nationalsecurity gravitas in the eyes of journalists. The media responded by placing Murtha at the top of the news agenda, granting him the status of

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authoritative and believable challenger to the Bush narrative. By presenting an essentially uncritical and highly supportive assessment of his credentials as an oppositional political leader with considerable expertise on defense issues and long-standing concern for veteran affairs, the media helped to legitimize Murtha’s endgame proposal. And since Murtha was challenging the viability of the military strategy of the American commander in chief, his standing and trustworthiness to do so was an essential feature of the legitimacy of his redeployment frame. Other aspects of Murtha’s oppositional narrative lent themselves to positive media coverage as well. Most importantly, his counterframe challenged only part of the Bush narrative, namely, the victory frame in Iraq; it did not contest other components of the official narrative—the evilness of our adversaries, our duty to support the troops, or the necessity of fighting the war on terror—that still resonated positively with the American public and the mainstream media. And by late 2005, intervening events had also significantly eroded the Bush victory frame. More than two and a half years of continuing sectarian violence in Iraq had simply taken its toll on the viability of Bush’s stay-the-course strategy while creating the political and media conditions for a successful challenge. With diminishing public support and mounting criticism of its conduct of the war, the Bush administration was politically vulnerable; as a consequence, more congressional war opponents had begun to step forward, and the media were receptive to supporting at least a partial challenge to the dominant frame. John Murtha became the voice of that credible challenge, and the result in the mainstream media was a frame contest that, at least for a couple of months, came close to achieving the elusive status of frame parity. It is also useful to provide some perspective on which participants the media privileged in the Murtha-inspired endgame debate. John Murtha, not surprisingly, was frequently cited; so, too, were a handful of highranking officials in the Bush administration, especially the president. With Murtha and Bush in the starring roles, Republican and Democratic members of Congress, usually in positions of leadership on both sides of the aisle, filled out the cast of supporting characters. These powerful Washington officials were the exclusive players in this mediated drama, and thus the ensuing debate was essentially congruent with Bennett’s indexing model of media coverage, in which the press tends faithfully to report the nature of elite controversy and dissensus, but does not pose questions beyond the boundaries of established elite discourse or include nonelite or non-American perspectives.76 And in all the impassioned Washington rhetoric over the Iraq War endgame, one tenet of the administration’s frame went virtually unchallenged in the waning months of 2005: America’s need to fight the war on terror.

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THE DOG

THAT

DID NOT BARK

Representative Murtha would continue to make news over the course of 2006, for he was now established in the media and among his colleagues as one of the leading opponents of the president’s stay-the-course Iraq policy. But additional voices would be added to the growing antiwar chorus, and the intense focus on Murtha would rather quickly begin to fade. However, the significance of Murtha’s November 2005 call for a rapid withdrawal from Iraq, and the subsequent media attention it garnered, should not be underestimated in terms of its impact in moving the Iraq War endgame debate from the margins of elite discourse to center stage. Moreover, Murtha’s counterframe challenge to the Bush narrative set the discursive parameters for the endgame debate through 2006. As Michael Kinsley wrote in the Washington Post, Murtha’s biggest contribution may well have been simply that “now, thanks to Rep. John Murtha, it is permissible to say, or at least to ask, ‘Why just not get out now, or least soon on a fixed schedule?’”77 But even as he spoke in often withering terms of the Bush administration’s failed policies in Iraq and directly confronted the president’s Iraq victory frame, Murtha declined to criticize the legitimacy of our open-ended war on terror or even to raise the issue of whether such a war was still necessary. More than four years into our as-of-yet unsuccessful efforts to capture the terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden, neither Murtha nor any of his Democratic colleagues in leadership positions would deem it appropriate to offer even the most cursory of challenges to a worldview that said our battle against ascendant terrorism was the defining issue of our time. And as the senior voices in Washington’s corridors of power fell silent on this topic, so did the media spotlight and megaphone. As of the end of 2005, our botched efforts in Iraq—and the accompanying Bush narrative that Iraq was the central front in our battle against terrorism—were fair game for the increasingly numerous White House critics, but Bush’s master narrative that America’s very survival depended on winning the existential struggle for our way of life and our most cherished ideals remained unscathed.

CHAPTER 5

Confronting Chaos in Iraq If soaring declarations that America would not rest until victory was ours had been the true measure of success in Iraq, President Bush would have emerged a triumphal commander in chief by the fall of 2005. As it stood, however, he was forced to plead his case to a nation and a Congress ever more hostile to his once-compelling rationale for war and increasingly censorious of his administration’s handling of the situation in Iraq. Even members of the president’s own party would challenge several major portions of his national security agenda as the new 2006 congressional session commenced, and, as the year wore on, Iraq would descend further into sectarian conflict and chaos, a dismal state of affairs that even the most aggressive White House public relations efforts would be unable to whitewash. But it would not be for want of determined rhetorical efforts on the part of our Iraq War advocate in chief and his loyal lieutenants, and foremost among their strategies was to embed the Iraq conflict more firmly than ever within the security-and-terror frame. Acknowledging Problems, Highlighting Progress against Terrorism To make his case that we would persevere against our terrorist enemies even in the face of some unfortunate setbacks in Iraq, Bush began the sixth year of his presidency by acknowledging responsibility for mistakes his administration had made in the conduct of the war but also by adding a new discursive twist to his stay-the-course script—an insistence that we were building a track record of success and continuing to make important gains in both major fronts of the broader war on terror. In Iraq, “2005 was a year of progress toward meeting our goal of victory,” and in Afghanistan, “we’ve made steady progress on the road to democracy,” the president confidently declared in public remarks following a briefing with his national security team in early January.1 Trumpeting successes with our

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three-pronged political, military, and economic strategy for victory in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars one week later, Bush did warn that Iraqi progress toward democracy would be accompanied by “a good deal of political turmoil,” but that far from being disheartened or alarmed, we should recognize that “democracies are sometimes messy and seemingly chaotic” and that “out of the turmoil in Iraq, a free government will emerge that represents the will of the Iraqi people—instead of the will of one cruel dictator.” He reminded his audience that Iraqis had expressed their democratic aspirations in December parliamentary elections and that even though there were a number of troubling reports of electoral and political missteps, “we should welcome this for what it is—freedom in action”2 and a turning point toward stability and American success. And so the idea of hard-fought progress en route to eventual victory in our global war against terrorism became a major White House theme at the dawn of the new year—but it was accompanied by the sobering reminder that the price of progress would be mounting violence in the war-torn country of Iraq. As Bush proclaimed to the members of the VFW, numerous dangers lay ahead, but so did all the glorious promise of a lasting peace and victory over the terrorist threat: We will see more tough fighting and we will see more sacrifice in 2006, because the enemies of freedom in Iraq continue to sow violence and destruction. We’ll also see more progress toward victory. Victory will come when the terrorists and Saddamists can no longer threaten Iraq’s democracy. Victory will come when the Iraqi security forces can provide for the safety of their own citizens. Victory will come when Iraq is not a safe haven for terrorists to plot new attacks on our nation. And when victory comes and democracy takes hold in Iraq, it will serve as a model for freedom in the broader Middle East. History has shown that free nations are peaceful nations. And by helping Iraqis build a lasting democracy, we spread the hope of liberty across a troubled region, we will gain new allies in the cause of freedom. By spreading democracy and freedom, we’re laying the foundation of peace for generations to come.3

Almost three years of bad news from the Iraqi front had not dulled President Bush’s taste for optimistic oratory, but the rancorous debate over Congressman Murtha’s proposal to redeploy the troops, declining public approval for the war, a press corps attuned to controversy and conflict, and a looming midterm election also prompted the White House to go on the offensive against what it termed irresponsible, partisan, and defeatist opponents and to portray their criticism as detrimental to the safety of our troops and the security of our nation. A new issue had also burst upon the political scene in December of 2005 with the New York

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Times’s revelation of a heretofore secret National Security Agency program to tap into the communications of U.S. residents with suspected ties to al Qaeda.4 Reactions in Congress and the media were swift and furious, and the White House was forced to mount an energetic defense. In response to a reporter’s question following his New Year’s visit to wounded troops at the Brooke Army Medical Center, Bush framed the program as a sensible and invaluable measure that focused only on the actions of a few known terrorists.5 Addressing a rising chorus of critics in a mid-January speech, the president claimed that because the country was now in campaign mode for the midterm elections, honest policy disagreements about how best to confront the terrorist threat would invariably be filtered through a harsh partisan lens, a political fact of life with potentially grave consequences: We face an added challenge in the months ahead: The campaign season will soon be upon us—and that means our nation must carry on this war in an election year. There is a vigorous debate about the war…and we should not fear the debate. It’s one of the great strengths of our democracy that we can discuss our differences openly and honestly—even in times of war. Yet we must remember there is a difference between responsible and irresponsible debate—and it’s even more important to conduct this debate responsibly when American troops are risking their lives overseas.6

In his January 31 State of the Union address, a somewhat chastened and subdued Bush conceded, yet again, that we had learned from our mistakes in Iraq and had adjusted our military tactics and approach to reconstruction accordingly. And he held out a small olive branch to his congressional opponents as he announced that “to confront the great issues before us, we must act in a spirit of goodwill and respect for one another—and I will do my part.” Observing that “even tough debates can be conducted in a civil tone,” the president admitted that “we have benefitted from responsible criticism and counsel offered by members of Congress of both parties” and promised that, in the coming year, he would continue to reach out and seek good advice. But he could not resist adding this admonishment: “Yet there is a difference between responsible criticism that aims for success, and defeatism that refuses to acknowledge anything but failure. Hindsight alone is not wisdom, and second-guessing is not a strategy.”7 President Bush might have been bloodied but he was far from unbowed. Nor did the White House neglect to remind the nation that the USA PATRIOT Act, a vital weapon for combating terrorism, was currently under review in Congress and was in danger of falling prey to attacks

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driven, the president and his senior officials argued, by overt political gamesmanship. In his first formal public statement of the year, President Bush noted that Congress had passed the act by an overwhelming margin in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks but that for “partisan reasons… people have not stepped up and…agreed that it’s still necessary to protect the country.” Stating that “the enemy has not gone away,” he exhorted Congress to “give us the tools necessary to win this war” and make the antiterrorism law permanent.8 Echoing the president’s call, in mid-January, Vice President Cheney similarly declared that “lately the Patriot Act has become a victim of partisan politics,” and, in a direct rebuke to the Senate Democrats who had boasted that their filibuster had “killed” the act, affirmed that “the security of the United States needs to be above politics” and that for the safety of us all, Congress needed to reauthorize this crucial security measure immediately.9 The vice president also staunchly defended the NSA’s terrorist surveillance program against congressional opponents on both sides of the aisle who were calling it a violation of law. “Another vital requirement in the war on terror is that we use whatever means are appropriate to try to find out the intentions of the enemy,” Cheney proclaimed as he insisted that the measure entailed only the surveillance of international phone and e-mail communications, not domestic eavesdropping.10 President Bush also went public to champion the importance of the NSA program and spoke at length to an audience at Kansas State University about our need to combat the still-lurking terrorist enemy through all means available— including the interception of terrorist messages to and from this country.11 In his State of the Union address one week later, the president returned to this theme, asserting that the surveillance program had helped prevent further terrorist attacks on American soil and was absolutely essential to our security. “If there are people inside our country who are talking with al Qaeda,” he declared, “we want to know about it, because we will not sit back and wait to be hit again.” He also emphasized that the authority to “pursue the international communications of suspected al Qaeda operatives and affiliates to and from America” had been granted by statute and declared constitutional by the Supreme Court, and that his predecessors had made full use of the same constitutional authority.12 The official White House narrative was thus that the fight for our very existence against a new kind of enemy in a different kind of war necessitated every conceivable tool at our disposal, and programs some critics might see as contrary to the rule of law and detrimental to our civil liberties were in fact vital to our fight against terrorism, in no way unconstitutional, and would not curtail the civil rights of law-abiding American

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citizens. The administration’s basic argument was that the battle against the menace of terrorism entailed a multifaceted, interlocking struggle for survival, and dismantling any one component—from the war in Iraq to security measures at home—would invariably hamper our overall course toward victory. The final strand of the Bush administration’s New Year Iraq-related rhetoric was the promise that as progress on the Iraqi security and political fronts continued to move forward, we should be able to reduce our combat forces in 2006. But even as he held out that hope, Bush also emphasized that “our own generation is in a long war against a determined enemy” (emphasis added)—and, in a real nod to just how protracted the conflict would be and how thoroughly Iraq was embedded in the lengthy global fight against terrorism, he went on to add that this would be “a war that will be fought by Presidents of both parties, who will need steady bipartisan support from the Congress.”13 This was a sobering assessment, indeed, from a president who far preferred to offer public paeans to victory, but one that fit well into his broad objective of framing Iraq as one with the war on terror. Over the following several weeks, the White House engaged in its now familiar post–State of the Union routine, as Bush and his top officials first took to the road and then delivered a series of inside-the-Beltway speeches to drum up support for the administration’s message of combating terrorism and guarding America’s security—and to underscore the need to properly fund these endeavors. Their core message was a chilling reminder of the pitfalls of disengaging from the world. “In a complex and challenging time, the road of isolationism and protectionism may seem broad and inviting,” the president stated in his January 31 address, but quickly went on to warn that such a head-in-the-sand worldview inevitably “ends in danger and decline.…The only alternative to American leadership is a dramatically more dangerous and anxious world.”14 And as the administration sought to impress upon this nation the importance of a robust antiterrorism policy, sobering would become far too modest a descriptor to apply to the unfolding situation in Iraq as the country erupted into full-blown sectarian fury over the bombing of the dome of one of Shiite Islam’s most holy shrines, the Golden Mosque of Samarra. Invoking the Discourse of Terror and Security As Congress reconvened in January of 2006, expressions of domestic political fury and frustration were also most apparent on Capitol Hill as angry members of both political parties confronted yet another year with no end in sight to the increasingly bloody conflict in Iraq. And adding

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to the congressional misgivings about the war was the volatile mix of the PATRIOT Act’s renewal, the discovery of the secret NSA domestic surveillance program, and the surprise February announcement of a new Bush administration agreement to turn management operations of six major U.S. ports over to Dubai Ports World, a government-run United Arab Emirates company. The latter proposal seemed to be the proverbial straw for the backs of a number of key Republicans who responded by raising their concerns in a venue that was becoming ever more problematic for the president—the court of public opinion, with the national media sitting as presiding judge. But all would not be lost for the White House as the political skirmishing over these three explosive issues played out on the administration’s preferred discursive terrain of terror and security. NO PORTS

IN A

STORM

An opportunity simply too delectable for Bush’s congressional opposition to bypass presented itself in the issue of the Dubai Ports agreement as Democrats immediately framed the deal as a national security disasterin-the-making and an abrogation of the administration’s solemn duty to keep America safe in the age of terrorism. Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) stepped forward as his party’s lead attack dog on February 13 with these fighting words: “In our post-9/11 world, you can’t be too careful. And the fact that the United Arab Emirates, even though it is now an ally of the United States, was the place where many of the hijackers came, should ring alarm bells when we hear that a company controlled by the United Arab Emirates is in charge of security now at our ports.”15 “Our ports are major potential terrorist targets,” Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT) declared a few days later as he urged the administration to thoroughly investigate the agreement with DP World.16 Senators Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Robert Menendez (D-NJ), whose states included ports affected by the agreement, also quickly went public with strong objections as they and other Democrats availed themselves of every media opportunity to express dismay with what they labeled as the administration’s cavalier attitude toward protecting the homeland. Hastily arranged press conferences, interviews, and flurries of press releases became the order of the day, and on February 16, Schumer continued his threat-to-our-security theme with this harsh public indictment: “Outsourcing the operations of our largest ports to a country with a dubious record on terrorism is a homeland security and commerce accident waiting to happen.” He also posed the following national security query: “If a terrorist organization decided to infiltrate this company…what

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would stop them?”17 Two days later, Clinton and Menendez announced that they planned to introduce legislation to prevent any company controlled by a foreign government from buying American port operations. Calling our country’s ports “a very significant hole within our security blanket,” Menendez proclaimed, “I just don’t believe that our ports should be handed over to foreign governments,” especially not to Dubai because of its “serious and dubious history” as a transit point for terrorism.18 Senator Kerry joined in the fray, noting that the agreement raised “a lot of questions about the lobbying, the connections and the terms of the deal, and the security problems the administration has left unaddressed.”19 Kerry and other Democrats also raised the politically inflammatory issue of Dubai’s support of an Arab boycott of Israel. “This boycott not only violates at least the spirit of U.S. law,” Kerry declared, “it is inconsistent with everything we believe in as Americans.”20 Recognizing an unfolding public relations disaster for the White House and an opportunity to claim the national security high ground, Democrats had quickly reached consensus on opposition to the ports agreement and stood united in their terrorism-and-security narrative. Unfortunately for the White House, the furor over the Dubai Ports deal was thoroughly bipartisan. Many Republican members in both the House and Senate, even those from landlocked districts far from any affected port, were strongly opposed on the same national security grounds as their Democratic counterparts and frequently less restrained in their expressions of condemnation. Tom Coburn (R-OK), usually a strong and loyal Bush supporter and a senator from a state hundreds of miles from the nearest port, uttered the following understated, yet clear, warning aimed directly at the White House’s failure to live up to its post9/11 terror-and-security mantra: “Handing the keys to U.S. strategic ports to a regime that recognized the Taliban is not a sound next step in our war against terror.”21 Representative Mark Foley (R-FL), whose district bordered the port of Miami, concurred and asserted in a House speech that “the potential threat to our country is not imagined, it is real.”22 His colleague Peter King (R-NY), chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, sounded a similar cautionary note as he issued the following warning about the vetting process for Dubai Ports: “I am not convinced that the system that’s used is satisfactory in a post-9/11 world.”23 Former Republican governor of New Jersey Thomas Kean, the highly regarded chair of the 9/11 Commission, gave an even stronger public critique of the deal, telling the AP that “it should never have happened” and saying of the United Arab Emirates, “There’s no question that two of the 9/11 hijackers came from there and money was laundered through there.”24

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Even more dramatic in her rejection of the agreement was Rep. Sue Myrick (R-NC), who wrote in a one-sentence letter as emotionally intense as it was inaccurate, “Dear Mr. President: In regards [sic] to selling American ports to the United Arab Emirates, not just NO but HELL NO!”25 Her misunderstanding of the Dubai Ports arrangement notwithstanding, her fervor was shared by most GOP colleagues, as they quickly joined with the Democrats to urge the administration to put the decision on hold until it had undergone far more careful scrutiny. When the White House appeared loath to concur, Sen. Schumer and Rep. King introduced bipartisan legislation that would not only block the takeover of port operations until a national security review of its implications was conducted but also give final approval of any agreement to Congress. In a statement urging congressional hearings, Rep. Vito Fossella (R-NY) declared, “At a time when America is leading the world in the war on terrorism and spending billions of dollars to secure our homeland, we cannot cede control of strategic assets to foreign nations with spotty records on terrorism.”26 Even House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL), who had rarely broken with the president, issued the following condemnation: “We do not believe the United States should allow a government-owned company to operate American ports.”27 And in the House and Senate committee hearings that followed, both Republicans and Democrats used every opportunity to assail the ports agreement. Most members of Congress, it became quickly apparent, simply wanted the administration to scuttle the deal. Rep. King probably spoke for all his Republican colleagues when he expressed puzzlement over the White House insistence that the ports arrangement should go through: “I don’t see why the president wants to fall on his sword for the United Arab Emirates. Not in the post-9/11 world.” On NBC’s Meet the Press, he continued, “This was only 4½, five years ago that they were very close to bin Laden, they were supporting the Taliban. And unless there’s been a complete transformation, I have real concerns.”28 The congressional outcry was buttressed by expressions of outrage from a public well cued by the constant White House terror-and-security rhetoric to the ongoing threats to our homeland. Constituents across the political spectrum expressed dismay and anxiety at what they perceived to be a national security nightmare. And in an election year, members of Congress were listening and responding. “Every day, we get hundreds and hundreds of phone calls, e-mails, letters objecting to this,” House Republican Conference Chair Deborah Price of Ohio stated in early March on CNBC.29 “I’ve literally had senior citizens, little old ladies, calling my office crying about their concerns,” Rep. Debbie Wasserman

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Schultz (D-FL) informed Bush administration officials.30 “The broader issue at work here is the public’s continuing concerns over 9/11, Iraq and all things Middle Eastern as a result,” Rep. Michael Castle (R-DE) told the New York Times.31 Speaking of the reactions from his home state of Arizona, GOP Senator Jon Kyl, who was locked in a tight reelection race, noted that they were “almost all critical to dubious,” adding, “if I have to disagree with the Bush administration, I will.”32 Helping to drive the flood of constituent communications were incensed reactions across the myriad outlets of the new media—talk radio, cable news political commentary, political blogs from both ends of the ideological spectrum, and political comedy shows. The backlash from conservatives was particularly intense. Michael Savage, a popular conservative radio host with an audience of some 8 to 10 million listeners, railed against the ports agreement on his radio broadcast. “People were crazy about this; even the Bush supporters went nuts,” he explained to the New York Times.33 Castigating Bush for his decision to push ahead with the Dubai Ports deal despite “considerable conservative opposition,” an opinion piece in the right-wing Human Events Online—titled “Bush Shoots Himself in Foot With Dubai”—rhetorically queried, “How can anyone seriously argue that Dubai is our best Islamic ally in the War on Terror?” Making reference to the recent conservative firestorm over Bush’s failed Supreme Court nomination, the author, Jerome Corsi, sneeringly called the ports agreement a “Harriet Miers moment” and went on to offer this scathing critique of our supposed ally: Dubai has put up a “Welcome Here” sign for the billions of dollars the millionaire mullahs and their cronies have stolen from the Iranian people. Dubai has served as a financial center and country of transit for al Qaeda terrorists, including the hijackers who flew the airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9/11. Dubai was one of the few countries in the Middle East to openly endorse the Taliban in Afghanistan. A group known as the Dubai Action Committee for the Support of the Intifada has worked with Islamic charitable organizations to funnel funds from the United States to Hamas. The list goes on.34

On March 9, the day that Dubai Ports World finally acceded to political reality and bowed out of the deal, CNN’s outspoken populist political commentator Lou Dobbs declared that Congress had—“for the first time in recent memory”—responded to “the will of the American people.” He also labeled the action a “stunning defeat for President Bush.”35 Data from public opinion polls confirmed that the public outcry was not limited just to those who sent angry messages to members of Congress

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or vented on blogs or talk radio programs. A CBS News poll taken at the end of February found that 70 percent of Americans, including 58 percent of Republicans, believed that the UAE company should not be permitted to operate at U.S. ports, and that only 21 percent supported the arrangement.36 A Pew Research Center survey in mid-March reported comparable levels of public alarm over the prospect of an Arab-owned company managing ports in this country. This was also an issue that resonated strongly with the public, as the 41 percent who stated they were closely following news of the ports deal were almost as numerous as the 43 percent who said they were closely tracking the news from Iraq. And sounding an additional warning bell to the Bush administration, the Pew survey found that President Bush’s public approval ratings for handling terrorist threats had dropped a full eleven points since February and now stood at a bleak 42 percent.37 The elite mainstream media also elevated news about the Dubai Ports deal to the status of a major front-page and lead broadcast story from mid-February through mid-March. During that time period, the New York Times and Washington Post devoted just over two hundred news and op-ed pieces to the story as the alluring specter of congressional Republicans in open rebellion against the president on his signature issue of national security quickly translated into the favored media narrative of dissensus within the corridors of power.38 In this tale of the clash of titans inside the Beltway, journalists made liberal use of words and phrases such as political uproar, controversy, flap, political collision, resurgent tensions, political firestorm, political furor, unrest, public clash, unprecedented Republican revolt, political storm, uprising, rebellion, mutiny, rebuke, remarkable public breach, and showdown to describe the confrontation between the president and his heretofore supine legislative colleagues. The opening lines of a March 1 New York Times article that bore the title “GOP Unease Spreads to Security Issues; Port Deal Among Challenges to What Has Been Bush’s Strength” nicely encapsulated the elite outlets’ tale of a president under siege by a revolt within his own ranks: The first heading on the issues page of Rep. Mark Foley’s Web site brags that he is “one of President Bush’s strongest supporters in Congress.” The Florida Republican voted for the president’s legislation 90 percent of the time.… Now the Florida delegation’s third-strongest Bush supporter is on the front lines of the Republican revolt against the president on the deal to turn over key operations at six U.S. ports to a United Arab Emirates company. Republicans who once marched in lock step behind their president

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on national security are increasingly willing to challenge him in an area considered his political strength. The signs of GOP discontent have been building in the past few months. Dissident Republicans in Congress forced Bush to sign a measure banning torture of detainees despite his initial veto threat, blocked renewal of the USA Patriot Act until their civil liberties concerns were addressed and pressured the White House into accepting legislation on its secret eavesdropping program. By the time the ports deal came to light, the uprising was no longer limited to dissidents. “We simply want to participate and aren’t going to be PR flacks when they need us,” Foley said.39

Presaging the deal’s unfortunate outcome for the Bush administration, a February 25 Times article carried the headline “Scramble to Back Port Deal: Making of Political Disaster” and noted that the situation had “snowballed into a political disaster, one that has become a paradigm of failed crisis prevention.”40 On March 10, two days after Republicans joined with Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee to vote 62 to 2 to reverse the ports agreement, and the day after Dubai Ports World said it would transfer its operations to a U.S. entity, the AP’s headline tidily summarized the impact of the political collision in Washington: “For many fretting Republicans, Dubai port deal was final straw.”41 Just as the Bush administration’s short-lived attempt to portray the war on terror as a more nuanced, long-term struggle against ideological extremism had courted political disaster in the summer of the 2004 presidential campaign, so did its more subtle arguments in defense of the Dubai Ports agreement at the start-up of the 2006 midterm congressional campaign season. Painted into a rhetorical corner by its dramatic, emotional—and highly resonant—framing of terrorism’s menace, the White House found itself a prisoner of its own rhetorical devices as it fought to explain why this particular agreement would not increase the likelihood of another act of terror. The administration trotted out a series of what it hoped would be persuasive arguments—the agreement had been “rigorously reviewed” by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (a little known, secretive panel composed of the leaders of twelve federal agencies headed by the treasury secretary) and was found to pose no security threat; Dubai Ports would not entirely control any port and would be subject to any U.S. laws that apply to port security; its U.S. dock workers would be union members who had to undergo background checks; U.S. port authorities and the Coast Guard would be responsible for security at the ports; the UAE was a vital partner in our fight against terrorism; and criticism of the agreement had racial overtones and

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overturning it would send a message to the entire Arab world that it was not to be trusted no matter how loyal an ally any country had been. The mounting chorus of critics, however, merely threw Bush’s discourse of terror right back in the administration’s collective face. Primed by more than four and a half years of constant repetition of the Bush terrorism-and-security mantra, members of Congress from both parties, the American public, and media outlets both traditional and new had a ready rebuttal—and one that had come straight from the White House: this deal would endanger the American homeland and place us in heightened peril from another terrorist attack. Not one of the Bush administration’s arguments about why we should accept the ports agreement could match the clarity or resonance of the message about confronting terrorism that the president and his team had been so assiduously espousing since the attacks of 9/11. The direction of rhetorical coercion was now reversed, and in an instance of what some might call exquisite irony, the White House had fallen victim to its own rhetorical success in framing the war on terror as the defining issue of our time. As a February 22 New York Times editorial illustrated, there was no way the president would be able to extricate the Dubai Ports deal from his still dominant terror discourse: Congress is right to resist the ports deal.…The issue is not, as Mr. Bush is now claiming, a question of bias against a Middle Eastern company. The United Arab Emirates is an ally, but its record in the war on terror is mixed. It is not irrational for the United States to resist putting port operations, perhaps the most vulnerable part of the security infrastructure, under that country’s control.… The Bush administration has followed a disturbing pattern in its approach to the war on terror. It has been perpetually willing to sacrifice individual rights in favor of security. But it has been loath to do the same thing when it comes to business interests…The ports deal is another decision that has made the corporations involved happy, and has made ordinary Americans worry about whether they are being adequately protected.42

The Bush administration’s only saving grace was that DP World’s decision to drop the agreement averted a showdown with Congress and an even further erosion of the president’s approval ratings on handling terrorism. And perhaps the knowledge that this nation had so thoroughly internalized the discourse of terror that not even the White House could pierce its rhetorical armor offered a measure of consolation as the members of the Bush team took stock, licked their wounds, and prepared for yet more confrontations over their other security initiatives and a war that was becoming more chaotic by the day.

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TERRORISM, ROUND TWO

While the discourse of terror trapped the Bush administration in a rhetorical box over the Dubai Ports agreement, it served the White House well in the two other—arguably, more central—homeland security battles it was simultaneously waging in the spring of 2006 over the National Security Agency’s surveillance program and the USA PATRIOT Act. Once again facing considerable congressional opposition and an elite press whose antennae were more carefully attuned than ever to the intensifying clashes between the executive and legislative branches, the president and his lieutenants employed the terror-and-security frame to redirect the debate and distance both initiatives from charges that they were abrogating basic civil liberties. The administration might have lost round one of the policy battles over keeping America safe in the age of terror, but they redoubled their efforts to insure victory in this second round. Contrasts in language between the two sides were stark in the struggle over the NSA program, as the president cast it as a terrorist surveillance program designed to keep the nation secure while his congressional and civil libertarian opponents leapt upon the terms spying, domestic eavesdropping, and warrantless wiretapping as the appropriate labels for an intrusive program they considered both illegal and unconstitutional. The hands-down winners in media reportage and commentary were the opposition’s descriptors, with eavesdropping and wiretapping capturing the media terminology sweepstakes as journalists generally avoided Bush’s preferred labels except when paraphrasing or directly quoting him. As we have seen, the president began the year with an energetic and impassioned defense of the surveillance program, delivering a series of major speeches and making the rounds of television interview programs. Unlike the Dubai Ports agreement—and to the administration’s good fortune—this debate played out on familiar partisan turf, with Republicans marshalling their forces behind Bush’s clear and forceful depiction of the program as a “vital” defense tool imperative to stopping terrorism while Democrats were forced to explain the more nuanced civil libertarian position.43 And the media assumed their usual position as the contest’s scorekeeper. A New York Times/CBS News poll on the eve of Bush’s State of the Union address indicated that the White House narrative was having the intended public impact as 53 percent of respondents said they supported warrantless eavesdropping “in order to reduce the threat of terrorism.”44 Compelling evidence of the terrorism frame’s key role in shaping public attitudes came when the question was stripped of any mention of terrorism and the percent of respondents approving the wiretapping program

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dropped to 46 percent. While the survey revealed some clear apprehension about the program (70 percent said they would not support monitoring the communications of “ordinary Americans”), more than two-thirds stated that they would be willing to support surveillance of “Americans the government is suspicious of.”45 A Pew survey also found a six-percentage-point shift in public opinion toward the administration’s position in the aftermath of Bush’s intensive January public relations campaign.46 The perceived need to guard the safety of the homeland became the bedrock of public support, and critics of electronic eavesdropping were unable to shape the debate to counter the majority public belief that while government monitoring without court permission was an unacceptable intrusion into the lives of law-abiding citizens, it was an appropriate measure in the case of suspected terrorists. In a Pew survey one month before the midterm elections, public support was almost unchanged from late January, with 54 percent stating that government surveillance of suspected terrorists without court permission was “generally right” and 41 percent disagreeing.47 Even in the aftermath of their fall electoral victories, the Democrats could not wrest control of this issue and, after much congressional wrangling, they made concessions that gave the administration most of the surveillance authority it sought. As the New York Times concluded, “For all the sound and fury in the last year, the National Security Agency’s wiretapping program continues uninterrupted, with no definitive action by either Congress or the courts on what, if anything, to do about it, and little chance of a breakthrough in the lame-duck Congress.”48 The administration also cloaked its PATRIOT Act defense in the mantle of security and antiterrorism and, in so doing, was able—with minor modifications in judicial oversight that satisfied most of the moderate Democrats and the handful of wavering congressional Republicans—to win reauthorization of a law that enabled federal agents secretly to tap phones, obtain library and bank records, and search the homes of terrorism suspects. A Pew survey in early January found that the public was evenly divided in its view of the act, with 39 percent saying it was a necessary tool to fight terrorism and 38 percent believing that it went too far and was a threat to civil liberties.49 But in sharp contrast to its reaction to the Dubai Ports issue, the public raised no significant outcry over this legislation, and media coverage focused on the failure of congressional opponents to mount a sustained attack on the law’s reach. Once again, the major press narrative would become the capitulation of the Democrats. A March 7 news article in the Washington Post bearing the title “A Tame End to Patriot Act Debate” noted that the battle ended “with a whimper” as

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the House followed the Senate’s lead and voted to reauthorize the legislation. The following day, the Times would depict the outcome of this “last step in a tortuous journey through Congress” as “an important victory for Mr. Bush, who has maintained that the act is an essential component in fighting terrorism.”50 And in the bill-signing ceremony, the president reminded his audience not only that this was a piece of legislation “vital to win[ning] the war on terror and protect[ing] the American people,” but also that we must remain ever vigilant about the ongoing threat of terrorism: “The Patriot Act has served America well, yet we cannot let the fact that America has not been attacked since September the 11th lull us into the illusion that the terrorist threat has disappeared. We still face dangerous enemies. The terrorists haven’t lost the will or the ability to kill innocent folks. Our military, law enforcement, homeland security and intelligence professionals are working day and night to protect us from this threat. We’re safer for their efforts, and we’ll continue to give them the tools to get the job done.”51 Since the fall of 2001, the Bush administration had been able to realize some important rhetorical, policy, and electoral victories when its initiatives were in line with its master terror-and-security narrative, but that record of success would undergo a severe test as a seemingly unending stream of highly negative news from Iraq continued to erode the reservoir of support the president had been able to maintain on his signature issue of terrorism. The White House was about to learn that the deteriorating situation in Iraq would quickly overwhelm its core message of keeping us safe from the terrorist menace. Sectarian Strife or Civil War? Ten days after the bombing of the sacred Shiite shrine in Samarra and the outbreak of fierce sectarian fighting that had taken hundreds of civilian lives, General George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, stated in a Pentagon news briefing via teleconference from Iraq, “It appears that the crisis has passed.”52 But Casey cautioned that violence could erupt again and that civil war, although unlikely, remained a possibility. Testifying that same week before a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on the administration’s emergency war funding request, Secretary Rumsfeld was berated by the committee’s ranking Democrat, Robert Byrd, over the war’s downward spiral. Pressed for assurances that emergency money “won’t be used to put our troops right in the middle of a full-blown Iraqi civil war,” Rumsfeld replied that “the plan is to prevent a civil war,” a sentiment echoed by General John Abizaid, the senior American commander

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in the Middle East, who told the committee that with American support, Iraqi forces could accomplish that critical goal.53 But a mere two days later, six car bombs exploded in the Sadr City neighborhood of Baghdad, killing at least fifty and wounding more than two hundred others. Smaller outbreaks of violence had preceded this latest large-scale incident, and the sectarian chaos erupting in and around Baghdad mirrored the volatile political situation in Iraq as leaders of the country’s various political blocs appeared unable to reach any agreement over forming a government or nominating a prime minister.54 Faced with this rapidly escalating violence, President Bush once more employed his strategy of going public, and in a series of speeches, interviews, and press releases throughout March and April, ardently defended his stay-the-course strategy as the only path to guaranteeing America’s security in a time of terror. Before the National Newspaper Association Conference in Washington, the president stated, “We’re at war. I wish I could report to you we weren’t at war; we are. There’s an enemy that still lurks, that would like to do serious harm to the United States.” Reminding the audience of his 9/11 vow to “secure this homeland,” Bush emphasized that removing Saddam had been a central component of his strategy to be proactive and not allow any terrorist threat to materialize.55 Adhering to the public relations credo of message repetition and consistency, White House officials carefully retold this narrative in a variety of settings and supplemented their spoken words with The President’s National Security Strategy, a document that spelled out the security policies and priorities of a nation facing the “grave challenge” of the “rise of terrorism fueled by an aggressive ideology of hatred and murder.”56 A key element of the administration’s latest public relations initiative was also combining odes to optimism with firm denials that Iraq had descended into civil war. Highlighting the positive about Iraq at the unlikely venue of a briefing by the Joint Task Force on Defeating Improvised Explosive Devices, Bush insisted that his sanguine view was based upon “reality on the ground,” in particular, the failed efforts to foment sectarian violence. Noting that “some have called it a civil war,” he defiantly declared, “But it didn’t work.”57 To a gathering of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, an organization supportive of the administration’s efforts to combat terrorism, Bush argued that the terrorists who attacked the Golden Mosque did so because their only hope to succeed in Iraq was to provoke a civil war. But, the president continued, they failed to accomplish that heinous objective: “Iraq faced a moment of choosing—and in the days that followed, the Iraqi people made their choice.

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They looked into the abyss and did not like what they saw.…By their responses over the past two weeks, Iraqis have shown the world they want a future of freedom and peace.”58 In the days leading up to the third anniversary of Operation Iraqi Freedom, news reports were filled with White House visions of Iraqi glasses half full as the president and his team spread out across numerous media outlets repeating the message that despite the horrific images from Iraq, significant military and political progress was being made. Casting a rosy glow on the escalating violence in Iraq, Vice President Cheney delivered a brief but pointed history and politics lesson to host Bob Schieffer on CBS’s Face the Nation: Bob, it took us a lot longer to put an effective government together when we tried to do it 200 years ago than it has taken the Iraqis. It’s remarkable when you think about a group of people who have been under the heavy hand of oppression for 35 years, with Saddam Hussein, one of the bloodiest dictators in modern times, slaughtered hundreds of thousands of his own people, started two wars, used weapons of mass destruction against his own folks, to emerge from that as effectively as they have in as short a period of time as they have. Yes, there’s continuing violence. Why? There’s continuing violence because our adversaries understand what’s at stake here, because they know that if we’re successful in establishing a democratic government in Iraq, that’s going to put enormous pressure in that part of the world on all of those other regimes and governments. It offers a counter to the bloody ideology that Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda organizations have tried to perpetrate throughout that part of the world.59

Just as succinctly summarizing Iraq’s political and security advances in a Washington Post opinion piece titled “What We’ve Gained in 3 Years in Iraq,” Secretary Rumsfeld argued that even though the daily headlines highlighted the negative and sensational, the “bigger picture” of history would one day provide an accurate perspective on the true progress we were making. But there was no need to await that long-term judgment, he declared, for “anyone looking realistically at the world today—at the terrorist threat we face—can come to only one conclusion: Now is the time for resolve, not retreat.”60 Addressing the City Club of Cleveland one day later, President Bush acknowledged that Iraq had been more difficult than we had anticipated and we had been forced to adjust our strategy, but then insisted that failure to confront the enemy in Iraq would have proven far more problematic:

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The last three years have tested our resolve. The fighting has been tough. The enemy we face has proved to be brutal and relentless. We’re adapting our approach to reflect the hard realities on the ground.… The terrorists who are setting off bombs in mosques and markets in Iraq share the same hateful ideology as the terrorists who attacked us on September the 11th, 2001, those who blew up commuters in London and Madrid, and those who murdered tourists in Bali, or workers in Riyadh, or guests at a wedding in Amman, Jordan. In the war on terror we face a global enemy—and if we were not fighting this enemy in Iraq, they would not be idle. They would be plotting and trying to kill Americans across the world and within our own borders.61

And in a morning press conference the following day, the president used the word progress four times in opening remarks about Iraq as he implored the public to recognize that “for every act of violence there is encouraging progress in Iraq that’s hard to capture on the evening news.”62 It certainly did not help, however, to have the former interim Iraqi prime minister, Ayad Allawi, simultaneously issue the public declaration that “if this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is.”63 For the next two months, in the face of news from Iraq—both discouraging (reports of rising casualties from improvised explosive devices and the revelation of Marine shootings of unarmed Iraqi civilians at Haditha) and encouraging (the formation of an Iraqi constitutional government under the newly appointed prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki)—President Bush and his senior officials spread the words of hope across America, always focusing on the core theme that military and political progress in Iraq had produced a new, invaluable ally that would be key to our ultimate victory over global terrorism. On May 1, the third anniversary of “mission accomplished,” Bush announced that the new government marked “a turning point” and that we would work together to “achieve a victory in this war on terror.”64 The administration’s spring public relations offensive culminated in the president’s May commencement address at West Point. Drawing clear comparisons between the challenges President Truman confronted at the dawn of the cold war and those he had faced since 9/11, Bush situated Iraq within a “long war with Islamic radicalism” that was comparable to the “ideological struggle between tyranny and freedom” we faced for more than thirty years in the latter part of the twentieth century. Just as in the cold war, we were “fighting the followers of a murderous ideology” who believed that “the innocent can be murdered to serve a political vision” and sought “weapons of mass murder that would allow them to deliver catastrophic destruction to our country.”65 But the president also drew some stark contrasts between this

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global conflict and all that had come before: “The enemies we face today are different in many ways from the enemy we faced in the Cold War. In the Cold War, we deterred Soviet aggression through a policy of mutually assured destruction. Unlike the Soviet Union, the terrorist enemies we face today hide in caves and shadows—and emerge to attack free nations from within. The terrorists have no borders to protect, or capital to defend. They cannot be deterred—but they will be defeated.”66 Bush concluded with a reminder to the Class of 2006 that we were still in the early stages of “this struggle for freedom” and that even though the “great struggle” would not end while he was president, “it’s going to end on your watch. Your generation will bring us victory in the war on terror.”67 Even the Iraq War cheerleader in chief could not gloss over the chilling reality that war in the age of terror would be a very protracted affair. THE DEMOCRATS MOUNT

AN

OFFENSE

The administration’s 2006 Iraq War rhetoric may have been just as clear, concise, and consistent as ever but it was failing to make a compelling case to congressional Democrats and the American public. As the war headed into its fourth year, the White House’s argument that Iraq was one with the war on terror was no longer resonating with a majority of its audience. In his March interview with the vice president, Bob Schieffer read a portion of a statement that Senator Kennedy had issued on the war’s third anniversary. Its tone and content reflected the intensifying congressional discontent: “It is clearer than ever that Iraq was a war we never should have fought. The administration has been dangerously incompetent. And its Iraq policy is not worthy of the sacrifice of our men and women in uniform. Yet President Bush continues to see the war through the same rose-colored glasses he has always used. He assures the American people we are winning, while Iraq’s future and the lives of our troops hang so perilously on the precipice of a new disaster.”68 Sensing widening cracks in Bush’s national security frame, the Democrats ramped up their attacks on the administration’s failures both to manage the central front in the war on terror and protect the homeland. In recognition of the need to keep America secure from terrorism, and seeking to demonstrate that they had viable national security alternatives, Democratic leaders in Congress issued a set of policy papers titled Real Security: Protecting America and Restoring Our Leadership in the World. Carefully avoiding the divisive issue of a specific timetable for troop withdrawals, the proposals called for the “responsible redeployment of U.S. forces” and also included demands for increased military, economic development, homeland safety, and veterans’ benefits expenditures.69

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Capitalizing on the constant stream of bad news from Iraq, prominent Democrats also took to the airwaves and the op-ed pages of leading newspapers to highlight the administration’s many missteps and present their own initiatives. Illustrative of these promotional and policy exercises was Senator Kerry’s April New York Times opinion piece. Drawing an explicit parallel with Vietnam, Kerry wrote that “half of the service members listed on the Vietnam Memorial Wall died after America’s leaders knew our strategy would not work. It was immoral then and it would be immoral now to engage in the same delusion.”70 He went on to argue that the only way to extricate our troops from “the middle of an escalating civil war” was to “get tough” with the Iraqis and set two deadlines—the first for Iraq’s squabbling leaders to reach genuine political and security agreements by mid May, and the second, to establish a schedule by the end of the year for our troops to begin the process of withdrawal. “No American soldiers should be sacrificed,” he declared, “because Iraqi politicians refuse to resolve their ethnic and political differences.”71 The Bush administration had now been placed in the awkward position of publicly defending the very leaders whose failures to act had already been the subject of much behind-the-scenes White House pressure. Adopting the approach that the best defense is a good offense, in early June, congressional Republicans sought to turn the news of the death of al-Zarqawi, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, to their political advantage by sharpening their attacks against the Democrats as soft on terrorism. GOP House leaders prepared for a week of legislative maneuvers that culminated in a vote on a Republican resolution promising to “complete the mission” in Iraq, prevail in the global war against terrorism, and oppose any “arbitrary date for the withdrawal or redeployment of U.S. armed forces from Iraq.” When the motion passed on a mostly party-line vote, Republicans framed it as a “contest of ideas about our national security policies versus theirs—ours strong and aggressive, theirs weak and incoherent”; furious Democrats assailed it as “an affirmation of President Bush’s failed policy in Iraq.”72 An energized president also stepped up his midterm campaign rhetoric and travels. Noting that his course in Iraq was correct, Bush vowed to “keep talking about it and talking about it,” and declared to supporters in Albuquerque that “we will not cut and run.” The White House confirmed Iraq would take center stage that fall: “The war is going to be the backdrop of every campaign,” counselor Dan Bartlett confidently proclaimed.73 These were prescient words the Republicans would soon come to regret as their Democratic opponents, heartened by the increasingly negative turn

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that public opinion was taking on Iraq, were only too pleased to make precisely the same pledge. In midsummer, Democrats in both houses finally united in calling on Bush to begin the drawdown process. A July 30 letter to the president signed by leaders Reid and Pelosi, as well as ten other top Democrats including senators Biden and Levin and Representative Murtha, stated that far from being the comprehensive “strategy for victory” Bush had promised months ago, the administration’s strategy appeared merely to be one of “trying to avoid defeat.” Declaring that the country could not afford to pay the high price of waiting as the White House searched for a policy, the Democrats offered their own: a phased troop redeployment to commence before the end of 2006, with remaining U.S. forces transitioning to a more limited mission focused on counterterrorism, training and logistical support, and force protection of U.S. personnel. And this military policy had to be linked to significant political progress in Iraq. The letter concluded with these stark words: “Mr. President, simply staying the course in Iraq is not working. We need to take a new direction.”74 By the time the letter was released, Republican lawmakers were already beginning to edge away from their wholehearted embrace of war in Iraq and starting to shift their optimistic message of progress to one of acknowledging difficulties and mistakes made in the war’s planning and execution.75 And their declining spirits could hardly have been lifted by a blunt warning from General Abizaid that “the sectarian violence is probably as bad as I’ve seen it, in Baghdad in particular, and that if not stopped, it is possible that Iraq could move towards civil war.”76 THE PUBLIC MOOD TURNS BLEAKER

As 2006 began, the Pew Research Center reported mixed trends in U.S. public opinion about Iraq: the war was still viewed as the single most important national problem and public attention to it was high, but Americans remained split on the decision to go to war and on the question of what to do now. On the plus side, a majority believed that we were making progress in training Iraqi forces, establishing a democracy, rebuilding Iraqi infrastructure, and preventing Iraq from being used as a terrorist base; and, by a slight margin, the public felt Iraq had helped more than harmed the war on terror. But they were less sanguine about progress in defeating the insurgents, preventing a civil war, and reducing civilian casualties. In addition, the number who favored withdrawal of U.S. troops as soon as possible was slowly climbing and now stood at 48 percent.77 Also of concern to Republicans were the president’s approval numbers, which, as of early January, stood at a mere 38 percent. Nor

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could they take comfort in the public’s perception that the Democrats were better able to handle Iraq, the country’s most pressing problem. And even the public’s evaluations of the administration’s handling of terrorism had turned lukewarm.78 By March, in the wake of the failed Dubai Ports initiative, the president’s overall approval ratings had declined to 33 percent, the lowest of his presidency, and, as we have seen, his ratings on handling terrorist threats had also declined eleven points in one month. Particularly worrisome were the words respondents now employed to describe the president: almost 50 percent used a negative term, with incompetent, idiot, and liar the most common descriptors, a marked downward shift from the more positive evaluations of previous years.79 And on the eve of the war’s third anniversary, the public’s mood about the war was becoming decidedly more pessimistic, as the number who said that we were “losing ground” in preventing a civil war, defeating the insurgents, establishing a democracy, and preventing terrorist bases in Iraq had increased between eleven and eighteen percentage points since January, and the number who favored a timetable for troop withdrawal had climbed to 55 percent.80 While the news about al-Zarqawi’s demise did cause a brief supportive public opinion bump in June, a plurality of respondents did not believe that the event would have any lasting effect on the situation in Iraq, and baseline attitudes about whether we should bring the troops home as soon as possible or maintain them until Iraq had stabilized remained unchanged and closely split. Researchers also noted the continuation of a sharp partisan divide in support for the conflict, with 83 percent of Republicans saying that the decision to go to war was the right one, and only 24 percent of Democrats concurring. A similar divide on whether to keep troops in Iraq was also apparent, as 72 percent of Republicans but only 31 percent of Democrats agreed. And whereas 75 percent of Republicans thought the military effort was going very or fairly well, only 37 percent of Democrats shared that view. The partisan split on whether war in Iraq had helped the war on terrorism was equally wide. Even the small June increase in Bush’s overall approval ratings from 33 to 36 percent was merely the result of an eight-point bump among conservative Republicans.81 As presidential scholars George C. Edwards and Desmond King pointed out, Bush was the most polarizing president in polling history even prior to the Iraq War, and his already apparent partisan gap widened into a gaping chasm after hostilities against Saddam commenced.82 Edwards also found that Bush was preaching more and more to the already supportive choir as the Iraq conflict wore on. By the time of his

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2006 State of the Union address, audiences for the president’s televised speeches had significantly decreased in size, with Republicans far more likely than Democrats and Independents to watch his appearances and heed his messages.83 The late summer report of a terrorist plot against U.S. transatlantic airliners and the outbreak of war in Lebanon also did little to change American public attitudes about the president and the Iraq conflict. A Pew survey in August reported that Bush’s approval ratings stood at 37 percent and that about half of the respondents still gave him negative ratings on leadership and trustworthiness. The president’s best ratings continued to appear on his signature issue of handling terrorism (50 percent approved), but the salience of terrorism had decreased, with only 2 percent citing it as the issue they most wanted to be discussed in the campaign. And as a harbinger of negative campaign news to come, the survey also revealed some notable divisions among Republicans over the issue of a troop withdrawal, with about twice as many moderate and liberal Republicans as conservatives now favoring redeployment as soon as possible. Democrats across the ideological spectrum coalesced around the idea of an expedited drawdown, an indicator of party unity that boded well for the rapidly approaching midterm elections.84 Given all these numbers, it would not take a Democratic Party profile in courage to nationalize the campaign message and attempt to make the elections a referendum on Iraq. IRAQ

AS

WAR

ON

TERROR?

As the fifth anniversary of 9/11 drew near, President Bush intensified his efforts to embed Iraq in the terror-and-security frame and make the upcoming congressional elections a referendum on the broader war on terror. Starting in late August, he delivered a series of speeches designed to subsume the conflict in Iraq under the rubric of the “first war of the 21st century,” our global struggle against terrorism.85 Reprising his post-9/11 discourse of good versus evil, Bush presented his vision of a nation still under siege by “men without conscience”—evil and ambitious individuals who, like the Nazis and communists of the last century, had a plan for world domination and the determination to wreak whatever havoc necessary to achieve their dreadful ends.86 Reminding the American public of all that we had accomplished in our war against the terrorists and the work that still remained to be done, Bush elaborated upon the strategy that would lead us to eventual victory. Essential to our success, he insisted in a September 6 speech to 9/11 families, was for Congress to pass legislation authorizing military commissions to prosecute those being held for the terrorist atrocities of the past decade. His language was particularly impassioned:

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The terrorists who declared war on America represent no nation, they defend no territory, and they wear no uniform. They do not mass armies on borders, or flotillas of warships on the high seas. They operate in the shadows of society; they send small teams of operatives to infiltrate free nations; they live quietly among their victims; they conspire in secret, and then they strike without warning. In this new war, the most important source of information on where the terrorists are hiding and what they are planning is the terrorists, themselves. Captured terrorists have unique knowledge about how terrorist networks operate. They have knowledge about what plots are underway. This…is intelligence that cannot be found any other place. And our security depends on getting this kind of information. To win the war on terror, we must be able to detain, question, and, when appropriate, prosecute terrorists captured here in America, and on the battlefields around the world.87

On September 11, in a prime-time address to the nation, Bush let loose all the oratorical powers of the bully pulpit. Invoking “the face of evil,” he proclaimed—as he had so often over the past five years—that the terrorist enemy represented a “totalitarian ideology” that kills “without mercy,” “hates freedom, rejects tolerance, and despises all dissent.” Hence, war against this enemy “is more than a military conflict. It is the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century, and the calling of our generation.”88 Noting that “America has confronted evil before, and we have defeated it,” the president called upon his fellow citizens to fight this “struggle for civilization” with “every element of national power,” knowing that while we are just “in the early hours of this struggle between tyranny and freedom,” we will “work together to meet the test that history has given us. We will defeat our enemies. We will protect our people. And we will lead the 21st century into a shining age of human liberty.”89 Quite an inspirational mouthful—but one that was about to confront a two-pronged dose of harsh reality: a newly declassified National Intelligence Estimate that concluded war in Iraq was fueling a global jihadist movement and creating terrorists faster than we were able to kill or capture them, and a book by best-selling author Bob Woodward that painted a portrait of a White House in dysfunctional denial about the deteriorating situation in Iraq.90 The White House refuted both these charges in a series of public appearances by senior administration officials; it also posted detailed rebuttals on its official Web site.91 But the president’s major rhetorical tactic was to affix Iraq to our broader struggle against terrorism. With Election Day drawing closer and news from Iraq growing ever more dismal, Bush responded by intensifying his campaign offensive against the Democrats, barnstorming across the country to provide support to increasingly worried and disgruntled GOP congressional candidates. Honing in

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on the Democrats’ opposition to the PATRIOT Act, warrantless surveillance of suspected terrorists, and the creation of military tribunals to try terror detainees, Bush tarred his congressional opponents with the brush of terrorist appeasement. In an October 3 campaign stop in California, he mockingly declared, “Time and time again, the Democrats want to have it both ways. They talk tough on terror, but when it comes time—when their votes are counted, their softer side comes out.” Noting Democratic leader Pelosi’s words that “this election shouldn’t be about national security,” Bush strongly demurred: “Well, I think it’s about national security, and I think that when the people take a good look about the dangers confronting the United States of America, they’ll think it’s about national security. Democrats take a law enforcement approach to terrorism that means America will wait until we’re attacked again to respond. That’s kind of a pre-9/11 mentality, and it’s not going to make this country any safer.”92 In rallies around the country over the next several weeks, the president repeated these words essentially verbatim as he drove home the theme that the Democrats neither would nor could keep America secure. But while this tough rhetoric may have helped persuade Congress to extend the NSA wiretapping program and win passage of a bill authorizing military tribunals and coercive methods of interrogation, it failed to convince a majority of the American public that his strategy in Iraq was either appropriate or effective. It also failed to keep Democratic candidates from incessantly hammering their GOP opponents on Bush’s failed policies in Iraq. As preelection opinion polls reported, the Democrats were succeeding in their twin goals of framing Iraq as the premier voting issue and uncoupling it from our wider battle against terrorism. A Pew survey from early October found that even though terrorism was the leading issue for 57 percent of Republican voters, Iraq was even more central to Democratic voters, with 68 percent stating that it was the top national issue. And Independents also viewed Iraq as a more important issue than terrorism by a margin of 50 to 33 percent.93 As the Democrats unveiled their slogan of a New Direction for Iraq, even the president seemed to recognize that the constant mantra of stay the course was not having the desired effect, telling ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos, “Listen, we’ve never been stay the course, George. We have been—we will complete the mission, we will do our job and help achieve the goal, but we’re constantly adjusting the tactics. Constantly.”94 The following week, White House press secretary Tony Snow declared—with blatant disregard of the Bush administration’s previous discourse—that our Iraq policy actually was “not ‘stay the

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course,’ but in fact a study in constant motion by the administration.”95 Striving to replace the ossified and increasingly vilified phrase, the administration turned to flexibility, meeting benchmarks, and not leaving before the job is done as their newly favored policy descriptors. The White House should have realized by this point that such nuanced rhetorical shifts had consistently proven to be their worst discursive nightmare. As linguistics expert George Lakoff argued in the New York Times, the powerful, emotionally resonant stay-the-course metaphor evoked a steadfast, decisive, and moral path of action, and negating it implied that the president was lacking in character, strength, and purpose, unable to complete the divinely ordained mission of a war against evil.96 Bush was once again trapped by his own discourse of terror and security, placed in the no-win situation of either defending a failed policy or abandoning his moral authority.97 As could only have been expected, the Democrats seized upon this rhetorical volte-face and declared it to be an act of political desperation. In the words of Senator Levin, “This is a struggle on the part of the administration to look as though they’re really trying to change course without saying they’re changing course. The congressional elections will be a referendum on Iraq policy to a significant degree.”98 And as exit polls from the day the Republicans lost control of both houses of Congress indicated, while the president had succeeded in impressing the threat of terrorism on public mind, he had failed to persuade most Democrats and Independents of two essential things: that the war in Iraq had improved U.S. security and that Republicans would make us safer from terrorism. Concern about Iraq had trumped fear about terrorism; in the words of Pew Research Center director Andrew Kohut, “Discontent with Iraq has taken terrorism off the table for the Republicans.”99 THE MEDIA’S CAMPAIGN-AS-WAR NARRATIVE

Media organizations had been carefully charting the course of war in Iraq and the midterm elections throughout the summer, and by the traditional start of the fall campaign season, were employing their favored conflict and horserace narratives as they merged coverage of the congressional campaigns with that of the political struggle over Iraq. The media storyline centered on whose depiction of Iraq would win out in November—the president’s frame of Iraq-as-war-on-terror or the Democrats’ frame of Iraq-as-hopeless-quagmire and dangerous distraction from the wider war on terror. The elite media were particularly attentive to Bush’s rhetoric and the responses it drew from Congress, shaping a dramatic narrative of the challenges to a president’s hubris, culpability, and intransigence that would ultimately result in resounding defeat for the White House.

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A small sampling of Washington Post and New York Times news headlines from the six weeks prior to Election Day provides a synopsis of the media’s tale of a beleaguered president fighting to control the agenda against a rising tide of bipartisan congressional criticism: “Democrats Focus on Terrorism Report in Attacks on Bush; Lawmakers Challenge Assertion of Safer World”; “Waging the War on Terror: Report Belies Optimistic View”; “New Woodward Book Says Bush Ignored Urgent Warning on Iraq”; “Bush Faces a Battery of Ugly Choices on War Tactics, if Not on Strategy”; “Tables Turned on the GOP Over Iraq Issue”; “Bush’s Gamble: Turning the Spotlight on the Iraq War as Republicans Try to Dim It”; “Conceding Missteps, Bush Urges Patience on Iraq”; and “Tipping Point for War’s Supporters? In Past Month, Even Stalwarts Have Called for Change in Iraq Policy.” Accompanying the media narrative of the intensifying contest between an embattled president and his congressional adversaries was the related press storyline of a leader whose terror-and-security frame was failing to gain traction with the public. Reporting results from their commissioned polls, elite media outlets chronicled the Republicans’ downward trajectory and underlined the extent to which war in Iraq had framed the elections. In late August, the Times noted that its latest poll revealed Americans increasingly saw the war in Iraq as distinct from the fight against terrorism and that public sentiment about the war was generally negative.100 In early October, the Post reported that the Republican advantage on terrorism continued to decline, as respondents now gave Democrats a six percentage point advantage in trustworthiness on the president’s signature issue.101 A Post news article from late October noted that even as the White House was heating up its discourse of terror, polls were indicating that a number of key races were tightening and turning in the Democrats’ direction. The article quoted Bush’s declaration that “however they put it, the Democrat approach in Iraq comes down to this: The terrorists win and America loses.” But it immediately presented Pelosi’s rebuttal that the president was looking to retain “a rubber-stamp Republican Congress that has done nothing to change our failed Iraq policy.”102 Five days before the election, the Times reported that its most recent poll contained “worrisome indicators” for Republicans as majorities in both parties cited Iraq as the most important issue driving their vote and said they wanted a change in approach.103 The paper also noted that even Bush’s seizing of Saddam Hussein’s conviction as a milestone in Iraq did little to rally Republican voters. In a preelection article titled “War Now Works Against GOP,” Post reporters drew the following conclusion: “In both parties, a consensus now exists—buttressed by polls—that

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disaffection with a war grown costly and difficult to manage is the gravest threat to continued Republican rule. Iraq is not only a potent issue in its own right, but is also a resonant metaphor for doubts about the competence and accountability of the Republican Party.”104 And with less than two weeks to go in the campaign, the Post highlighted Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist’s (R-TN) refutation of the administration’s national security narrative: “The challenge is to get Americans to focus on pocketbook issues, and not on the Iraq and terror issue.”105 Within hours of the cessation of voting, as official results showed the Democrats now in control of both congressional chambers, elite press outlets interpreted the election as a definitive rejection of the president’s Iraq War rhetoric and policies. “Everything is different now for President Bush,” a Post news analysis piece proclaimed: “The era of one-party Republican rule in Washington ended with a crash in yesterday’s midterm elections, putting a proudly unyielding president on notice that the voters want change, especially on the war in Iraq.” The article included a trenchant quote from Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME) about the need for the White House to shift its Iraq strategy: “It absolutely has to change. And that message could have been conveyed by the administration much sooner.”106 The New Way Forward Having sprinted to the campaign finish line attacking Democrats on their repeated failures to support the war on terror and reluctance to keep America safe, President Bush seamlessly made the transition to a most gracious-in-defeat leader. He began by congratulating his opponents on running strong and disciplined campaigns. Then, ruefully admitting that his party had received “a thumping” and that he shared “a large part of the responsibility,” Bush announced that “it is now our duty to put the elections behind us and work together,” and he pledged to “work with the new Congress in a bipartisan way to address issues confronting this country”107 But it was obvious in his November 8 press conference that the president was in no way willing to cede the foreign policy agenda to his congressional adversaries. While the newly triumphant Democrats were making it clear that they had received a mandate and their first order of business would be to press for changing course in Iraq, the president was carefully framing the meaning of the election—and his responsibilities as commander in chief—in a far more circumscribed manner that presaged anything but an about-face on staying the course in Iraq: “I know there’s a lot of speculation on what the election means for the battle we’re waging in Iraq. I recognize that may Americans voted last night to register their displeasure with the lack of progress being made there. Yet

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I also believe most Americans and leaders here in Washington from both political parties understand we cannot accept defeat.…The election has changed many things in Washington, but it has not changed my fundamental responsibility, and that is to protect the American people from attack.”108 Bush’s headline-grabbing announcement was that both he and Secretary Rumsfeld had agreed we needed “a fresh perspective during a critical period in this war” and that the “timing is right for new leadership at the Pentagon.”109 The president had accepted Rumsfeld’s resignation and would shortly nominate Robert Gates—long-time Washington insider who had risen through the ranks to become CIA director under Bush’s father—as his replacement. Underscoring that this change in leadership merely indicated a necessary midcourse correction, Bush declared that both he and most Americans were “fully committed to victory” and that we would not withdraw before the job was completed in Iraq. Bush was being quite forthcoming about his intentions, especially as he pointedly told reporters that “there’s a significant difference between common ground and abandoning principle” and that he truly believed the Democrats cared deeply about the security of this country and concurred with his belief that “winning this war on terror is, by far, the most important priority.”110 But despite these presidential endorsements of bipartisan comity, political and media speculation ran high as Democratic lawmakers proposed phased troop withdrawals, GOP members of Congress presented a far from united political front, and the congressional armed services committees held a series of hearings in which top military personnel and intelligence officials offered often-conflicting information about the security situation in Iraq and the course of action we should follow. Washington awaited the December report of the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan blue-ribbon commission appointed by Congress the previous March to assess the situation in Iraq and make policy recommendations about how best to proceed, and numerous media reports claimed that the ISG would recommend a substantial troop drawdown in the near future. President Bush, however, remained adamant in his view that a timetable for withdrawal was a nonstarter: “I know there’s a lot of speculation that these reports in Washington mean there’s going to be some kind of graceful exit out of Iraq,” the president said at a late November joint press appearance with Prime Minister Maliki, and then quickly added, “We’re going to stay in Iraq to get the job done…In my judgment, if we were to leave before the job is done, it would only embolden terrorists, it would only embolden the extremists.” Pressed further about his policy intentions, Bush declared, “This business about a graceful exit just

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simply has no realism to it at all.”111 In his December 2 radio address, the president noted that while he looked forward to receiving the ISG report and acknowledged that “the recent violence in Iraq has been unsettling,” we still had a duty to perform in Iraq: “Failure in Iraq would embolden the extremists who hate America and want nothing more than to see our demise. It would strengthen the hand of those who are seeking to undermine young democracies across the region and give the extremists an open field to overthrow moderate governments, take control of countries, impose their rule on millions, and threaten the American people. Our Nation must not allow this to happen.”112 As anticipated, the ISG report contained a number of specific recommendations; less expected, however, were the blunt condemnations of current White House policy that accompanied them. The report’s tone and content were set by its opening words: “The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating. There is no path that can guarantee success, but the prospects can be improved.” Noting that “the challenges in Iraq are complex,” the executive summary continued, “Our most important recommendations call for new and enhanced diplomatic and political efforts in Iraq and the region, and a change in the primary mission of U.S. forces… that will enable the United States to begin to move its combat forces out of Iraq responsibly.”113 In a press conference following the report’s release, the commission’s two chairs, ex-Secretary of State James Baker (who had served under the first President Bush) and retired Representative Lee Hamilton (D-IN), were no less forthright in their criticism of the Bush strategy. “The current approach is not working, and the ability of the United States to influence events is diminishing,” Rep. Hamilton declared. “Our ship of state has hit rough waters. It must now chart a new way forward.”114 As he accepted the ISG report, President Bush assured the nation that while the White House “probably won’t agree with every proposal,” his administration would take its recommendations “very seriously,” act on them “in a timely fashion,” and use the report as “an opportunity to find common ground.”115 But the following day, the president once again signaled that common ground did not extend to troop redeployments and that he had no intention of withdrawing from Iraq. In a joint press appearance with Prime Minister Blair, Bush underscored the need for victory in Iraq and the central role that country played as an ally in the war on terror. Seeking to reassert control of the Iraq agenda, he initially framed the report as a lovely illustration of bipartisanship at work: “The Baker-Hamilton commission showed it’s possible for people of goodwill to sit down at the table and design a way forward.…And I thought the

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report did a good job of showing what is possible.”116 Two days later, in his Saturday radio address, the president unveiled the report’s core message: “The urgency of getting it right in Iraq.” In the administration’s deconstruction, the ISG had explicitly endorsed “the strategic goal we’ve set in Iraq: an Iraq that can ‘govern itself, sustain itself, and defend itself.’” And, most importantly, the ISG had declared that precipitous withdrawal from Iraq would “almost certainly produce greater sectarian violence,” leading to “a significant power vacuum, greater human suffering, regional destabilization, and a threat to the global economy.” And Bush highlighted the commission’s ominous warning: “If we leave and Iraq descends into chaos, the long-range consequences could eventually require the United States to return.”117 President Bush also noted that his senior military and national security advisors were conducting their own reviews of our strategy in Iraq and that he was waiting to receive their recommendations. The media reported that several military experts with whom the president met concurred with the ISG’s dismal assessment of his handling of Iraq but were unable to achieve consensus on whether to beef up or redeploy the troops. According to media reports, however, the Joint Chiefs of Staff were unanimous in recommending against adding significant numbers of troops in Iraq.118 While stressing that the White House was still determining how best to proceed and that it was weighing all options, Bush remained unwavering in his commitment to winning the global war on terror and to victory in its central front. As he stated in his final press conference of the year: As you know, I’ve been consulting closely with our commanders and the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the strategy in Iraq, and on the broader war on terror.… This war on terror is the calling of a new generation; it is the calling of our generation. Success is essential to securing a future of peace for our children and grandchildren. And securing this peace for the future is going to require a sustained commitment from the American people and our military.… I’m not going to make predictions about what 2007 will look like in Iraq, except that it’s going to require difficult choices and additional sacrifices, because the enemy is merciless and violent. I’m going to make you this promise: My administration will work with Republicans and Democrats to fashion a new way forward that can succeed in Iraq. 119

The year would end with the botched and grizzly execution of Saddam Hussein, but President Bush would frame it as an indicator of progress both in Iraq and in our wider battle against terrorism. His press release

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read: “Saddam Hussein’s execution comes at the end of a difficult year for the Iraqi people and for our troops. Bringing Saddam Hussein to justice will not end the violence in Iraq, but it is an important milestone on Iraq’s course to becoming a democracy that can govern, sustain, and defend itself, and be an ally in the War on Terror.…Many difficult choices and further sacrifices lie ahead. Yet the safety and security of the American people require that we not relent in ensuring that Iraq’s young democracy continues to progress.”120 The world awaited the president’s next move.

CHAPTER 6

Changing America’s Course in Iraq “It is clear,” President Bush succinctly declared in a televised prime-time address to the nation on January 10, 2007, “that we need to change our strategy in Iraq.”1 With these words, the president publicly acknowledged what had become obvious even to the most casual observer—over the previous year, Iraq had descended into a vicious and expanding cycle of “sectarian violence” that had, Bush admitted, “overwhelmed the political gains the Iraqis had made.” The key element of Bush’s strategic shift was a troop surge—an increase in American (as well as Iraqi) force levels in and around Baghdad with a clearly defined mission of providing and enforcing security in the region. Noting that “America’s commitment is not open-ended,” the president also charged the Iraqi government with meeting political and economic benchmarks it had previously announced and cautioned that it would “lose the support of the American people” if it failed to follow through on its promises.2 But political reconciliation and economic revitalization were contingent on the stability that only a military buildup could provide. Faced in early 2007 with a gloomy public and defiant Congress, Bush and his advisors recognized that to persuade this nation to commit yet more lives and treasure to an increasingly problematic war, he would need to deploy the rhetorical arsenal that had served him so well since the 2001 terrorist attacks and the lead-up to the conflict in Iraq. Thus, in words that covered well-trod rhetorical terrain, Bush reminded his audience of the intimate connections among the situation in Iraq, global terrorism, and our national security, and warned of the dire consequences of refusing to heed his call for a new Iraqi strategy: Failure in Iraq would be a disaster for the United States. The consequences of failure are clear: Radical Islamic extremists would grow in strength and gain new recruits. They would be in a better position to topple moderate governments, create chaos in the region, and use oil revenues to fund their

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ambitions. Iran would be emboldened in its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Our enemies would have a safe haven from which to plan and launch attacks on the American people. On September 11, 2001, we saw what a refuge for extremists on the other side of the world could bring to the streets of our own cities. For the safety of our people, America must succeed in Iraq.3

But as Bush knew only too well, convincing the America of 2007 that a significant increase in troops was an effective and credible strategy necessitated more than a steadfast repetition of his once highly resonant war-on-terror mantra. Events on the ground had outpaced even the most soaring 9/11 rhetoric, and the White House realized it was time to revamp and reinvigorate its promotional as well as its military strategy. To that end, Bush literally put forward a new face on the war—Lt. General David H. Petraeus, the president’s nominee to assume command of the coalition forces in Iraq—and began to construct a rationale for, and interpretation of, the troop surge that centered on the persona of this icon in the making. Given the title of the New Way Forward, the administration’s surge morality tale offered all the components of a complete and substantive frame: it defined a problematic situation (upswing in sectarian and al Qaeda-sponsored violence in Iraq), identified its causes (beliefs and actions of terrorists and those who harbor them), conveyed a moral judgment of the players involved (an heroic new protagonist confronting the evil enemies of democracy), and endorsed a remedy (a military buildup that would lead to victory both in Iraq and the war on terror). This dramatic storyline consisted of three interrelated themes: military victory was still attainable and essential to winning the wider battle against terrorism; defeat would entail catastrophic consequences; and General Petraeus, the embodiment of the surge, would chart the course to success. Surging to Victory As we have seen, from the moment of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, President Bush articulated a highly consistent narrative that the United States had been forced into a monumental struggle representing nothing less than a battle of the civilized and democratic good against the forces of terrorist evil. Integral to this frame was the struggle’s difficulty and length, but Bush always reassured his audiences that the forces of good would eventually prevail. While admitting mistakes had been made in the past, throughout 2007, the administration would continue to insist that success was still possible in Iraq, that Iraq was a central front in the war on

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terrorism, and that the surge represented the last chance to achieve victory. Thus, patience was necessary to allow the surge time to improve the security situation in Iraq, and that, in turn, would create the breathing space for political reforms and reconciliation. The following words from Bush’s 2007 State of the Union address nicely encapsulate the major elements of his surge rationale—Iraq-as-war-on-terror, recognition of missteps in the prosecution of the war, our desire and resolve to win, and the surge as the best means to achieve victory: With the distance of time, we find ourselves debating the causes of conflict and the course that we have followed. Such debates are essential when a great democracy faces great questions. Yet one question has surely been settled: that to win the war on terror we must take the fight to the enemy.… This is not the fight we entered in Iraq, but it is the fight we’re in. Every one of us wishes this war were over and won. Yet it would not be like us to leave our promises unkept, our friends abandoned, and our own security at risk. Ladies and gentlemen: On this day, at this hour, it is still within our power to shape the outcome of this battle. Let us find our resolve, and turn events toward victory.4

Integral to the surge’s justification was also the notion that winning the war would inevitably enhance the spread of democracy, an outcome that would make the world safer not just for the Middle East but for generations of Americans to come. As Bush declared, “Victory in Iraq will bring something new in the Arab world—a functioning democracy.…A democratic Iraq will not be perfect. But it will be a country that fights terrorists instead of harboring them—and it will help bring a future of peace and security for our children and our grandchildren.”5 Emphasizing the stability that democracy would bring, the surge narrative studiously avoided the term civil war to describe the current situation in Iraq. When directly asked in a press conference in mid-February about whether he believed that Iraq was in a civil war, for example, Bush managed to respond without even repeating the key words of the questioner: Q: Do you believe it’s a civil war, sir? The President: I can only tell you what people on the ground, whose judgment— it’s hard for me, living in this beautiful White House, to give you an assessment, firsthand assessment. I haven’t been there…But I do talk to people who are and whose judgment I trust, and they would not qualify it as that. There are others who think it is. It is, however, a dangerous situation, thereby requiring action on my part.6

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Inarticulate though he might frequently have been, at key moments, the president could prove quite artful at carefully sidestepping potentially explosive verbal minefields. Another semantic danger the administration was anxious to avoid was applying the Vietnam-era term escalation to public discourse about the surge. The following testy verbal exchange between Iraq policy skeptic Senator Hagel and Secretary of State Rice during her Senate testimony in mid-January is instructive: Hagel: My question was the escalation of American troops in Iraq. Rice: But I think you asked who was supporting it. And I said the Kurdish parties, Prime Minister Maliki and his Shia allies, and the IIP support a plan to do this. And they know that the augmentation of American forces is part of that plan. Now, as to the question of escalation, I think that I don’t see it, and the president doesn’t see it, as an escalation. What he sees… Hagel: Putting 22,000 new troops, more troops in, is not an escalation? Rice: Well, I think, Senator, escalation is not just a matter of how many numbers you put in. Escalation is also a question of, are you changing the strategic goal of what you’re trying to do? Are you escalating.… Hagel: Would you call it a decrease, and billions of dollars more that you need for it? Rice: I would call it, Senator, an augmentation that allows the Iraqis to deal with this very serious problem that they have in Baghdad. (emphasis added)7

As this exchange illustrates, Rice steadfastly refused to characterize the proposed increase in troops as an escalation of forces. The purpose of the administration’s verbal jujitsu was to distance its new policy as far as possible from the political ghost of a doomed Vietnam-style military escalation. Rather than remind Americans of the tragic consequences of the commitment once made in Vietnam, the administration sought to assure the public that the current troop increase would merely be a temporary one. And while other critics would attempt to attach the term escalation to the surge, the White House’s preferred descriptor quickly became the dominant shorthand term in both public and official discourse. While his public language was sometimes cautious in 2007, Bush never wavered from the idea that success was possible in Iraq, and his public utterances became more positive as the year wore on. In March, the president pleaded for breathing time; acknowledging that “it’s going to require a sustained, determined effort to succeed,” he offered the carrot that “there are some early signs that are encouraging.”8 The following month, he noted that even though the new approach to securing Baghdad brought risks, “day by day, block by block, Iraqi and American forces are making incremental gains.”9 Even when faced with a July report that the

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Iraqis were failing to meet a number of economic and political benchmarks, Bush saw the security glass as half full: “Those of us who believe the battle in Iraq can and must be won see the satisfactory performance on several of the security benchmarks as a cause for optimism.”10 And by late summer, he felt sufficiently confident to note that “in Iraq, our troops are taking the fight to the extremists and radicals and murderers all throughout the country.…We’re in the fight.…Our troops are seeing this progress that is being made on the ground.”11 But the specific timing and exact parameters of success were never clearly articulated in the Bush surge narrative, and, throughout the year, the president continued to repeat variations on ever-so familiar words from his 9/11 frame: “Victory will not look like the ones our fathers and grandfathers achieved. There will be no surrender ceremony on the deck of a battleship.”12 Running throughout the president’s surge narrative was also the theme that defeat in Iraq would result in dire consequences for the United States, Iraq, and the future of freedom everywhere. In announcing the troop escalation for Iraq, Bush repeated a key argument from his 9/11 narrative: “The challenge playing out across the broader Middle East is more than a military conflict. It is the decisive ideological struggle of our time. On the one side are those who believe in freedom and moderation. On the other side are extremists who kill the innocent, and have declared their intention to destroy our way of life.”13 Warming to this theme in his State of the Union Address two weeks later, Bush reminded his vast audience that we were still a nation at war, confronted by the “shoreless ambitions” of the terrorist enemy, a war that would not end until the terrorists’ “radical vision is fulfilled”: Our enemies are quite explicit about their intentions. They want to overthrow moderate governments, and establish safe havens from which to plan and carry out new attacks on our country. By killing and terrorizing Americans, they want to force our country to retreat from the world and abandon the cause of liberty. They would then be free to impose their will and spread their totalitarian ideology.… In the sixth year since our nation was attacked, I wish I could report to you that the dangers had ended. They have not.… This war is more than a clash of arms—it is a decisive ideological struggle, and the security of our nation is in the balance.14

And in a press conference in mid-February, Bush repeated the words “disastrous consequences” as he continued to elaborate on the connections between failure in Iraq and our security at home: “I concluded that to step back from the fight in Baghdad would have disastrous

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consequences for people in America…And the reason why I say ‘disastrous consequences,’ the Iraqi government could collapse, chaos would spread, there would be a vacuum, into the vacuum would flow more extremists, more radicals, people who have stated intent to hurt our people…What’s different about this conflict than some others is that if we fail there, the enemy will follow us here.”15 In his Coast Guard commencement address in May, Bush sought to challenge critics who alleged he was making too much of the al Qaeda and al Qaeda in Iraq connection. As he phrased it, “Some in our country question whether the battle in Iraq is part of the war on terror.” Citing, for the first time, declassified intelligence data from 2005, Bush described in detail how Osama bin Laden had enlisted the assistance of a key al Qaeda operative in Iraq possibly to help organize and plan attacks against the United States. Moments after revealing this dire threat, he posed the following query to his audience: “The question for our elected leaders is: Do we comprehend the danger of an al Qaeda victory in Iraq, and will we do what it takes to stop them? However difficult the fight in Iraq has become, we must win it. Al Qaeda is public enemy number one for Iraq’s young democracy, and al Qaeda is public enemy number one for America, as well. And that is why we must support our troops, we must support the Iraqi government, and we must defeat al Qaeda in Iraq.”16 Noting that congressional proposals to withdraw from Iraq were akin to advocating retreat—a de facto surrender to the terrorists—the president insisted that any legislation advocating redeployment or blocking military funding was tantamount to undercutting the troops’ ability to accomplish their mission and would leave us vulnerable to further terrorist attacks.17 Imposing a “specific and random” date for troop withdrawal would be especially catastrophic: “If we cannot muster the resolve to defeat this evil in Iraq,” the president declared, “we will endanger our citizens, because if we leave Iraq before the job is done, the enemy will follow us here.”18 An arbitrary withdrawal date would also be a betrayal to our soldiers on the ground; such a move would “pull the rug out from under” the troops, Bush noted late in the summer, “just as they’re gaining momentum and changing the dynamic on the ground in Iraq.”19 And any official expression of congressional disapproval of the surge would also mean vitiating the efforts of General Petraeus, the man whom Bush had designated to lead us to triumph in Iraq.20 PETRAEUS

AS

EMBODIMENT

OF THE

SURGE

The novel component of Bush’s surge narrative—the element that separated it from the president’s earlier 9/11 and Iraq-as-war-on-terror

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frames—was its focus on the newly appointed commander in Iraq as the representation of the surge itself. From the moment that Bush introduced General Petraeus to the world, the general’s character, competence, and credentials became the incarnation of the new strategy and everything it could accomplish in both the short term (military victory) and long term (triumph of freedom and democracy). In his first public appearance with a freshly confirmed Petraeus, Bush assigned him the usual role of a military commander, noting that “this good man” would implement the new plan that the president and his leadership team had so carefully devised.21 But just a few weeks later, Bush elevated Petraeus to a far more exalted status, essentially ceding authorship of the plan on the ground to his new commander. The president relegated to himself the dual role of cheerleader in chief and admonisher in chief as he applauded members of the Senate for their unanimous vote to confirm Petraeus while simultaneously warning members of the House not to hobble him: “When General Petraeus’ nomination was considered three weeks ago in the United States Senate, the senators voted unanimously to confirm him to his new position, and I appreciate that affirmation, that strong statement for this good General. Now, the House is debating a resolution that disapproves of our new strategy. This may become the first time in the history of the United States Congress that it has voted to send a new commander into battle and then voted to oppose his plan that is necessary to succeed in that battle” (emphasis added).22 From that point on, Petraeus owned the surge as he and the new strategy were irrevocably fused in the president’s official Iraq War discourse. Witness Bush’s reference to the surge strategy in mid-March as he chastised the House Democrats for erecting a legislative roadblock to its implementation: “Yet at the very moment that General Petraeus’s strategy is beginning to show signs of success, the Democrats in the House of Representatives have passed an emergency war spending bill that undercuts him and the troops under his command” (emphasis added).23 The key components of the Petraeus-as-surge-savior narrative—his expertise, experience, and hence his credibility—were well illustrated in comments Bush made in early May. “First of all,” the president noted, “General Petraeus is an expert on counterinsurgency.” Thus, Petraeus was “the best messenger” on Iraq, and when he reported that we had made gains on the ground both Congress and the country were obligated to give great weight to his observations. Referring to the surge strategy as “General Petraeus’s plan,” the president exhorted Congress and the country to “give General Petraeus time to see whether or not this works.”24 Petraeus the credentialed and experienced expert was just the person to present an

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“objective assessment” about the Baghdad plan;25 calling the general his “main man”—“a smart, capable man, who gives me his candid advice”— Bush pleaded with Congress “to give General David Petraeus a chance to come back and tell us whether his strategy is working” (emphasis added).26 Two days later, in response to a question asking him to speculate on the general’s forthcoming report to Congress, the president tidily encapsulated his Petraeus narrative: “I’m going to wait to see what David has to say. I’m not going to prejudge what he may say. I trust David Petraeus, his judgment. He’s an honest man. Those of you have interviewed him know that he’s a straight shooter, he’s an innovative thinker.”27 Petraeus’s anticipated September testimony was the consequence of a compromise forged in May between the administration and congressional Democrats. To resolve a funding impasse on the war, Democrats agreed to drop a withdrawal timetable from a supplemental funding request in exchange for an agreement that Iraq meet a series of political and security benchmarks. The president was also required to submit a report on Iraq’s progress by September 15, and the legislation specified that Petraeus and ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker testify before Congress in advance of Bush’s report. Since Bush had given every indication that he would defer to Petraeus’s assessment on Iraq, the general’s testimony would in effect become the de facto presidential report and constitute a make-or-break time for the future of the president’s surge strategy. SAVIOR

OR

BETRAYER?

If the surge mantra of the spring and summer could be summarized as “waiting for Petraeus,” in the wake of his September congressional testimony, it had morphed into “invoking Petraeus: the troop surge is working.”28 In the official surge narrative, the savior of the surge had accomplished his mission. And so thoroughly was Petraeus entwined with the surge itself, so identified with its mission and its success, that even the liberal advocacy organization MoveOn.org recognized his pivotal role in a full-page antisurge advertisement it placed in the New York Times on the day of Petraeus’s report to Congress. The ad displayed a photograph of the uniformed general above the provocative caption, “General Petraeus or General Betray Us?” It accused the general of “cooking the books for the White House,” that is, serving merely as Bush’s shill, and it concluded by suggesting the general would continue his selective presentation of the facts in his testimony before Congress. When asked to give his reaction to the ad, President Bush was able, in one verbal stroke, to defend the honor of his commander, the military, and, by extension, the surge itself: “I thought the ad was disgusting. I felt like the ad was an attack not only

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on General Petraeus, but on the U.S. military. And I was disappointed that not more leaders in the Democrat Party spoke out strongly against that kind of ad…It’s one thing to attack me; it’s another thing to attack somebody like General Petraeus.”29 Thus, by the time of Petraeus’s September testimony before Congress, the president had achieved a feat that just a few months earlier many would have thought impossible. He had constructed a revised narrative on Iraq that was taking on the trappings of success. As it had done before, the White House had launched a highly organized and disciplined public relations campaign during the eight months between January and September 2007 to sell the surge in the media. As the Washington Post reported, “From the start of the Bush plan, the White House communications office had been blitzing an e-mail list of as many as 5,000 journalists, lawmakers, lobbyists, conservative bloggers, military groups and others with talking points or rebuttals of criticism. Between Jan. 10 and last week [September 9, 2007], the office put out 94 such documents in various categories—‘Myths/Facts’ or ‘Setting the Record Straight’ to take issue with negative news articles, and ‘In Case You Missed It’ to distribute positive articles and speeches.”30 This public relations effort was buttressed by, and coordinated with, President Bush’s multiple speeches, radio addresses, and press conferences, as our Iraq advocate in chief relentlessly broadcast his message that the surge was the only means to accomplish our essential goal of victory. With General Petraeus cast as the guest star in the drama of the surge, Bush was content to relinquish the spotlight as Petraeus’s strategically timed appearances in Washington and his dazzling press briefings in Iraq captured the lion’s share of public and media attention. To their detriment, the oppositional forces to the surge were neither as singular in their focus as the White House nor could they muster an equally impressive spokesman for their cause. Recognizing an Unwinnable Conflict Emboldened by their midterm electoral successes in the fall of 2006, Democratic leaders in Congress began pressing the administration to begin the process of troop withdrawal even prior to the surge announcement. It is therefore hardly surprising that Bush’s surge strategy was initially met with considerable criticism by most Democrats (and skepticism even by some high-profile Republicans). Although the opposition’s specific proposals varied, they could be condensed into a single, complete alternative narrative: a tale of problem (unwarranted, unwinnable war), cause (the Bush administration’s mistaken insistence that war in Iraq was part of the war

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on terror), remedy (troop redeployment, withdrawal), and moral judgment (Bush’s misguided and detrimental policies). This counterframe contained two major themes: the impossibility of military victory in Iraq and the war’s negative impact on other pressing national priorities. The withdrawal narrative was first and foremost premised on the assumption that the war in Iraq was lost because the nature of the conflict had changed. Despite the relatively easy military success against the Iraqi conventional army under Saddam Hussein, the opposition argued, the situation in Iraq had degenerated into a bitter civil war with American forces caught in the middle of an intense sectarian conflict. Furthermore, the government of Prime Minister Maliki was so weak and rife with corruption that it neither would, nor could, establish stability in Iraq. The following formal letter to President Bush from Democratic leaders Pelosi and Reid well illustrates this theme: “Surging forces is a strategy that you have already tried and that has already failed. Like many current and former military leaders, we believe that trying again would be a serious mistake. They, like us, believe there is no purely military solution in Iraq. There is only a political solution. Adding more combat troops will only endanger more Americans and stretch our military to the breaking point for no strategic gain.”31 A chorus of leading Democrats publicly rejected the notion that the military option for Iraq was still viable. Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Carl Levin concluded the war was a “failure”; Senator Clinton derided the Bush plan as “a dead end”; and majority leader Reid declared to reporters in April that “this war is lost.”32 One of the boldest efforts at limiting or preventing the surge deployments was proposed by Bush nemesis John Murtha. In what would become known as the Murtha Plan, the Pennsylvania Democrat sought to tie Bush’s request for supplemental funding for the war to strict limitations on troop readiness, equipment, and rest time between tours of duty. While Republicans leapt upon this as a “slow bleed” strategy, Murtha was nevertheless hopeful that even though he did not know “how many troops they can get in the field before we get our bill up and passed in Congress,” it might at least prevent the last two brigades from deploying to Iraq.33 Murtha also thought his restrictions would be so stringent that eventually Bush would have no choice but to bring the troops home. But support for Murtha’s plan would soon collapse, as many Democrats feared it might be construed as undermining troops in the field by preventing replacements from arriving as scheduled. The Murtha plan was “as risky as catching a falling knife,” one Democratic colleague concluded.34 Most congressional Democrats preferred an approach of establishing timetables for withdrawal and linking those to

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funding requests. And over the course of the spring and summer, they would offer numerous—but ultimately unsuccessful—amendments to limit funding of the war. Supporters of withdrawal also explicitly and emphatically rejected the Bush claim that the Iraq War and the global war on terrorism were two sides of the same coin and that defeat in the former presaged defeat in the latter. As Speaker Pelosi (replacing surge with the far more emotionally laden term escalation) stated in remarks on the House floor in February: “Proponents of the President’s escalation are equating the war on terror to the war in Iraq. As our esteemed Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Congressman Ike Skelton of Missouri, great patriot, has observed, ‘Two conflicts. Two wars. And the two should not be confused. There are those who attempt to fuzz the two conflicts together as “the war on terror,” but the wars are truly separate and distinct.’”35 In April, the House Armed Services Committee issued a memo that banned the phrases global war on terror and the long war from the 2008 defense budget and mandated instead that the phrases war in Iraq or war in Afghanistan be used to describe the ongoing military operations. Committee aides confided that the change involved the issue of “whether the war in Iraq is part of the effort to combat terrorism or is actually a distraction from fighting terrorists.” Making reference to the Harry Potter books, one Republican committee aide shot back that “you might describe this as the war that must not be named.”36 But beneath these bureaucratic and linguistic tussles was the substantive effort by Democrats in Congress to decouple the war in Iraq from the larger war on terror. The supporters of withdrawal made the additional argument that the continued presence in Iraq had strained the U.S. military to the point where our efforts in Afghanistan—the true site of the war on terror—were undermined. Again, in the words of Pelosi: “The war in Iraq continues to detract from our ability to fight the war against international terrorism effectively. We need to finish the job started more than five years ago in Afghanistan against al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and address other conditions around the world in which the appeal of terrorism breeds. The longer it takes us to resolve the situation in Iraq, the longer resources and attention will continue to be diverted from the war on terrorism.”37 Opponents of the war were also concerned that because of the level of the ongoing deployment in Iraq, the Untied States did not have the military capacity to respond to other potential military contingencies, and Rep. Murtha was one of many members of Congress who raised this issue. As he explained in an April 2007 press release, “Our military readiness has deteriorated to levels not seen since Vietnam and our ability to

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fight future threats is severely compromised. Yet the President refuses to address this most vital issue.”38 And as the financial costs of the war escalated, surge opponents pointed to the budgetary implications of the Iraq War, especially its contributions to the budget deficit and the limits it placed on Congress’s ability to provide adequate funding for domestic programs.39 But as a January headline in the New York Times prophetically put it, “Democrats are Unified in Opposition to Troop Increase, but Split over What to Do About It.”40 In the first half of 2007, Democratic opponents debated and considered a variety of proposals including timetables for withdrawal, reconsideration of the 2002 vote authorizing the war, and war funding cuts. Lacking a veto-proof majority, however, congressional Democrats enjoyed limited options in their battles with President Bush. In January, Congress passed a largely symbolic nonbinding resolution opposing the surge; on May 24, it forced Bush to agree to link Iraqi progress on political and economic benchmarks to a supplemental funding request for the war, but it capitulated on the critical issue of withdrawal timetables. The bottom line was that despite repeated attempts, the new Democratic leadership would be unable to bend the president to its will over troop redeployment from Iraq. With the exception of the House “Out of Iraq” Caucus, the default Democratic strategy boiled down to maintaining critical public pressure on the president’s surge policy until General Petraeus’s and Ambassador Crocker’s September testimony. Democratic leaders anticipated that by that time, a tipping point would have been reached, and that wavering Republicans would provide the opposition with sufficient bipartisan support to force a change in the administration’s Iraq policy. Until then, both sides attempted to score points as they engaged in an intense competition for favorable media coverage. Depicting the Surge and Its Opponents Elite media representations of the competing Iraq surge narratives contained a mix of negative and positive elements, but the trend was toward more favorable reports on the surge as Petraeus’s fall testimony approached.41 Initially, however, media depictions of Bush’s iteration of the New Way Forward suggested little support and much skepticism, as exemplified in this January New York Times piece on congressional reaction to the president’s surge announcement: “Democrats in Congress are drawing up plans for what, at a minimum, could be a nonbinding resolution expressing opposition to the commitment of more forces to what many of them say they now believe is a losing fight. They will be joined by some Republicans, and may attempt other steps to block Mr.

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Bush from deepening the American commitment. Not since Richard Nixon ordered American troops in Vietnam to invade Cambodia in 1970 has a president taken such a risk with an increasingly unpopular war.”42 A reporter for the Assoicated Press noted that the president’s new plan “was slammed as desperate and even dumb” by many on Capitol Hill.43 And as a reporter for the Washington Post informed readers in late January, even key Republicans were not on board with the President’s new policy: “More than 30 years after Vietnam, John W. Warner is once again watching as generals propose additional troops. But this time, he’s not staying silent. In a rebuke to President Bush, Warner is leading an effort to have the U.S. Senate declare a lack of confidence in the administration’s plans to send 21,500 additional soldiers into the Iraqi war zone.”44 Throughout the spring of 2007, the press raised consistent doubts regarding the surge’s prospects for success. In April, the media widely reported Senate majority leader Reid’s comment that the “war is lost” as well as Senate Foreign Relations chair Biden’s declaration that the “Bush administration’s ‘surge’ strategy in Iraq is doomed to fail.”45 In June, the Post quoted retired Army General Barry McCafferty’s reference to the surge as “a fool’s errand” and an unnamed U.S. intelligence officer’s conclusion that as result of the su rge, “we are being led to failure.”46 An AP report observed that in contrast to the president’s view on success in Iraq, “Most Americans…call it a hopeless effort.”47 In the all-important media platform of television—the single most important source of foreign policy news for most Americans—the prospects for the surge seemed bleak as well. In an April broadcast, NBC news provided the following assessment of the surge for its viewers: Brian Williams: There’s news on Iraq tonight. US military sources tell NBC News they’re worried about new threats to American troops and the president’s surge strategy on two fronts. We get that report from our Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski. Jim Miklaszewski: It’s been one of the bloodiest weeks in four years of war. More than 500 Iraqi men, women and children killed, hundreds more wounded.48

Seemingly, little improvement had occurred by the time this June NBC news broadcast aired: Brian Williams: Now to Iraq, and early indications that the so-called US troop surge to secure Baghdad is not working. From the Pentagon tonight, NBC’s Jim Miklaszewski has the details on the uphill fight. Jim Miklaszewski: Four months into the surge, and the outlook is grim.49

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This type of media depiction lent initial support to the opposition narrative that the war was lost and the surge was not working. But by late spring, some members of the press were beginning to report “mixed results” from the surge.50 A typical assessment was provided by a Post reporter: “If there is one indisputable truth regarding the current offensive, it is this: When large numbers of U.S. troops are funneled into areas, security improves. But the numbers only partly describe the reality on the ground. Visits to key U.S. bases and neighborhoods in and around Baghdad show that recent improvements are sometimes tenuous, temporary, even illusory.”51 By the middle of the summer, some news accounts of the surge began to reflect an even more optimistic tone as the theme that progress was being made and a precipitous troop withdrawal would be a mistake started to emerge. For example, a July story in the New York Times reported that General Lynch, a blunt-spoken, cigar-smoking Ohio native who commands the Third Infantry Division, said that all the American troops that began an offensive south of Baghdad in mid-June were part of the fivemonth-old troop buildup, and that they were making “significant” gains in areas that were previously enemy sanctuaries. Pulling back before the job was completed, he said, would create “an environment where the enemy could come back and fill the void.” He implied that an early withdrawal would amount to an abandonment of Iraqi civilians who he said had rallied in support of the American and Iraqi troops, and would leave the civilians exposed to renewed brutality by extremist groups.52

Bush and his senior aides would respond to this media development with immense relief, for, as the White House director of strategic initiatives commented, “We put all of our eggs in the surge-Petraeus basket.”53 FRAMING GENERAL PETRAEUS

While media depictions of Bush’s surge success theme shifted from deep skepticism to a more mixed tone during the first nine months of 2007, there was more continuity in the media narrative surrounding General Petraeus himself. Prior to his September appearance before Congress, a significant amount of media attention had focused on Petraeus’s background and training as well as his management of the surge. By the eve of his congressional testimony, then, he was certainly the most well-known military leader in the United States, if not among the most trusted and respected. The development of a powerful and remarkably consistent

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biography for Petraeus was not inconsequential for shaping the coverage of his congressional testimony. One prominent theme of his personal storyline was his involvement in updating the army’s field manual on counterinsurgency. This narrative quickly translated into the branding of Petraeus as one of the military’s leading experts on counterterrorism. Petraeus, who had earned a PhD in international relations from Princeton University, was described as an able military thinker well-suited to the command in Iraq. From the time of his appointment, the administration presented Petraeus as the last best hope for success in Iraq, a depiction that was uncritically adopted by the press. “If anyone can save Iraq, it’s David H. Petraeus, the ultimate can-do general,” gushed a reporter for the Washington Post.54 A Post colleague noted that political and military leaders alike characterized Petraeus as “the best man to salvage the Iraq effort.”55 “Brilliant” and “the best general in the army” were frequent accolades the media used to describe the military leader with responsibility for the surge. Bush surrogates also attempted to enhance the surge’s credibility by linking the new strategy directly to the general, and their efforts were repeated in news reports. In early February, the Post reported Senator Lindsey Graham’s reference to the surge as the “Petraeus Doctrine,”56 and, throughout the spring and summer, numerous news articles referred to the surge as the “Petraeus Plan.” Thus, the White House public relations effort to publicly couple the shift in strategy to the commanding general was largely successful, as were its attempts to portray Petraeus as the person who could salvage the situation in Iraq. President Bush played an instrumental role in putting the media spotlight on Petraeus, a situation that did not go unnoticed in press reports. As a reporter wrote in the Post, “Bush has mentioned Petraeus at least 150 times this year in his speeches, interviews and news conferences, often setting him up in opposition to members of Congress.” The article also noted that the president made little mention of Ryan Crocker, the American ambassador to Iraq, in his public comments.57 The news media were keenly aware that Bush’s low popularity compromised his credibility on the war, thus prompting him to rely on his popular general. As an article in the New York Times stated, “fully aware of his standing in opinion polls, Mr. Bush said his top commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus would perhaps do a better job selling progress to the American people than he could.”58 On the eve of the September Petraeus-Crocker report, so dismal was Bush’s credibility on the war that the Times wrote, “Only 5 percent of Americans—a strikingly low number for a sitting president’s handling of such a dominant issue—said they most trusted the Bush administration

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to resolve the war.…Asked to choose among the administration, Congress and military commanders, 21 percent said they would most trust Congress and 68 percent expressed most trust in military commanders.”59 FRAMING

THE

OUTCOME

OF THE

SURGE

Continuity in media coverage generally prevailed in the third theme of the Bush surge narrative—the dire consequences of defeat. In his January surge announcement, the president forcefully described the results of failure to achieve our goals in Iraq, and press reportage duly presented his warnings. As the Times wrote, “In defying mounting pressure to begin troop withdrawals, the president reiterated his argument that the consequences of failure in Iraq were so high that the United States could not afford to lose.”60 A few weeks later, Bush revisited this theme in his State of the Union address, and a story in the Times noted that Bush raised “the ‘nightmare scenario’ of an Iraq ‘overrun by extremists on all sides.’ He said the violence in the country would turn contagious, spread beyond Iraq’s borders and inflame the entire Middle East. ‘Many in this chamber understand that America must not fail in Iraq,’ Mr. Bush said, ‘because you understand that the consequences of failure would be grievous and far-reaching.’”61 The president consistently spoke of the dire consequences of defeat in Iraq in his speeches, radio addresses, and press conferences over the spring and summer. And the press routinely recounted his words of warning, especially the argument that U.S. failure in Iraq would likely lead to the intensification of sectarian violence. As an AP news report noted, “Those who favor Bush’s plan and many who oppose it are in striking agreement that the consequences will be dire if it flops.”62 Not only did the media report the specter of a security crisis for the United States, they depicted a humanitarian crisis for the Iraqi people, complete with genocidal overtones were we to fail in Iraq. This theme was reinforced later in the summer when, commenting about the likely consequences of an early U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, General Petraeus was quoted in the Times as saying, “If you didn’t like Darfur, you’re going to hate Baghdad.”63 As we shall see, the dire consequences of failure theme was picked up, and in some ways magnified, in the op-ed pages of our leading newspapers. FRAMING

THE

SURGE’S OPPONENTS

Media depictions of the withdrawal narrative’s two major arguments— that the war was unwinnable and was diverting military and economic resources from other national priorities—underwent significant change

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over the course of 2007 as well. As previously noted, the media greeted Bush’s surge announcement with considerable skepticism, and much early coverage emphasized either that the likely outcome of the surge would be failure or that the war was already lost. The theme that the surge was “too little, too late” was common in newspaper articles.64 “Placed in charge this late in the game, Petraeus should not have to carry the burden of Iraq’s probable failure,” an article in the Post grimly stated in late February.65 And with high profile Democrats such as Reid and Biden declaring the war was lost, the media presented the idea of the probable withdrawal of American forces as a credible outcome. Much of the withdrawal coverage focused on Democratic efforts in Congress to force President Bush to set timelines for redeployment of U.S. troops. “Democrats began laying the constitutional groundwork for an effort to block the president’s plan to send more troops to Iraq and place new limits on the conduct of the war there, perhaps forcing a withdrawal of American forces from Iraq,” noted a late January story in the Times.66 At times, there was even a sense of the inevitability of withdrawal. For example, in May, a spokesperson for Sen. Reid was quoted as saying, “Sounds to me like the president has a Plan B after all, and that it includes timelines for withdrawal of U.S. troops.”67 However, as media accounts of the surge became more positive, the credibility of the war is lost theme was undercut. As the year wore on, press depictions of withdrawal began to reflect the surge opponents’ revised message that while we might be making progress militarily, there was still little progress in Iraq on meeting the political and economic benchmarks. The AP provided an assessment typical of this perspective: “Military efforts to stabilize the country have made strides in recent months, but political progress has lagged.”68 Since this thematic change in coverage coincided with a significant decline in civilian deaths in Iraq, critics of the surge were left with little choice but to instead emphasize the surge’s failure to facilitate political progress. The erosion of the war is lost theme was on full display by the summer of 2007 when the White House talking points distributed to the press listed it as the number one myth regarding Iraq.69 The withdrawal narrative also focused on the war’s cost and its detrimental domestic economic impact. But this theme initially received little mention in news articles. Even though the press routinely reported the congressional debates over funding the war, it was not until after Petraeus’s September testimony that the domestic effect of the requested appropriations began to find traction in the media. As the Times explained, Democrats had been slow to incorporate this theme in their oppositional

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narrative: “In a shift from last year’s failed legislative efforts to force a reduction of troops, the Democrats’ new approach is aimed primarily at framing the issue for the November elections by focusing on the financial cost of military operations and on the war’s implications for the nation’s troubled economy.”70 Apparently, this was an issue on which the media were unwilling to take the lead; absent cues from Congress, journalists were content to ignore this component of the withdrawal narrative. If the domestic economic implications of the war received little notice in the press, the opposite was the case for the theme of an overstretched military. The idea that war in Iraq was compromising the preparedness of our forces—and thereby the readiness of the U.S. military to sustain operations in Afghanistan or respond to other military contingencies— received consistent and significant media coverage. Before the surge announcement, President Bush met with Republican and Democratic senators to brief them on his new policy in Iraq. In one exchange, Senator Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) asked the president, “Where would that surge come from?” The Times reported that President Bush merely replied, “That was a very good question.”71 A Times analysis of the surge’s impact on the military concluded that “any extension of the troop buildup would add to the strain on Army and Marine forces that have already endured years of continuous deployments.…Another point of stress is the amount of time active duty units have spent in the United States between deployments.”72 Juxtaposed with the complaint that American forces were stretched too thin in Iraq was the eruption of a controversy in February over the treatment of wounded veterans from the Iraq and Afghan theaters undergoing outpatient treatment at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. An investigative series that would win a Pulitzer Prize for the Washington Post revealed that the veterans’ care had been hampered both by bureaucratic red tape and by substandard and deteriorating facilities.73 Since support for the troops was about the only common ground in the contentious debate over Iraq, these revelations were an embarrassment to the administration just at the time when it was attempting to build support for the surge. This became a major story across the media universe as compelling visual images of the decaying outpatient facilities and the heartbreaking stories of the wounded soldiers and their families filled the pages of the print media and the airwaves of the broadcast outlets and rocketed across the Internet. The sorry spectacle of the military brass attempting to explain away their negligence and indifference before outraged members of congressional committees also captured the full attention of the media. The swift ouster of Walter Reed’s top administrators and a presidential

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apology would help to contain the damage, but the episode heightened public awareness of the war’s human toll and certainly lent credibility to the opponents’ narrative that not all aspects of the conflict were going as advertised by the Bush administration. The media also reported that many senior military officials were privately concerned about the long-term impact of the surge. According to the Post, top generals at the Pentagon had informed defense secretary Gates that the “extra brigades flowing to Iraq had stretched the military close to the breaking point.” The article went on to observe that Admiral William Fallon, chief of U.S. Central Command, was “worried that Iraq was undermining the military’s ability to confront other threats, such as Iran.”74 By citing top military leaders on the impact of the surge, the press provided substance and credibility to the theme that Bush’s policy was straining the U.S. military in ways that could potentially compromise American security. Thus, even supporters of the surge often recognized that its sustainability was time-limited due to the stress caused by the increased level and duration of troop deployments to Iraq. Awaiting Petraeus’s Report By the end of the summer of 2007, the raucous public and media debate over the surge versus withdrawal in Iraq had entered what New York Times columnist David Brooks termed “endgame deadlock.”75 What had happened? As noted above, by the spring, the surge success narrative had begun to effectively compete in the media with the war is lost oppositional frame. The op-ed pages in both the Times and the Post played a role in boosting the success of the surge theme as claims that the surge was beginning to show progress also made their way into newspaper commentary. In March, halfway through the surge buildup, one op-ed column in the Times by several Brookings Institution researchers noted “a glimmer of hope” from the surge.76 Also in March, neoconservative commentator and early supporter of regime change in Iraq, Robert Kagan, argued in the Post that “the ‘surge’ is succeeding.”77 By May, Frederick Kagan, American Enterprise Institute scholar and a strong proponent of the surge, highlighted in his op-ed piece the many successes of the surge so far.78 An influential Times opinion essay written in June by Peter Rodman, who had served as a senior national security advisor in several administrations, and William Shawcross, the British author of a well-known Vietnam-era critique of U.S. policy in Southeast Asia, provided a stark assessment of the consequences of failure in Iraq: “There should be no illusion that defeat would come at an acceptable price. George Orwell wrote that the quickest way of ending a war is to lose it. But anyone who

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thinks an American defeat in Iraq will bring a merciful end to this conflict is deluded. Defeat would produce an explosion of euphoria among all the forces of Islamist extremism, throwing the entire Middle East into even greater upheaval. The likely human and strategic costs are appalling to contemplate.”79 Added weight may have been lent to this essay since these two writers had clashed years ago over U.S. policy in Vietnam, but had now joined forces in support of the surge and to warn of the dangers of defeat in Iraq. And by July, Michael O’Hanlon and fellow Brookings scholar, Kenneth Pollack, were optimistic enough to pen an opinion column titled “A War We Just Might Win.”80 To be sure, numerous op-ed pieces in both the Times and Post were critical of the surge. Frank Rich, Maureen Dowd, and Paul Krugman constantly voiced skepticism toward the surge in their regular New York Times columns. Also especially and consistently harsh were the Times editorials against the surge, as exemplified by a July editorial calling for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq “without any more delay than the Pentagon needs to organize an orderly exit.”81 Washington Post editorials tended to be more cautious in their criticism of the surge strategy than those in the Times. As one Post editorial in July warned, while President Bush might be guilty of wishful thinking on Iraq, “advocates of withdrawal would like to believe that Afghanistan is now the central front in the war on terror but that Iraq is not; believing that doesn’t make it so. They would like to minimize the chances of disaster following a U.S. withdrawal; of a full-blown civil war, conflicts spreading beyond Iraq’s borders, or genocide. Before Congress begins managing rotation schedules and ordering withdrawals, it should at least give those generals the months they asked for to see whether their strategy can offer some new hope.”82 By September, the Post editors were optimistic enough to characterize the surge strategy as “the least bad plan.”83 The surge was also a topic of substantial and sustained interest among the Post’s opinion writers. While Post columnists reflected a range of views on Iraq, in general, they were more supportive of the surge than their counterparts at the Times. Eugene Robinson was a consistent voice of skepticism, while Charles Krauthammer remained determined in the view that it was necessary to give the surge a chance to succeed. Most of the rest of the Post columnists occupied a middle ground between these two extremes. Most significant, however, was that surge-related news items in both newspapers tended to reflect the more optimistic tone of the surge proponents. The combination of mixed op-ed columns and more positive news items created a viable media surge narrative by the end of the summer. Thus, the stakes could not have been higher for Petraeus’s September congressional testimony. As a Times editorial put it, “The military

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commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, is to deliver a report to Congress on Monday that could be the most consequential testimony by a wartime commander in more than a generation.”84 While it was widely assumed that the fate of the surge would rest on the general’s report, the larger issue of the importance of the moment for the future of U.S. foreign policy was succinctly framed by Anthony H. Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Quoted in the Times on the eve of the hearings, Cordesman contended that “it seems likely that the U.S. will ultimately be judged far more by how it leaves Iraq, and what it leaves behind, than how it entered Iraq. Thus, America’s future ability to use its hard and soft power depends on what the U.S. does now.”85 The Democratic strategy regarding the Petraeus testimony was clear— their prospects for forcing a withdrawal from Iraq hinged on the September hearings. According to the Times, “Congressional Democrats, who wrote the Sept. 15 deadline into war-financing legislation, envisioned General Petraeus’s report as the moment they would have enough solid information to decide whether to continue financing for the so-called surge. They say that it could provide the opportunity to peel away enough nervous Republicans to create a veto-proof majority in favor of a withdrawal.”86 While there was never any doubt concerning the substance of Petraeus’s congressional report, the issue became which narrative would emerge as most credible in the eyes of the media and the public. The Post’s awestruck account of General Petraeus’s appearance before Congress should have left little doubt in the minds of readers about the outcome: The best historical analogy for Gen. Petraeus’s appearance before Congress yesterday might be found in the days of the Roman Republic. Then, returning generals wearing laurel wreaths and purple robes and riding in chariots were greeted at the city gate by senators and led through a “Triumph” ceremony that included trumpeters and the slaying of white bulls. There were no animal sacrifices in the Caucus Room yesterday, but Petraeus—even the name is a felicitous echo of the Latin “patronus” (protector)—enjoyed the modern equivalent: Taking his place on a raised platform in the middle of the room, the general, with four stars on each shoulder and a chest full of ribbons, was surrounded by more than 50 cameras and lawmakers lining up to pay respects. The lawmakers used their allotted questioning time to heap linguistic laurels on the visiting general, and to a lesser extent, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker: “America’s finest…Our nation’s most capable…The capability, the integrity, the intelligence and the wisdom…Nothing but admiration.” And that was from the Democrats.87

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The AP continued the pattern of media tributes for the general’s performance with the following analysis: “A Congressional hearing that lawmakers called the most important of the year opened like a rock concert Monday, with crackling anticipation and screeching feedback from acoustic speakers. Yet, this show turned out to be David Petraeus, unplugged. Calm, measured, unflinching, the Iraq war commander walked lawmakers through the latest turns in the unpopular war, stopping well short of promising victory but asking the nation to give escalation a chance.”88 With only a little less dramatic flair, a New York Times reporter interpreted the scorecard after day one as a one-sided contest between a heroic figure and his outgunned political opponents: “If it is true that a battle’s outcome is determined before the first shot is fired, then Gen. David H. Petraeus won the first day of hearings before his microphone was turned on…It turned out that the military was not on trial on television, but the Democrats were. The Bush administration let the popular and respected military commander make the case for maintaining troop levels, forcing opponents to tiptoe around the general’s rows of medals and gleaming four stars.”89 One reason the Democrats were under the media microscope was the fallout from the publication of MoveOn.org’s provocative Times advertisement. The ad’s blunt challenge to Petraeus’s integrity placed congressional surge opponents in a very awkward and uncomfortable position. While they did not want to issue a public condemnation of a liberal ally, neither did they wish to give any appearance of condoning or endorsing its highly controversial message. It was a lose-lose proposition for the Democrats, and one their GOP colleagues were pleased to use to political advantage. Republicans immediately characterized the ad as unpatriotic and offensive and seized the opportunity to link Democrats with the increasingly vilified advocacy group; congressional surge opponents did their best to pretend that neither MoveOn.org nor its ad existed. Once the congressional hearings ended, media organizations quickly concluded that far from being a clash of titanic forces, they had merely been a minor skirmish. As stated in the Times, “the hearings had been expected to provoke an epic confrontation between opponents of the war and its front-line leaders. But that conflict did not fully materialize Monday, in part because only a few Democrats on two House committees seemed inclined to dispute with much vigor the assessments provided by a commander with medals on his chest and four stars on his shoulders.”90 And as the media also noted, even when Democrats challenged the substance of General Petraeus’s report in the hearings, they were careful to not impugn his honesty or integrity.

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The prospect of dramatic confrontation over the war was especially attractive to the medium of television, and NBC’s Nightly News highlighted selected verbal exchanges between Petraeus and Crocker and their congressional inquisitors. The network’s coverage of the general’s testimony was punctuated with revealing sound bites such as Petraeus’s “Sir, I don’t know, actually” response to the query posed by Senator Warner as to whether his plan made the United States any safer.91 But even under the rare sharp questioning by a member of Congress, the television lens portrayed a stoic and composed professional soldier more than holding his own with congressional critics of the war. “A four-star general used to taking enemy fire, Petraeus shot back at his critics who accused him of shaping his Iraq strategy to appease the White House,” is how NBC’s Miklaszweski described Petraeus’s “I wrote this testimony myself ” comment.92 Most committee members seemed to recognize that they were definitely on the losing side of the hearings’ image competition and carefully held their rhetorical fire. The MoveOn.org advertisement fueled additional controversy when it was revealed that the Times had initially charged less than the appropriate fee. Some conservatives made accusations that the newspaper’s liberal bias might be responsible for the alleged preferential treatment. Even the public editor of the Times raised questions concerning some of the assertions made in the ad.93 Presidential electoral politics eventually became enmeshed in the controversy as well when Republican Rudy Giuliani placed his own advertisement in the Times criticizing MoveOn. org and Hillary Clinton while praising General Petraeus. In the end, the MoveOn.org ad provided a useful mechanism for the president’s supporters to place congressional Democrats on the defensive as they attempted to challenge the Petraeus report. As for the substance of the Petraeus testimony, the Post reported, “David H. Petraeus presented an upbeat picture of improving security conditions in Iraq and offered a grim forecast of the ‘devastating consequences’ of a more rapid pullout.”94 Most significantly, the usually cautious general asserted to the committee, “I believe we have a realistic chance of achieving our goals in Iraq.”95 Thus, Petraeus succinctly emphasized the two core themes of the Bush surge narrative—that victory in Iraq was still achievable and that the consequences of defeat would be catastrophic for the United States. General Petraeus’s ability to work in 160 mentions of al Qaeda during his two days of testimony also provided a boost to the president’s terror-and-security narrative, and this did not go unnoticed in media reports.96 And equally helpful to the White House was that the media gave scant visibility to a General Accounting Office

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report and a National Intelligence Estimate whose data were in conflict with Petraeus’s conclusions about the situation in Iraq. Devoting more attention to the actions of noisy protestors in the hearing room and the flap over the MoveOn.org advertisement, the press tended to present a one-sided narrative in which the substance of the general’s testimony was not subjected to thorough scrutiny. Ambassador Crocker’s task before the congressional committees was, in many respects, more challenging than his military colleague’s. While Petraeus could credibly argue violence in Iraq was down and the military situation was more stable, Crocker was in the more difficult position of addressing the lack of political progress in Iraq. Since the creation of breathing space for Iraqi leaders to achieve national reconciliation had in fact been the raison d’être for the surge, military progress represented an ephemeral tactical success in the context of the overall plan’s strategic failure. In response to a question by a frustrated Senator Levin suggesting American patience with Iraqi leaders was nearly exhausted, Crocker could only muster the argument that “our course is hard. The alternatives are far worse.”97 But as it turned out, demonstrating military success was all that was required to keep Republicans on board with a staying the surge course. Post reporters described the Petraeus testimony as just the “political lifeboat” nervous Republicans in Congress needed to save them from being forced to repudiate the president’s surge policy.98 As E. J. Dionne of the Post surmised, “Bush has pacified two of the three constituencies he needed to quiet if he was to continue with his policy—Republicans in Congress and the leading Republican presidential candidates.”99 Crucial to quieting Republican dissenters, and perhaps even some Democrats, was Petraeus’s suggestion that an American force drawdown to presurge levels would likely occur by the summer of 2008. As David Gregory of NBC put it, “By recommending a withdrawal of surge troops beginning in December, Petraeus may have satisfied both sides of the aisle.”100 A more cynical interpretation of the Petraeus testimony’s outcome might have been that President Bush had succeeded in passing the problem of Iraq on to his successor. Supporters of the surge were unquestionably buoyed by the general’s testimony before Congress, but the media also noted the success of the larger administration effort to change the terms of the debate over Iraq, as the New York Times reported: “White House officials say that Mr. Bush is in a much better place now than he was in July…But in the nearly two months since then, Mr. Bush’s communications team waged an aggressive—and, many Republicans say, largely successful—campaign to use the Congressional recess in August to take control of the debate

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on Iraq.”101 The September Petraeus-Crocker testimony had resulted in a solid media advantage for President Bush in the debate over the best way to achieve closure in Iraq. According to a Times article, “By the end of two days of testimony, it appeared clear that the Democrats still did not have enough votes to cut off funding for the war or set deadlines for an American withdrawal.” It went on to suggest that not only had the Democrats lost this round of the policy debate but also that Bush’s Iraq strategy would prevail: “It was also clear that, unless Mr. Bush includes a surprise in his Thursday speech, the strategy for the remaining troops will be a familiar one. The planned level of about 130,000 troops by next July is about the same level as was in Iraq in February.”102 A clearly more confident president delivered a prime-time address to the nation in the wake of the September hearings. Returning to the uplifting rhetoric of earlier times, Bush began his speech with the words, “In the life of all free nations, there come moments that decide the direction of the country and reveal the character of its people. We are now at such a moment.”103 The president affirmed that the surge strategy was working and he embraced his commander’s troop level recommendations. As if to underscore his agreement with Petraeus, Bush made reference to the general eight times. He also left little doubt about the identity of the enemy in Iraq, mentioning the phrases war on terror, terrorists, and al Qaeda twenty times. In contrast, sectarian violence was mentioned a mere three times while insurgency was mentioned only once. The president also introduced a new concept in his address that he termed return on success, the idea that “the more successful we are, the more American troops can come home.” Thus, Bush suggested he, too, had a military strategy for withdrawal from Iraq but only after the troops “defeat the enemy.” In his conclusion, Bush returned to his oft-repeated theme that our stake in Iraq was nothing less than winning the global battle for freedom against al Qaeda: “Some say the gains we are making come too late. They are mistaken. It is never too late to deal a blow to al-Qaeda. It is never too late to advance freedom. And it is never too late to support our troops in a fight they can win.”104 Not surprisingly, the press depicted congressional Democrats as divided and defeated in the wake of the Petraeus-Crocker testimony. A news article in the Post noted that “amid division, some Democratic leaders appeared glum,”105 and the Times wrote that “the struggle to settle on a party alternative illustrates the problems Democrats are having finding a way to take on the president that unites their party and avoids criticism that they are weak on national security.”106 Other media sources echoed the notion of Democratic defeat at the hands of the popular general.

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Speaking of the domestic political impact of the Petraeus testimony, Today show host Meredith Vieira posed the following question to Tim Russert: “So, essentially he [Bush] has won, Tim, hasn’t he?” Russert responded that “in terms of prosecuting this war the way he wants to, absolutely. General Petraeus’ plan has become the Bush Strategy.”107 WHEN NO NEWS IS GOOD NEWS

In the aftermath of the September hearings, media coverage of General Petraeus and the surge diminished significantly. According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism, coverage of the Iraq War had comprised nearly 25 percent of total media news hole during the month of September. This was the second highest monthly total of the year and the congressional testimony of Petraeus and Crocker was no doubt responsible for the spike in media interest. However, for the remaining three months of 2007, media attention to Iraq sank dramatically and accounted for only 6.2 percent of the total news hole by December; it would drop even further in the first two months of 2008.108 The declining media interest in Iraq reflected several developments. First, after the Petraeus-Crocker testimony, it seemed apparent that the president’s course had prevailed and would successfully withstand any congressional challenge. Given that there was unlikely to be a successful congressional effort to change course in Iraq during the remainder of 2007 or even by early 2008, the newsworthiness of the Iraq policy debate was severely diminished. And as the fall brought fewer casualties in Iraq, the events on the ground were less important as a media story. Some of the fall’s remaining paltry media coverage of Iraq also shifted to the private security firm Blackwater USA and allegations that its employees had been guilty of the unjustified killings of Iraqi civilians. Blackwater’s young and politically well-connected founder, Erik Prince, was called to testify before Congress, and the appearance of the controversial former Navy Seal made for irresistible news copy. But most importantly, the expanding news story of the 2008 presidential campaign season had begun to crowd out competing storylines. Democrats and Republicans alike realized that the success of the Petraeus testimony had established the dominance of the Bush surge narrative well into 2008 and perhaps beyond. Even so, for the remainder of 2007, Democrats would continue their mostly symbolic and largely unsuccessful attempts to alter the president’s policy in Iraq by imposing spending restrictions. In September, Senate Democratic efforts to cut off funding for the war by June lost on a vote of 28 to 70 and were described by the AP as “a predictable defeat for Democrats,” while the Times noted in November that the Democrats “failed once again to shift the President

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Bush’s war strategy in Iraq,” as House Democrats sought to add restrictions to a war funding bill that would have required withdrawal of U.S. forces to begin within thirty days and be completed by December 2008.109 Predictably, these congressional efforts to thwart Bush’s Iraq policy failed to generate much interest in the press. By this point, the storyline of Democratic failure to overturn the surge policy had become an old and tired tale. Sensing the media were beginning to neglect the important story of Iraq, a sarcastic Thomas Friedman wrote in an October 2007 Times opinion column: “Boy, am I glad we finally got out of Iraq. It was so painful waking up every morning and reading the news from there. It’s just such a relief to have it out of mind and behind us.…Huh? Say what? You say we’re still there? But how could that be—nobody in Washington is talking about it anymore?”110 The relative media silence on the surge was interrupted at the end of 2007 with renewed media reports of success in the form of declining levels of violence. Reports from General Petraeus that violent attacks in Iraq were down by 60 percent since June made front-page headlines in the Times.111 In December, Post columnist David Ignatius opined that Petraeus had the “enviable problem” that his “surge had been so successful” that he might be able to “accelerate his timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops.”112 Nonetheless, despite reports of success, the media also noted that Petraeus was expected to recommend a “pause” in troop reductions beyond those scheduled for July 2008. The pause, if adopted, would, in effect, freeze troop deployments in Iraq at the presurge level well into the next administration. By the end of the year, even some of Bush’s harshest critics appeared to be having second thoughts about the surge. Although he insisted the war could not be won militarily and that he continued to oppose it, even Rep. Murtha was quoted by the AP as saying, “I think the surge is working.”113 But evidence that the debate over the surge was far from over was also apparent as voices of opposition continued to appear in mainstream media commentary. In March of 2007, for example, the well-respected conservative professor of history and international relations, Andrew Bacevich, had condemned the Iraq War as “immoral, illicit, and imprudent,” arguing in a Boston Globe opinion column that merely “decrying the so-called ‘surge,’” as many in Congress seemed wont to do, would accomplish little. The only remedy to what he termed “the folly” of Bush’s doctrine of preventive war was for Congress to offer a binding resolution condemning the administration’s use of “preemptive, unilateral military force when and where it chooses.” But even if that course of action reduced “the likelihood that we will see more Iraqs in our future,” Bacevich ominously

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cautioned, it would still “not solve the problems posed by Iraq.”114 Ten months later, he was no less pessimistic, writing in a Post op-ed piece that the surge success narrative—as colorfully expressed in Bush’s quip that we were “kicking ass” in Iraq—was nothing but a myth. The reality was far more complicated and problematic, Bacevich warned: “To say that any amount of ‘kicking ass’ will make Iraq whole once again is pure fantasy. The U.S. dilemma remains unchanged: continue to pour lives and money into Iraq with no end in sight, or cut our losses and deal with the consequences of failure.”115 But Bacevich’s and other opposition commentators’ arguments notwithstanding, the narrative that the surge was accomplishing its intended goals held sway in elite media news accounts as 2007 came to an end. The Petraeus Effect As we have documented, a less than unified opposition and positive media coverage of our new commander in Iraq lent support and credibility to the Bush surge narrative and were key factors enabling it to successfully contend with calls for withdrawal of American forces. A brief examination of public opinion shows a steady increase in public support for the surge and sheds some light on the pivotal role of General Petraeus’s September testimony. According to the Gallup Organization, during the week of his testimony, Petraeus’s favorability ratings jumped from 52 to 61 percent, a gain of nearly ten points.116 Gallup also reported that whereas in July only 22 percent of the public thought the surge had improved the situation in Iraq, after the Petraeus testimony, that number increased to 35 percent, and by December, it had risen an additional 5 percent. Another indicator of the surge narrative’s success was an eighteen-point increase from February to November 2007 (a jump from 30 to 48 percent) of Americans who believed that the military effort in Iraq was going very or fairly well.117 But the Bush administration would be unable to claim victory in its campaign to promote wholehearted public acceptance of our Iraq policy. Attitudes about our ultimate failure or success in Iraq were evenly divided throughout 2007, and there was no significant shift in feelings on the issue of whether U.S. troops should stay or be withdrawn.118 Furthermore, aggregate American views about whether the decision to go to war was an error were unchanged during 2007, with the same number—57 percent— claiming both in January and December that the war in Iraq had been a mistake.119 In short, the perceived tactical success of the surge, and the popularity of the general who led it, had not altered fundamental attitudes about the war or perceptions of our long-term prospects for success. The Gallup News Service captured the import of these various trends when it

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concluded that the surge and Petraeus’s September testimony had “bought time, but not support” to President Bush on the Iraq War issue.120 The upsurge in public support of the surge and favorable media depictions of the general and his management of the surge did, however, provide evidence of a Petraeus effect on the surge policy. First, the personal biography of General Petraeus presented by the White House and uncritically adopted by Congress and the media was one of an exceptional military leader especially well suited to the challenge posed by Iraq. As the Petraeus narrative suggested, if anyone could succeed in Iraq, it was he, and neither Congress nor media organizations raised any significant questions about his previous military performance or record. The MoveOn. org ad challenging the general’s integrity was ineffective, at best, and counterproductive, at worst, as it provided the White House with additional talking points about problems with the withdrawal scenario and the fecklessness of the surge’s opponents. Secondly, over time the ownership and authorship of the surge strategy became increasingly vested in General Petraeus. In short, the Bush surge became the Petraeus plan. Even MoveOn.org’s advertisement referred to Petraeus as the “architect of the escalation of troops in Iraq.” President Bush was able to accomplish this by consistently insisting that he would listen to the military’s advice and follow their recommendations. In effect, the decision about whether the surge was working would be made by General Petraeus, and since this would be a report on his own performance, there could be little doubt concerning the outcome. Critical to the Petraeus effect was that while President Bush might lack credibility on Iraq, his commander did not. And because the military in American society is both highly respected and perceived as a nonpartisan institution, this shift in responsibility for the surge complicated opponents’ efforts to challenge it. Opposition to the surge could be dismissed as lack of support for the troops, defeatist, and partisan. Few dissenting voices would be raised in the media concerning the insertion of the military into the policy debate. One of the rare examples appeared in the Post when former admiral and current Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA) stated about the Petraeus testimony: “We have defaulted to a military man to set the terms of the debate. I think it is profoundly against the spirit of the Constitution…Congress is as responsible as the president.”121 This comment was, however, an exception to the general pattern of coverage. Far more central to the Petraeus effect were the extensive and mostly supportive reports of his cautiously optimistic congressional testimony about progress on the ground in Iraq. Without this September appearance, continued congressional and public support for the surge would have become seriously problematic for

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President Bush. But what remained unanswered—and largely unexplored by the media—was the question of whether Petraeus was an ambitious general doing the president’s bidding or a professional soldier whose views happened to coincide with those of his commander in chief. Other factors also accounted for the increasing credibility of the Bush surge narrative throughout 2007. A disciplined and skillfully orchestrated public communications operation by the White House again proved successful in shaping media coverage, and it far outmatched the efforts of the divided congressional opposition. And despite Democratic efforts to block the troop escalation, the surge became the actual U.S. policy in Iraq. The withdrawal narrative was only a hypothetical policy, and the Bush administration and its surrogates were able to suggest that the unknown consequences of withdrawal might be worse than staying in Iraq, especially if there were even a modest chance of achieving U.S. goals through the surge. Institutional constraints on Congress’s ability to shape foreign policy also put it at a distinct disadvantage in this struggle to control policy in Iraq. Congress could only react to the Bush initiative, and the policy debate shifted from the congressional counternarrative of withdrawal to a debate over the success of the surge. Starting quickly and persisting consistently throughout the debate, the administration’s case that the surge was working, at least militarily, was a prominent component of media coverage. And as we have emphasized, this also is why Petraeus’s September testimony was so pivotal in the debate between the contending narratives. The reduction in civilian and military violence in Iraq also helped to buttress the administration’s narrative. U.S. military fatalities dropped from a monthly high of 126 in May of 2007 to a monthly low of 23 in December, and a similar pattern occurred with reported deaths of Iraqi civilians.122 Not only could the administration’s supporters present this as tangible evidence that the surge was providing greater stability, it also contributed to declining overall media coverage of the war.123 In the case of Iraq, no news was good news for the administration. And as the violence declined both on the ground and in the news, the media, Congress, and the public also began to turn their attention to presidential politics and worrisome economic issues. Along with emerging presidential campaign coverage, news stories of a growing mortgage crisis and a looming recession began to crowd out Iraq for news space. IRAQ

AS

WAR

ON

TERROR?

One of the most striking dimensions to emerge from the political and media debates of 2007 was the contested linkage between the war in Iraq

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and the global war on terror. Just as the president needed to maintain that Iraq was the central front in our battle against terrorism to legitimize his surge policy, the credibility of the Democratic challenge required that the Iraq War be uncoupled from the president’s master terror-and-security narrative. To accomplish that goal, the Democrats essentially embraced the president’s wider theme of our struggle against terrorism while heatedly denying Iraq’s centrality to that conflict. And because congressional opponents did not make it an integral part of their challenge to the surge, the media also left the president’s terrorism narrative largely unexamined and unchallenged. Thus, once again, the big winner in the surge debate was the president’s discourse of terror. This, in part, explains the low level of public and media debate regarding the military conflict in Afghanistan. There was consensus that Afghanistan was central to our fight against terrorism, whereas the nature of Iraq’s linkage to the broader war on terror lay at the heart of the competing Bush and withdrawal narratives. But while Bush and his congressional adversaries fundamentally disagreed about whether Iraq had any relevance to our wider struggle, they both agreed that terrorism represented the greatest threat of the contemporary era and that we were in a life-and-death struggle against this powerful foe. That the surge policy and its ensuing debate would play out against the backdrop of terrorism and security had been underscored by the opening words of President Bush’s January 10, 2007, address to the nation announcing his new surge strategy. He began his prime-time speech with the following declaration: “Tonight in Iraq, the Armed Forces of the United States are engaged in a struggle that will determine the direction of the global war on terror—and our safety here at home. The new strategy I outline tonight will change America’s course in Iraq, and help us to succeed in the fight against terror.”124 Almost a year to the day later, Bush commenced his final twelve months in office still embedding Iraq within the war-on-terror frame. Addressing our troops on a January 2008 visit to Kuwait, the president projected himself into the role of a future historian penning the story of the victorious culmination of the global war on terror. “There is no doubt in my mind that we will succeed,” Bush said, and then proceeded to proclaim: “There is no doubt in my mind when history was written, the final page will say: Victory was achieved by the United States of American for the good of the world; that by doing the hard work now, we can look back and say, the United States of America is more secure, and generations of Americans will be able to live in peace.”125 But in a political contest that was already assuming epic proportions, there was no way that this endgame narrative would go unchallenged.

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CHAPTER 7

Envisioning War’s Denouement On the evening of November 4, 2008, president-elect Barack Obama strode before a large and enthusiastic crowd in Chicago’s Grant Park to deliver his victory speech. At this historic moment, there was little mention of Iraq, Afghanistan, or the war on terror. Given the celebratory nature of the occasion, perhaps it was fitting that Obama not dwell on the intervention that had become so publicly corrosive or the difficult choices that lay ahead in Afghanistan. As the focus of his measured remarks would demonstrate, it was also evident that the financial and economic crisis had shoved Iraq (along with every other issue) to the policy periphery. But while not central, Iraq had nonetheless been visible during the hard-fought fall campaign, and it had played an important role in the nomination process, figuring prominently in both Obama’s and McCain’s appeals to their core constituencies during the lengthy primary season. In fact, each party ended up selecting its most consistently antiwar and prowar candidate, respectively. But the political instincts on Iraq that each contender had followed to gain his party’s nod would not be as helpful for either man in the fall campaign. As the year that marked the Iraq War’s fifth anniversary commenced, public and media attention was starting to turn away from President Bush’s conduct of the war. Even though a February Gallup poll had identified Iraq as the public’s primary campaign issue, economic concerns soon proved more powerful.1 This trend was also mirrored in declining media attention to Iraq, as the war’s reportage reached new lows by early 2008. With diminishing violence on the ground and little chance of policy change until after the November elections, Iraq accounted for only 4 percent of the total news hole during the first three months of the year. A particularly severe drop-off occurred in press reports of the Washingtonbased policy debate over Iraq.2 Thus, General Petraeus’s May testimony before Congress hardly made a ripple in the news, in sharp contrast to the media spectacle of his appearance the previous September. Part of

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the reason for the decreasing focus on Iraq was structural in nature. Since 2007, media outlets had substantially reduced the resources devoted to covering the war from the site of the conflict. By the fall of 2008, only four newspapers maintained a full-time bureau in Baghdad, and CBS and NBC no longer kept a permanent correspondent stationed there.3 But for a nation weary of nearly five years of war, the campaign did afford Americans the opportunity to assess the contrasting views of the presidential contenders on how and when the war would conclude and what the conflict represented. While vigorous public and media debate over the war’s denouement was largely overwhelmed by economic issues, the two major party candidates had set forth competing and essentially irreconcilable views on Iraq years earlier, and these would form the backbone of their respective endgame narratives. Let Us Tell You How It Ends: The 2008 Presidential Candidates’ Iraq Endgame Narratives THE DEMOCRATS’ IRAQ ENDGAME

During the 2008 primary season, the top-tier Democratic candidates displayed only minor differences on their Iraq policies. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Edwards all supported plans calling for the withdrawal of U.S. forces. But Clinton and Edwards possessed liabilities on Iraq, for they had both voted in favor of the 2002 congressional authorization for war, and while Edwards had renounced his vote as a mistake, Clinton had not. Clinton attempted to thread the political needle by advocating a withdrawal plan to placate the Democratic antiwar constituency while simultaneously appearing strong enough on fighting terrorism not to cede this issue to the Republicans in the general election. But as a result of this delicate balancing act, Clinton confronted a second problem. She had voted in the fall of 2007 to support a congressional resolution that called for the identification of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization. Opponents feared the resolution could potentially provide justification for the Bush administration to take military action against Iran under the questionable rubric of the war on terrorism. But more problematic for Clinton, her vote could be spun as the second time she had used poor judgment and voted to give the Bush administration grounds for unwise use of military force. Aside from this instance, however, Clinton and Obama had nearly identical Senate voting records on measures relating to Iraq. While Iraq policy differences may have been small among the top-tier Democrats, they nonetheless became an important campaign issue. An

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Iowa poll on the eve of the caucuses revealed that for potential Democratic caucus goers, the Iraq War remained the top issue, edging out health care and the economy.4 Candidate Clinton would, at times, experience difficulty satisfying Democratic constituents with her unwillingness to admit her original vote on Iraq had been a mistake. But had she renounced that vote, Clinton could well have been vulnerable to the charge of “flip-flopping” on Iraq, a claim leveled with no small measure of success against the Democrats’ 2004 nominee.5 Thus, much of the Democratic nomination discourse centered less on what to do about Iraq now than whose judgment had been most sound on the decision to go to war. By this measure, Obama could distinguish himself favorably from the competition, for among the major Democratic contenders, he possessed the longest and most consistent antiwar record. Obama’s first public statement on Iraq had been in opposition to the war. As a state senator from Illinois, he spoke before a crowd in Chicago in early October 2002 denouncing the prospect of war against Iraq as “a dumb war. A rash war.” However, Obama repeated the phrase “I don’t oppose all wars” six times in his brief remarks.6 Thus, while emphasizing that the use of military force could be justified and necessary in some circumstances, he emphatically rejected the argument that war against Iraq was warranted. His opposition was centered on two issues. First, Saddam was not an imminent threat to the United States, nor had the Bush administration exhausted the alternatives to war. Secondly, the consequences of military engagement would prove far too costly: “I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than the best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda.”7 For Obama, the national security threat of terrorism was a serious problem, but a war with Iraq would distract the United States from the real danger. As he admonished the commander in chief that October day, “You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s finish the fight with Bin Laden and al-Qaeda, through effective, coordinated intelligence, and a shutting down of the financial networks that support terrorism, and a homeland security program that involves more than color-coded warnings.”8 In brief, while Obama rejected the linkage between the prospective war in Iraq and the larger war on terrorism, he did accept the necessity of waging a global a battle against the terrorists: “After September 11th, after witnessing the carnage and destruction, the dust and the tears, I supported

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this Administration’s pledge to hunt down and root out those who would slaughter innocents in the name of intolerance, and I would willingly take up arms myself to prevent such a tragedy from happening again.”9 Obama articulated additional elements of his anti-Iraq narrative in a major speech twelve months after his 2004 election to the Senate. Having carefully maintained a low profile on the war for nearly a year, Obama delivered his first major address on the subject before the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations. While not embracing the language of defeat, he did assert that the administration’s strategy was not working and it was time to begin the process of reducing the American “military footprint in Iraq.”10 But, he cautioned, “we need not a time-table, in the sense of a precise date for U.S. troop pull-outs, but a time-frame for such a phased withdrawal.”11 Obama believed this action would send the message to the Iraqis that we were serious about the need for broad political accommodation by all sides, but at the same time provide them with sufficient time to achieve these goals and avoid the possible destabilizing effects of a precipitous withdrawal. A second theme to emerge in this particular address was the necessity of engaging the international community, especially Iraq’s neighbors, in a diplomatic effort to assist in the country’s stabilization. Obama also returned to his earlier point that Iraq was a distraction from the larger war on terror, stating, “I continue to believe that the Administration’s tendency to equate the military defeat of the Iraqi insurgency with the defeat of international terrorism is dangerously short-sighted.”12 One year later, in a November 2006 speech before the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, little had changed in Senator Obama’s position on Iraq. He continued to argue that the war had been a mistake and a distraction from Afghanistan, the president’s strategy was a failure, there needed to be a greater diplomatic push to help stabilize Iraq, and American military forces should be withdrawn.13 However, Obama’s call for withdrawal now was more specific in that it had incorporated the idea of timetables and a start date of within four to six months. He also explicitly argued for the redeployment of at least some of the troops to Afghanistan. And in January 2007, Obama formally introduced the Iraq War De-escalation Act, which was designed to begin the redeployment of combat troops by May 1 and complete the process by the following March. The final major element of Obama’s antiwar narrative was crafted in response to Bush’s 2007 decision to increase military forces in Iraq. Joining with most Democrats, Obama opposed the president’s surge strategy, stating on the Senate floor, “I cannot in good conscience support this escalation. It is a policy which has already been tried and a policy which has failed.”14 Two months later, he again addressed his Senate colleagues with the more definitive assessment that “there is no military solution

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to this war. No amount of U.S. soldiers—not 10,000 more, not 20,000 more, not the almost 30,000 more that we know we are sending—can solve the grievances that lay at the heart of someone else’s civil war. Our troops cannot serve as their diplomats, and we can no longer referee their civil war.”15 Thus, from October 2002 to March 2007, the core elements of Barack Obama’s Iraq endgame narrative had taken shape: the invasion had been a mistake; military victory, even with the surge, was not possible; Iraq represented a distraction from Afghanistan and the fight against al Qaeda; we should begin a gradual, phased withdrawal from Iraq without delay; and we must commence a push for regional diplomatic engagement with Iraq’s neighbors to assist in the country’s stabilization. Obama’s Iraq War endgame perspective evolved further over the course of the campaign. Most notably, he advanced a specific plan for the removal of all combat troops from Iraq within sixteen months of his inauguration. Writing in the op-ed pages of the New York Times in July 2008, Obama stated that on his first day in office, he “would give the military a new mission: ending this war,” and he specified a drawdown of one to two combat brigades per month and the redeployment of at least two combat brigades to Afghanistan. While acknowledging a decline in violence since the surge had begun, he nonetheless maintained that “the same factors that led me to oppose the surge still hold true” and characterized Iraq as “the greatest strategic blunder in the recent history of American foreign policy.” He also continued to separate the war in Iraq from our battle against terrorism, noting that “Iraq is not the central front in the war on terrorism, and it never has been.”16 But even though he consistently faulted Bush’s Iraq policy, nowhere did Obama express serious opposition to Bush’s master narrative of an aggressive military response to international terrorism. Obama’s call for military withdrawal from Iraq to enable us to “finish the job” in Afghanistan suggested his goal was victory of some sort, but what it entailed or how long U.S. forces might be necessary in Afghanistan he never fully explained. The substantive difference Obama had with the Bush administration was significant to be sure, but it was limited to the prosecution of the war in Iraq, not the underlying global terrorist threat. THE GOP IRAQ ENDGAME

As early as September 2007, the McCain camp had made the calculation that Iraq should be a central campaign focus. Emblematic of this strategy was the decision to replace the familiar “Straight Talk Express” logo on the McCain bus with a new “No Surrender” one as the campaign

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headed to Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. And to generate publicity for the new theme, the McCain camp touted the change as the “No Surrender Tour.” Just as Obama sought his party’s nomination on the basis of his consistent opposition to the war, McCain would seek to distinguish himself from the Republican competition by burnishing his record of ardent support for the war in Iraq and his foreign policy and commander-in-chief preparedness. With the exception of Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), all of the 2008 Republican hopefuls supported the war in Iraq, but none could match McCain’s stellar public record of support for both Iraq and the war against terrorism. One early GOP frontrunner, the former mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani, had become the victim of the biting campaign quip by Sen. Biden that the mayor’s sentences consisted of little more than “a noun, a verb, and 9/11,”17 but McCain’s personal biographical narrative as a Vietnam POW and war hero served to enhance his foreign policy credentials. McCain’s problem in the primaries was not his foreign policy bona fides, but convincing Republican activists that he was a genuine social conservative. Staking out a strong position on Iraq would, he hoped, help to compensate for his major vulnerability among Republican primary voters—that he was simply too moderate. One week after Obama gave his October 2002 antiwar speech, McCain became a cosponsor of the congressional resolution to authorize the use of force against Iraq. In fact, McCain had publicly urged the invasion of Iraq six months before the White House began its public case for war.18 Although a sometime critic of the Bush administration’s handling of the war, McCain remained a steadfast supporter of the original invasion of Iraq and a staunch opponent of any effort to withdraw troops before victory was achieved. In his Senate floor statement in support of the original resolution to authorize the use of force, McCain described Saddam Hussein as “a megalomaniacal tyrant” who constituted a “clear and present danger” to the United States.19 McCain’s critique included Iraq’s possession of biological and chemical weapons along with an alleged crash nuclear weapons program, its support for al Qaeda and other terrorists, and Saddam’s repeated human rights violations against his own population. Furthermore, according to McCain, since there was no chance for accommodation, the threat Iraq posed could not be eliminated until its tyrant was removed from power.20 On the eve of the March 2003 invasion, Senator Robert Byrd’s eloquent and passionate rebuttal to Bush’s rationale for war prompted McCain to deliver an ardent defense of the decision to invade Iraq. While reprising the national security argument, McCain mostly cast the struggle

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with Iraq in the idealistic language of promoting freedom and the liberation of an oppressed people. As he explained, “Although Theodore Roosevelt is my hero and role model, I also, in many ways, am Wilsonian in the respect that America, this great nation of ours, will again contribute to the freedom and liberty of an oppressed people who otherwise never might enjoy those freedoms.”21 McCain did criticize the White House for mishandling the occupation and not providing sufficient troops on the ground, blaming the postinvasion escalation of violence on both these shortcomings. As early as fall 2003, McCain was suggesting that the administration needed more troops and a different strategy to succeed in Iraq. As conditions deteriorated, his critique became more pointed. In a major speech to the American Enterprise Institute in November 2005, McCain premised his remarks on the assumption that rather than whitewash the situation in Iraq, we must acknowledge that “not all is well there.” But as the “Winning the War in Iraq” title of his speech suggested, withdrawal was not the solution. Instead, he insisted that the stakes in Iraq were simply too great for failure to be an option: “We must get Iraq right because America’s stake in that conflict is enormous…Success or failure is the transcendent issue for our foreign policy and our national security, for now and years to come.”22 The transcendent importance of Iraq would be a theme McCain returned to again and again, arguing that we needed to send more troops and revise our counterinsurgency strategy to promote a “clear and stay” approach rather than the current one of just “killing and capturing insurgents” and repeatedly retaking the same ground.23 Not surprisingly, then, when President Bush announced his decision to escalate U.S. forces, McCain was a vocal and strong supporter. In fact, John Edwards dubbed the Bush surge policy the “McCain Doctrine,” illustrating just how closely McCain was identified with support for the surge and the general who had been appointed to lead it. As McCain commented at the time, “We should make no mistake—the potentially catastrophic consequences of failure demand that we do all we can to prevail in Iraq. A substantial and sustained increase in U.S. forces in Baghdad and Anbar province is necessary to bring down the toxic levels of violence there.” Observing that Iraq was teetering on the verge of civil war, those catastrophic consequences would be far greater than the U.S. defeat in Vietnam: “We were able to walk away from Vietnam. If we walk away from Iraq, we will be back—possibly in the context of a wider war in the world’s most volatile region.”24 Thus McCain tied the fate of his presidential ambitions squarely to the risky prospects of the surge achieving its stated goals. Asked in early 2008 what would happen in the general

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election if the American public did not believe the surge had worked, McCain tersely responded, “Then I lose.”25 In virtually every respect, McCain’s positions on Iraq were at odds with those of his Democratic opponent. First, he enthusiastically supported the original decision to go to war and never wavered from that position. Unlike Obama, McCain also agreed with the administration that Iraq was the central front on the war on terror and that the United States could not leave until victory had been achieved. In a 2006 Senate floor statement, McCain addressed the meaning of victory in Iraq. He rhetorically queried, “What does victory mean? It is the classic reduction and eventual elimination of any insurgency. An economy that works, a government that functions, and a military and police that are able to combat and eventually eliminate and destroy an insurgency.”26 McCain also believed that the war in Iraq was still winnable and that the surge provided the best chance to defeat the insurgents and stabilize the country. While he opposed timetables and deadlines, he did suggest that because of the success of the surge, most Americans forces could be out of Iraq by January 2013, the end of his first term in office. THE IRAQ WAR ENDGAME

IN THE

FALL CAMPAIGN

For McCain, the surge was an essential general election campaign issue. So exuberant was his campaign rhetoric in praise of General Petraeus and the surge that Washington Post columnist Jackson Diehl offered the chiding observation, “Never mind Sarah Palin. John McCain has another running mate: General David H. Petraeus.” Diehl went on to observe that while McCain had mentioned Palin once in his first debate, he had mentioned Petraeus seven times.27 Key to McCain’s campaign narrative was that the surge was succeeding and bringing victory in Iraq. This was a point that McCain made in the first debate on foreign policy, in his stump speeches, and on his campaign Web site. Under the heading, “Strategy for Victory in Iraq,” the McCain-Palin Web site stated, John McCain has been a leading advocate of the “surge” and the counterinsurgency strategy carried out by General David Petraeus…That strategy has paid off. From June 2007 through March 2008, sectarian and ethnic violence in Iraq was reduced by 90 percent…Those gains would be lost if we were to follow the policy advocated by Senator Barack Obama to withdraw most of our troops and leave behind only a small “strike force” to battle terrorists. That is, in essence, the same strategy of withdrawing from Iraq’s streets that failed in 2006. John McCain advocates continuing the successful counterinsurgency strategy that began in 2007.28

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In contrast, the Obama-Biden Web site barely mentioned the surge, and only in the context that it had not solved the fundamental problem in Iraq. Under the heading “Plan to End the War in Iraq,” it provided the following analysis: Inadequate Security and Political Progress in Iraq: Since the surge began, more than 1,000 American troops have died, and despite the improved security situation, the Iraqi government has not stepped forward to lead the Iraqi people and to reach the genuine political accommodation that was the stated purpose of the surge. Our troops have heroically helped reduce civilian casualties in Iraq to early 2006 levels. This is a testament to our military’s hard work, improved counterinsurgency tactics, and enormous sacrifice by our troops and military families. It is also a consequence of the decision of many Sunnis to turn against al Qaeda in Iraq, and a lull in Shia militia activity. But the absence of genuine political accommodation in Iraq is a direct result of President Bush’s failure to hold the Iraqi government accountable.29

Thus, the two contrasting surge narratives contained very different evaluations of the policy’s outcome. For McCain, the surge had clearly been successful and was the key to victory in Iraq. Obama provided the more nuanced assessment that while the surge may have contributed to the decline in violence in Iraq, it did not alter the fundamental dynamic that only a withdrawal of U.S. forces would prompt the Iraqis to achieve the political accommodation the surge was intended to accomplish. And, according to Obama, withdrawal from Iraq was necessary to ease the strain on the U.S. military, free up additional forces for deployment to Afghanistan, and lessen the financial burden of funding the war Obama’s decision to visit Europe and the Middle East during July 2008 also became a visible campaign issue. His trip included stops in Afghanistan and Iraq, where he was able to meet with President Karzai, Prime Minister Maliki, and American military commanders in the region, including General Petraeus. All of this occurred under the glare of an intense media presence, including the three major network anchors who accompanied Obama, thereby ensuring substantial media coverage during the network evening news broadcasts. On one level, this trip was an unprecedented media event that, while carrying risks for the candidate, generally portrayed Obama as presidential in stature. In one rather typical characterization, an op-ed commentator described it as “Obama’s Tour de Force.”30 On the policy level, the trip yielded real political dividends when the German newspaper Der Spiegel quoted Maliki as essentially agreeing with Obama’s withdrawal proposal. Asked by the reporter

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when the Americans should leave, Maliki responded, “U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes.”31 While Maliki initially claimed he had been misquoted by the German press, Obama was able to confirm that this was indeed the prime minister’s view. A joint press release with Senators Chuck Hagel and Jack Reed stated, “The Prime Minister said that now is an appropriate time to start to plan for the reorganization of our troops in Iraq—including their numbers and missions. He stated his hope that U.S. combat forces could be out of Iraq in 2010.”32 It was bad enough for McCain that Iraq’s prime minister was seemingly in agreement with his Democratic rival on a timeframe for the withdrawal of U. S. combat forces, but it would be compounded by the revelation that the White House had also agreed in principle to a timeline as part of the broader negotiations on the new Status of Forces Agreement with Iraq. As the New York Times reported, while the administration was not calling it a timeline, there was a “significant shift in the war,” as President Bush “agreed to a ‘general time horizon’ for withdrawing American troops in Iraq.”33 This difference between the candidates was also exaggerated by the Obama campaign and Democratic National Committee ads that claimed that McCain would keep U.S. forces in Iraq for one hundred years. But McCain’s criticism of Obama continued and, at times, could be quite harsh, as in his July 2008 quip about Obama’s withdrawal plan that “it seems to me that Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign.”34 This verbal rebuke was meant to contrast favorably with McCain’s oft-repeated claim that he would rather lose an election than lose a war. The theme of “Country First” embedded this sentiment overtly and prominently in McCain campaign communications. The occasion of the Middle East trip also allowed Obama to seize the initiative in emphasizing the relative neglect of the important Afghan theater. For Obama, the central front in the war on terror was Afghanistan, not Iraq. In his view, the military situation in Afghanistan was deteriorating dangerously as the Taliban and al Qaeda were regrouping. As he stated in a New York Times op-ed, ending the war in Iraq was “essential to meeting our broader strategic goals, starting in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the Taliban is resurgent and al-Qaida has a safe haven.”35 While McCain did not necessarily disagree with Obama’s policy prescription for Afghanistan, there was a difference of priority in the candidates’ positions, as Obama termed the situation in Afghanistan “precarious and urgent”36 while his opponent stressed the primacy of Iraq. Public comments by military commanders in the field would reinforce Obama’s contention that the situation in Afghanistan was dire and getting worse.

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McCain’s campaign narrative also emphasized his readiness to be commander in chief. Taking a page from the Clinton campaign playbook, McCain sought to portray Obama as weak on foreign policy experience and national security credentials. Just as Clinton’s famous “phone ringing at three a.m.” advertisement had made the point during the Democratic primaries, the McCain camp would attempt to exploit this perceived area of vulnerability during the general election. As McCain quipped at the time of the Clinton ad, “If you want someone really experienced on national-security issues to answer the phone, that would be me.”37 McCain’s Vietnam service was central to this dimension of his campaign narrative. His ads and speeches often touted his war and POW experiences and how these had prepared him to be a president who understood the horrors of war but was not afraid to use military power when the national interest required it. Since a majority of the public supported Obama’s policy position on Iraq, it was perhaps more important for McCain to demonstrate that his opponent was unfit to be an effective commander in chief than it was to convince Americans that Obama’s policy on Iraq was wrong. Thus, on the McCain campaign trail, Obama’s opposition to the surge became a question of flawed judgment as much as flawed policy, and McCain campaign communications variously referred to Obama’s Iraq withdrawal plan as “dangerous,” “imprudent,” and “reckless.” Obama struck back at this criticism, accusing McCain of poor judgment for his original support for the war and issuing a convention speech challenge: “If John McCain wants to have a debate about who has the temperament and judgment to serve as the next commander-in-chief, that’s a debate I’m ready to have.”38 In a late September news analysis of this very issue, the New York Times noted that public opinion on national security issues suggested that Obama “does not necessarily face a public that is at odds with his positions, but rather one that has yet to be fully convinced of his ability.”39 One of the more bizarre aspects of the 2008 general election was the McCain campaign’s effort to raise questions about the nature of the relationship between Barack Obama and a 1960s era radical, William Ayers. While not a foreign policy issue in the strict sense, the most plausible explanation for elevating it to a campaign issue was McCain’s attempt to characterize Ayers as a “domestic terrorist” and hence as evidence of Obama’s lack of fitness to lead the country in the war on terrorism. Public opinion polls consistently gave McCain an edge as the candidate better able to deal with the terrorist threat,40 so this was a potentially fertile issue area for the Republican team to emphasize. One of the campaign’s most memorable sound bites was the allegation from McCain running mate Sarah Palin that Obama “palled around with terrorists.”41 The McCain

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campaign and the Republican National Committee also released television ads highlighting the alleged connection between the two men. This controversy generated considerable media attention, but because Ayers maintained his silence during the campaign and the press was unable to uncover any details other than a casual acquaintance with Obama, it failed to gain much traction for the Republicans. Many observers had anticipated that Iraq would be an important issue in the general election, especially for McCain. A typical news headline in the Times proclaimed, “Events in Iraq Likely to Be Key Theme for McCain.”42 But because economic issues dominated the fall campaign discourse, even the first presidential debate, which was supposed to cover the topic of foreign policy, was devoted primarily to the domestic economic crisis. Council of Foreign Relations member Robert McMahon’s election eve op-ed in the Washington Post identified the financial crisis as the main factor responsible for pushing aside discussion of foreign policy. According to McMahon, “By the end of their contest, the issues of terrorism and Iraq had faded to distant echoes amid the din of the financial crisis.”43 The economic meltdown certainly was a pivotal event compelling both candidates to recalibrate their campaign messages. But as a New York Times–CBS poll found the month prior to the financial collapse on Wall Street, four in ten Americans were already claiming the economy as their top issue, and a mere 15 percent named the Iraq War.44 Thus, the economy was emerging as the dominant campaign concern well before the full brunt of the economic crisis hit, and this was being reflected in the specific issue emphases of the campaigns. One indicator of this shift was the relative issue focus of campaign advertising, as the Wisconsin Adverting Project discovered that over half of each candidate’s television ads were about taxes and the economy; while each campaign raised foreign policy issues and Iraq in its broadcast advertising, neither was accorded a very high priority.45 Another indicator of a candidate’s priorities comes from the content of his stump speeches. The bane of campaign reporters who sit through repeated renditions of the same speech week after week, the stump speech is nonetheless a useful guide to a candidate’s overall message and themes. A Times analysis at the end of the campaign found that foreign policy comprised less than 5 percent of Obama’s stump speech content, and about the only reference to Iraq was the spending reduction that would result once the United States pulled out.46 Similarly, an October National Public Radio analysis of a typical McCain stump speech concluded that “there’s almost no foreign policy in the speech, and very little about the war in Iraq.” Instead, according to NPR, McCain had made references

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to “Joe the Plumber” and his personal biography the foundation of his speech.47 While the McCain campaign certainly believed it had an issue advantage it could exploit, there was evidence that it, too, downplayed foreign policy even before the financial meltdown on Wall Street. Although a number of GOP convention speakers focused on Iraq and the war on terrorism, McCain’s acceptance speech contained only three sentences about Iraq and two on al Qaeda. Equally telling, the Republican Party platform was fifty-five pages long but contained only one paragraph on Iraq.48 This underscored the uncertainty in the McCain camp on the role the Iraq War issue should play in the campaign. McCain’s dilemma was that even though he wanted to tout the success of the surge, the war remained unpopular with the American public. As a consequence, he sought to minimize this risk by making any focus on the war a vehicle to underscore his foreign policy credentials.49 Thus, especially compared to 2004, the war had receded as a prominent issue for Republicans. Nor did the issue of terrorism fare much better as a GOP campaign issue. By September, the Post could report, “Once a key concern that propelled Republicans to big electoral victories in 2002 and 2004, terrorism has often seemed the forgotten issue of 2008.” As the article went on to observe, it was a “rare moment” that either campaign raised the specter of terrorism, usually doing so only “to emphasize larger themes about their campaigns and to question the judgment of their adversary.”50 The Media, Iraq, and the 2008 Presidential Election Since the Iraq War was a relatively low priority in campaign discourse, the fact that the media did not place it high on their campaign news agenda should come as little surprise. The Project for Excellence in Journalism found that the horserace theme of who was leading and who had fallen behind amounted to 53 percent of the total campaign coverage during the election’s final six weeks, while issue or policy coverage placed a distant second place at a mere 20 percent. The top three storylines the PEJ identified were the economy and financial crisis, the presidential debates, and Palin-related stories.51 The media were certainly aware that the focus of the campaign, and hence their coverage, had been altered by events on Wall Street. As Jeff Zeleny of the New York Times observed, “Neither Mr. Obama nor Mr. McCain won their respective nominations through their economic messages. Mr. Obama was a candidate of change, who campaigned on his judgment in opposing the Iraq War. And Mr. McCain largely appealed to Republicans because of his national security credentials and support for the war. The economy may not have been their initial playing field, but both have no choice but to urgently adapt.”52

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But that Iraq comprised just 1 percent of the total campaign coverage during the later stages of the presidential election53 is certainly noteworthy and seemed to reflect an elite media consensus on two vital aspects of the Iraq War endgame: the surge had achieved its military and security goals and the United States would soon be on its way out. As Peter Baker of the Times wrote of the first piece of conventional media wisdom, “It now looks as if the surge, one of the riskiest presidential decisions in a generation, has been vindicated.”54 Baker’s colleague, Michael Gordon, reached a similar conclusion: “There is no question that the American reinforcements by President Bush have helped reduce sectarian violence, both directly through military operations and indirectly by helping encourage the spread of the Awakening Movement, in neighborhood watch groups that have taken on Sunni extremists.”55 Foreign policy experts Stephen Biddle of the Council on Foreign Relations and Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution weighed in on this issue in an August Times op-ed, writing that as a consequence of the surge, “almost everyone now agrees there has been great progress in Iraq.”56 The issue of the surge’s success was one of the few areas where candidate Obama consistently found himself on the defensive. In a much-publicized interview with Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly, an exasperated Obama was finally pressed to admit that the surge had succeeded “beyond our wildest dreams.”57 Sometimes, as in the case of the O’Reilly interview, the press overlooked the nuance and complexity of Obama’s surge position. More commonly, media analyses cast Obama’s sixteen-month plan for troop withdrawal as precipitous and potentially jeopardizing the security gains on the ground. A Washington Post editorial expressed the concern this way: “Sadly, he [Obama] seems to be finding that the strident and rigid posture he struck during the primary campaign—during which he promised to withdraw all combat forces in 16 months—is inhibiting what looks like a worthy, necessary attempt to create room for maneuver he will need to capably manage the war if he becomes president.”58 Helene Cooper of the Times succinctly summarized the consensus as, “Most foreign policy experts say Mr. McCain has Mr. Obama on Iraq, and Mr. Obama has Mr. McCain on Afghanistan and Pakistan.”59 The most intriguing point is that the media incorporated the surge into their campaign horserace theme, focusing far less on the original decision to go to war than on who had been correct about the surge and stood to gain politically from it. For a majority of media reportage and commentary, this seemed to be McCain. As Peter Hart of the media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting concluded about mainstream media outlets during the fall campaign, “The media line seems to boil down to

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a few distinct truisms: The troop surge has worked; Democrat Barack Obama’s support for a phased withdrawal from Iraq must therefore be adjusted; and Republican nominee John McCain—an ardent supporter of the war and ‘surge’—has an unexpected advantage.”60 However, a few analyses in the Post interpreted the surge success as actually aiding Obama. In an op-ed titled “Casualty of the Surge,” Michael Gerson, a former George W. Bush speech writer and advisor, argued that McCain’s support of the surge made him “a vindicated prophet,” but that, paradoxically, the strategy McCain championed in Iraq may have actually helped pave Obama’s “way to the presidency.”61 A subsequent Post editorial concurred in this assessment by noting, “the biggest beneficiary of its [the surge] success is not Mr. Bush, whose popularity is as low as ever, or Mr. McCain, but Democrat Barack Obama.” The reasoning was that only the success of the surge enabled Obama’s withdrawal plan to have any plausibility.62 The theme that our exit from Iraq was essentially a fait accompli also permeated the elite media. As Frank Rich argued in a June op-ed in the Times, “In America, the war has been a settled issue since early 2007. No matter what has happened in Iraq since then, no matter what anyone on any side of the Iraq debate has had to say about it, polls have consistently found that a majority of Americans judge the war a mistake and want out. For that majority, the war is over except for finalizing the details. They’ve moved on without waiting for the results of Election Day 2008 or sampling the latest hectoring ad from moveon.org.”63 An October Times editorial titled “Nearing the End” carried a similar message: “No matter who wins the presidential election, the United States is on its way out of Iraq. Senator Barack Obama offers the most specific and speediest withdrawal plan, but even Senator McCain will not be able to keep a large number of combat troops there for long.”64 Echoing the same theme was a Post Election Day editorial, “The War That Didn’t Bark.” Noting that “by the time his [Obama] general election competition with Mr. McCain began, Iraq had faded as an issue,” it attributed the demise of Iraq as a campaign issue to the growing convergence of agreement on withdrawal timelines by Bush, Maliki, and Obama.65 Other op-ed headlines in the Times, such as “Not Quite Ready to Go Home” or “How to Exit Iraq,” all suggested an American withdrawal from Iraq was imminent. Because they perceived that the war in Iraq was essentially over and all that remained were the details of the American redeployment, the media viewed the differences between the candidates as largely irrelevant and essentially lacking in newsworthiness. Given a media narrative that assumed the consummation of the Iraq War

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endgame, an answer could at last be provided to the simple but prescient request posed by General David Petraeus in early 2003 to embedded Post reporter Rick Atkinson, “Tell me how this ends.”66 A final foreign policy media focus during the presidential campaign was the war in Afghanistan. While most previous coverage had been dramatically overshadowed by Iraq, media reports in the fall highlighted the candidates’ current positions on Afghanistan as well as the future implications of their proposed strategies. The press quickly reached the conclusion that the two contenders’ differences on Afghanistan were slight. As one news headline in the Post proclaimed, “Iraq Aside, Nominees Have Like Views on the Use of Force.”67 The first sentence in a Post column by David Ignatius made the same observation: “If there was one foreign policy issue on which Barack Obama and John McCain agreed during Friday night’s debate, it was that the United States should send more troops to Afghanistan.”68 But the second dimension of the Afghan storyline was more cautionary and ominous in tone and emphasized the dangers of the deepening American military commitment that both candidates were advocating. A typical example was a Times op-ed by influential British journalist Bartle Breese Bull that noted while 60 percent of Americans supported the idea of a surge in Afghanistan, its prospects for success were slim. As he explained, “a successful occupation of Afghanistan, which is larger, more complex, more populous and very much less governable than Iraq, would require 400,000 troops.” Furthermore, since “Afghanistan’s global significance is negligible” to the goal of promoting a more moderate Islam, a surge in Afghanistan was, as the title of Bull’s op-ed proclaimed, “the wrong force for the ‘right war.’”69 Pursuing the same skeptical argument, Ignatius warned that “the bipartisan consensus for the surge is so strong that there has been relatively little discussion of whether this strategy makes sense…The idea that we can saturate that vast country with enough soldiers to provide security for the population seems unrealistic, to put it mildly.”70 While stories critical of the presidential candidates’ overreliance on military force to achieve American objectives in Afghanistan were not frequent, there was at least some media scrutiny of this component of both campaigns’ foreign policy narratives. But none of these analyses challenged the basic notion that Afghanistan was a part of the global war on terrorism or that the original invasion was necessary. This was precisely Bull’s point in labeling Afghanistan the “right war.”

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Awaiting History’s Judgment Election Day exit polling by the Pew Research Center revealed the substantial dominance of the economy in shaping voter preferences. Sixty-three percent selected it as the most important issue, compared to only 10 percent who named Iraq and 9 percent who identified terrorism as their main concern. For those who chose Iraq as their top issue, 59 percent reported voting for Obama, while McCain enjoyed a six-to-one advantage (86 to 13 percent) among voters who named terrorism as their top issue.71 It is of little wonder, then, that the McCain camp sought to elevate terrorism as a campaign issue even if, at times, it was done through the stealth tactic of a dubious association with a radical from the 1960s. However, even terrorism was not necessarily a vote getter for the Republican ticket. For the 70 percent of Americans who responded that they were worried about another terrorist attack, McCain held only a two-point margin over Obama (50 to 48 percent). And of the remaining 28 percent who indicated they were not worried about another terrorist attack, Obama secured a commanding voter advantage of 67 to 30 percent.72 Thus, Obama’s position on Iraq provided an electoral advantage while the terrorism issue was more of a wash. And while Americans generally held that McCain was better able to deal with the threat of terrorism, the depth of concern over this issue had receded to the point that it did not translate into a substantial campaign advantage for the Republican candidate. BUSH’S IRAQ ENDGAME NARRATIVE

Iraq and terrorism may have receded as the paramount campaign issues of 2008, but for George W. Bush the war on terror continued to stand as the defining policy of his presidency, and Iraq remained the centerpiece of his self-proclaimed mission to protect America against another insidious onslaught. And even as he was relegated largely to the partisan sidelines throughout the presidential campaign, his waning months in office would provide the lame-duck president an opportunity to continue his promotion of the wider war on terrorism and to affix a meaning to Iraq’s essential role in that monumental conflict. In his final State of the Union address at the dawn of the primary season, Bush devoted nearly 50 percent of his speech to the topic of foreign policy. Highlighting the war on terror, he remained thoroughly unapologetic for the course he had set for the nation, and echoing rhetorical themes from earlier years, he noted both the justness of the cause and the significance of the stakes:

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Since 9/11, we have taken the fight to these terrorists and extremists. We will stay on the offense, we will keep up the pressure, and we will deliver justice to our enemies. We are engaged in the defining ideological struggle of the 21st century. The terrorists oppose every principle of humanity and decency that we hold dear. Yet in this war on terror, there is one thing we and our enemies agree on: In the long, men and women who are free to determine their own destinies will reject terror and refuse to live in tyranny. And that is why the terrorists are fighting to deny this choice to the people in Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Palestinian Territories. And that is why for the security of America and the peace of the world, we are spreading the hope of freedom.73

For Bush, the global war on terror represented—as it had for six and a half years—a struggle of good versus evil where security, peace, and freedom for the United States and the world were the stakes that hung in the balance. Turning to the situation in Iraq a bit later in the address, the president began to detail his assessment of the surge’s success, stating, “One year ago, our enemies were succeeding in their efforts to plunge Iraq into chaos. So we reviewed our strategy and changed course. We launched a surge of American forces into Iraq.” While conceding much work remained to be done, he quickly emphasized the point that the surge had “achieved results few of us could have imagined just one year ago”—an overall reduction in violence, a decline in terrorist attacks, and lower civilian casualties in Iraq. To any remaining skeptics, the president declared, “Ladies and gentlemen, some may deny the surge is working, but among the terrorists there is no doubt. Al Qaeda is on the run in Iraq, and this enemy will be defeated.”74 Speaking before a friendly audience at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in March, Bush continued his description of how a successful surge had assisted in the promotion of freedom in Iraq. The president observed, “The military achievements in Iraq have been accompanied by a political transformation. It can feel like distant history, but it was only five years ago that Iraq was one of the most brutal dictatorships on Earth—a totalitarian nightmare where any election was a sham, and dissenters often found themselves buried in mass graves.” Once again, he had a message for those who doubted the wisdom of the surge: Some, however, seem unwilling to acknowledge that progress is taking place. Early in the war, they said the political situation wasn’t good enough. Then, after Iraq held three historic elections, they said the security situation wasn’t good enough. Then, after the security situation began to

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improve, they said politics, again, wasn’t good enough. And now that progress is picking up, they’re looking for a new reason. But there is one thing that is always consistent. No matter what shortcomings these critics diagnose, their prescription is always the same— retreat. They claim that our strategic interest is elsewhere, and that if we would just get out of Iraq, we could focus on the battles that really matter. This argument makes no sense. If America’s strategic interests are not in Iraq—the convergence point for the twin threats of al Qaeda and Iran, the nation Osama bin Laden’s deputy has called “the place for the greatest battle,” the country at the heart of the most volatile region on earth—then where are they?75

These passages nicely illustrate the thematic continuity of the Bush narrative: the conflation of Iraq with the war on terrorism, the idea that withdrawal from Iraq was equivalent to surrender, the liberation of Iraq from a brutal dictator as justification for the war, and, with the success of the surge, a renewed emphasis on victory. Throughout 2008, Bush often returned to the theme of the surge’s accomplishments. In a July radio address, he noted that “the sustained progress” in Iraq was due to “the success of the surge.” He also announced that we had been able to reduce our troops’ tours of duty from fifteen to twelve months, bring home all five of the combat brigades that comprised the surge, and that further troop reductions might be possible later in the year.76 By November, it was clear that Bush interpreted the surge’s results as vindication of his policy in Iraq. Whether intentional or not, he had replaced the “we” pronoun of his State of the Union address with “I” as he recounted the policy review that resulted in the surge. As he told the troops at Fort Campbell, “So, I reviewed our strategy and changed course. Instead of retreating, I ordered more troops into Iraq. And to lead the surge, I chose a former commanding general of the 101st Airborne—the man formerly known as Eagle Six, General David Petraeus.”77 Finally, in a December radio address to the nation, the president cited the surge as the proximate cause that would enable the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq by 2011 under the terms of the new Status of Forces Agreement. Thus the withdrawal of American forces would not be in retreat or surrender, but in victory, and he ended his address with these words: “The war in Iraq is not yet over—but thanks to these agreements and the courage of our men and women in Iraq, it is decisively on its way to being won.”78 Careful students of the president’s discourse would also notice that the central front in the war on terror had expanded over the course of the year. By the fall, Bush would declare that “the war on terror, the

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war against people who would do us harm again, is being waged on two fronts—Afghanistan and Iraq.”79 This discursive shift would well serve his successor, but it would also help to cement the president’s master narrative that we were pursuing a battle against terrorism that was truly international in scope. In December addresses to the United States Military Academy and the Army War College, Bush delivered a formal, two-pronged peroration on his foreign policy accomplishments. Betraying no sense of doubt in the wisdom of the course he had charted in the aftermath of 9/11, he first summarized how his administration had reshaped our approach to national security, strengthened our counterterrorism capabilities, and transformed the military so as to wage the war against terrorism.80 He then highlighted the strategy he had pursued to keep our country safe, the results we had achieved, and the institutions he was leaving behind “for future Presidents to carry on this struggle.”81 Two weeks earlier, the president sat for an interview with ABC’s Charles Gibson. With just over a month and a half left in his final term, Bush was asked to comment on his toughest decision and greatest accomplishment as president. Both of his answers made reference to Iraq and the war on terror. Reflecting on whether there was ever a moment he thought he might be betraying his principles, Bush stated that a pullout from Iraq “would have compromised the principle that when you put kids into harm’s way, you go in to win. And it was a tough call, particularly, since a lot of people were advising for me to get out of Iraq, or pull back from Iraq—and rather than listen to—I mean, I listened to a lot of voices, but ultimately I listen to this voice: I’m not going to let your son die in vain; I believe we can win in Iraq; I’m going to do what it takes to win in Iraq.”82 And to the query about the one thing he was proudest of, the president unhesitatingly replied, “I kept recognizing that we are in a war against ideological thugs and keeping America safe.”83 On January 15, 2009, President Bush delivered his farewell address to the nation. It is telling that he began with thoughts of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, mentioning Iraq and Afghanistan only within the context of our primary national security accomplishment: keeping America free from another terrorist attacks on our soil. Driving home the idea that Iraq must be seen as part of “a broader struggle between two dramatically different systems,” Bush completed his final curtain call with the same Manichean rhetorical flourishes that had marked the beginning of his mission to defeat the terrorist menace—“good and evil are present in this world, and between the two there can be no compromise.”84 In Bush’s final public interpretation of a war that would soon enter its seventh year,

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the meaning and import of Iraq was nothing less than ground zero in the fight for freedom’s future. But while Iraq was a battle we were poised to win, the wider struggle against terrorism continued. As the outgoing president warned, “our enemies are patient and determined to strike again.… We must resist complacency. We must keep our resolve. And we must never let down our guard.”85 CONTESTING IRAQ

BUT

STANDING UNITED

AGAINST

TERRORISM

The Democrats’ efforts to decouple Iraq from the war on terror and the Bush-McCain promotion of Iraq as the central front in that larger conflict represented a classic frame contest over the meaning of the Iraq War. The vulnerabilities of the Bush frame were not difficult to identify. Years of American blood and treasure sunk into Iraq had taken their toll on the president’s narrative. So, too, had Bush’s low approval ratings and the widening gap between the social and political reality of Iraq as presented by the media and major oppositional figures, on the one hand, and the administration, on the other. As our analysis has indicated, this was a gradual process where, over time, the war’s opponents were able to marshal a coherent and compelling counterframe to the administration’s conflation of Iraq with the wider war on terror. While Iraq was far from the defining issue in the presidential campaign, Obama’s election did represent the ascendency of the perspective that Iraq was a tragic distraction from our major task at hand—confronting the worldwide terrorist threat. But we cannot overemphasize one essential fact: neither major party candidate challenged the fundamental assumption that America must wage a global war on terror. In fact, both strongly affirmed their support for military engagement of the terrorist threat but simply disagreed on Iraq’s significance in that battle. The media also adopted the prevailing framework, providing minimal coverage of the war and echoing the candidates’ position on combating international terrorism. During the fall campaign, Andrew Bacevich lamented that the future of American foreign policy was not contingent on the outcome of the presidential contest. Declaring that “the real winner in this election will be President Bush himself as his defective strategy carries over into the next presidential administration,” Bacevich noted that both Obama and McCain were committed to a “fundamental strategy of global war” against terrorism and merely disagreed on the “operational priorities” of Iraq versus Afghanistan.86 Similarly, Bob Woodward reported that one of the architects of the surge, retired General Jack Keane, believed that once General Petraeus was appointed as central commander, “U.S. strategy in the Middle East would be locked in, no matter who won the 2008 presidential race.”87

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Thus, as Bush exited the national stage, the master narrative he first articulated in the aftermath of 9/11 remained essentially intact. Our national debate over Iraq had been intense and contentious, but cascading virtually unimpeded from the White House through an acquiescent Congress and compliant mainstream media, the underlying idea that we must wage a worldwide military battle against shadowy and ever-morphing terrorist adversaries had remained an unexamined and unquestioned fixture of American public discourse. Few national leaders challenged the necessity of fighting the global war on terrorism or questioned the danger that international terrorists pose to American security—and in the face of such elite consensus, neither did the leading organs of the press. This perspective also resonated with the experiences of the American public as televised images of terrorist bombings abroad, repeated dire official warnings, and enhanced security screening in our airports reinforced the danger in people’s daily lives. Most importantly of all, Bush’s overarching worldview of the titanic clash of good versus evil, civilization versus barbarism, and light versus darkness had struck a particularly responsive chord across this nation, and the morality tale of a just and moral people forced into a life-and-death struggle to defend our precious values of liberty and freedom against faceless enemies determined to destroy everything we represent continued to occupy a hegemonic position in our national political conversation through the final months of Bush’s term in office. The election of the most liberal Democrat in over two generations thus served to highlight the foreign policy legacy Bush had bequeathed— the creation of a bipartisan consensus on the necessity of an unlimited and militarized global war on terror. As Bush proclaimed to the students, faculty, and staff at the U.S. Army War College a month before leaving the White House, “As President, I’ve had no higher responsibility than waging this struggle for the security and liberty of our people. After 9/11, I vowed that I would never forget the wounds from that day—and I’m not. That day defined my presidency, and that day changed the course of history.”88 And as Bush might be the first to recognize, the interpretation of what that day meant and how we had to respond had—for better or for worse—also come to define America’s legacy at the dawn of a new century. The critical question was whether this vision of why we had to fight would outlast the forty-third president’s term in office. Epilogue: Drawing Down the War on Terror? From the moment Barack Obama was sworn in as president on January 20, 2009, he signaled both continuity and change in the policies and

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official narrative of the two wars he had inherited. As he stood before an enormous and enraptured crowd in the chilly winter sunshine, the new commander in chief began his inaugural address by noting that every so often the oath of office must be taken “amidst gathering clouds and raging storms.” His initial statement on our current military tempest—“Our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred”— was both succinct and intriguingly evocative of his predecessor’s terror and security narrative. But after devoting the bulk of his remarks to the state of the economy, Obama expanded his discussion of America’s pressing national security concerns, drawing a pointed contrast between his and George Bush’s approaches to keeping the nation safe and offering an implicit rebuke to the man seated behind him on the platform: As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers…, faced with perils that we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man—a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience’s sake. Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please.…Our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.89

Although reiterating that we would use our power in a constrained and principled manner, President Obama immediately issued a warning to anyone who might interpret his words as a sign of weakness or lack of national will. In carefully measured terms that echoed much of the Bush discourse of the previous seven and a half years, Obama declared, “We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense. And for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken—you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.”90 The fortyfourth president seemed strongly to imply that while the Bush worldview on national security was about to undergo some important modifications, it was far from being totally repudiated. This rhetorical shift was accompanied by several significant policy changes in the treatment of terror detainees as Obama moved quickly to terminate some of the more unsavory and constitutionally questionable practices of Bush’s war on terror. He announced that the Guantanamo Bay detention facility would be closed within one year, harsh interrogation

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techniques would no longer be permitted, and the CIA’s secret prisons would be ended. In addition, administration lawyers indicated that they would abandon the Bush term “enemy combatant” to describe terror suspects. But astute political and media observers also noted that the new administration had given itself some maneuvering room on certain problematic Bush policies such as the practice of rendition (transferring prisoners to other countries without legal rights), intelligence agency interrogation policies, and the question of how future high-level terrorism suspects might be handled.91 As the White House counsel, Gregory Craig, asserted, “We are charting a new way forward, taking into account both the security of the American people and the need to obey the rule of law. That is a message we would give to the civil liberties people as well as to the Bush people.”92 Additional rhetorical and policy changes were also in the offing. In his January 20 address, Obama had stated that “we will begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people,” and in a widely anticipated and much-heralded policy development, the president traveled to the Marine base at Camp Lejeune just over five weeks into his term to announce his plan to end the war in Iraq. As Obama told the assembled troops, “Let me say this as plainly as I can: by August 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end,”93 a timeline that was only a couple of months longer than what he had promised on the campaign trail. Furthermore, President Obama informed the cheering soldiers, “Under the Status of Forces Agreement with the Iraqi government, I intend to remove all U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of 2011. We will complete this transition to Iraqi responsibility, and we will bring our troops home with the honor that they have earned.”94 Little public reaction or dissenting media commentary accompanied these remarks; while a few Democratic lawmakers and liberal commentators grumbled about the size of the residual forces that would remain in Iraq for the next several years, these voices were muted as Congress, the public, and the media tended to concur with no small measure of relief that our military commitment in Iraq was progressing toward some sort of closure. Evidence of America’s Iraq fatigue was also most apparent as the war’s sixth anniversary came and went with barely a media or political ripple. The Iraq War endgame discourse of early 2009 also contained little of the previous administration’s hyperbolic rhetorical trappings of a glorious military, political, or human rights victory. In his speech at Camp Lejeune, Obama encapsulated his administration’s more cautious and circumscribed endgame narrative as he said of his Iraq strategy and what it could accomplish:

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This strategy is grounded in a clear and achievable goal shared by the Iraqi people and the American people: an Iraq that is sovereign, stable, and selfreliant. To achieve that goal, we will work to promote an Iraqi government that is just, representative, and accountable, and that provides neither support nor safe-haven to terrorists.… What we will not do is let the pursuit of the perfect stand in the way of achievable goals. We cannot rid Iraq of all who oppose America or sympathize with our adversaries. We cannot police Iraq’s streets until they are completely safe, nor stay until Iraq’s union is perfected. We cannot sustain indefinitely a commitment that has put a strain on our military, and will cost the American people nearly a trillion dollars.… The drawdown of our military should send a clear signal that Iraq’s future is now its own responsibility.…Going forward, we can make a difference on several fronts….We will work with the United Nations to support national elections, while helping Iraqis improve local government. We can serve as an honest broker in pursuit of fair and durable agreements on issues that have divided Iraq’s leaders. And just as we will support Iraq’s Security Forces, we will help Iraqi institutions strengthen their capacity to protect the rule of law, confront corruption, and deliver basic services.95

How far we had come from the lofty words, idealistic goals, and grand ambitions with which President Bush had led the nation into war and the rhetoric of victory that infused his final speeches and interviews. Equally important to the Obama endgame frame was what he did not say about the meaning of our military engagement in Iraq. While thanking the troops for all that they had sacrificed in fighting against “tyranny and disorder” and “extending a precious opportunity to the people of Iraq,” at no point did he present the war as essential to our national security or central to America’s fight against the menace of terrorism.96 And in response to PBS news anchor Jim Lehrer’s question about whether the Iraq mission could now be viewed as successful, Obama carefully replied, “Well I think what we can say unequivocally is that our military succeeded in every mission that was given to them.…I don’t think that we can rightly say that the strategy cooked up by our civilian leadership, with respect to either going in in the first place or how the war was managed, was a success.”97 Applying the finishing touches to the rhetorical decoupling of Iraq from the wider fight against extremism, the president went on to say that Iraq had been an “enormous diversion of resources and attention” from what should have been done to keep our nation safe and that we must now direct our attention and energies to far more important adversaries.98 As a candidate, Obama had promised to focus our national security policy on Afghanistan, the country he pinpointed as the real central front

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in the war on terror. Making good on his pledge to send additional forces to Afghanistan, he also initiated a comprehensive policy review of American military and diplomatic strategy for a region—now comprising Pakistan as well—whose situation continued to deteriorate both politically and militarily. In remarks before a joint session of Congress in late February, Obama noted that the purpose of this assessment was to develop a strategy to enable the United States and its allies to “defeat al Qaeda and combat extremism,” In words again reminiscent of his predecessor’s, Obama provided a compelling soundbite-length rationale for his new strategic approach: “I will not allow terrorists to plot against the American people from safe havens a world away.”99 But contrary to Bush’s overarching narrative, Obama was careful to offer only “clear, minimal goals” for our mission in Afghanistan. As he said in the Lehrer interview, his initial objective was to “make sure that it’s not a safe haven for al Qaeda, they are not able to launch attacks of the sort that happened on 9/11 against the American homeland or American interest.”100 Obama was clearly suggesting that specific terrorist organizations and their acts—not some amorphous and open-ended war on terror centered in Iraq—would be this country’s national security challenge. But he was also careful to note that achieving even these more limited goals would be neither quick nor easy. Key members of the new administration publicly echoed the perspective that the United States should narrow its national security focus. On January 27, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, the only cabinet holdover from the Bush administration, stated in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee that Afghanistan presented our greatest military challenge and that the Afghan theater should be our top overseas military priority. His sobering assessment was that “this is going to be a long slog, and frankly, my view is that we need to be very careful about the nature of the goals we set for ourselves.” And in a somewhat startling—and widely quoted—rejection of his former boss’s foreign policy paradigm, Gates went on to say, “If we set ourselves the objective of creating some sort of central Asian Valhalla over there, we will lose, because nobody in the world has that kind of time, patience and money.”101 Studiously deconstructing the meaning of Obama’s rhetoric, media organizations quickly seized upon the president’s apparent choice to abandon not only some of Bush’s counterterrorism policies but also his omnipresent war on terror lexicon. Commencing a mere three days after Obama took office, his executive order closing the Guantanamo Bay prison prompted the first of a spate of news reports and commentaries on the demise of President Bush’s signature phrase. Bearing titles such as “Bush’s ‘War’ on Terror Comes to a Sudden End,” “From A War on Terror

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215

to Routine Vigilance,” “Moderating the War on Terror,” “After the War on Terror,” “Is this the End of the ‘War on Terror’?” and “Under Obama, ‘War on Terror’ Catchphrase Fading,” the gist of all these media pieces was that the new commander in chief had made a conscious decision to dampen down Bush’s apocalyptic vision of limitless war against a mindset and tactic intent on freedom’s destruction.102 President Obama reflected on his new rhetorical approach in a January 27 interview with the Arab television network Al Arabiya. Asked to comment on the broad terror narrative that had been the keystone of the Bush administration’s national security policy, Obama seemed eager to reframe the issue in narrower and decidedly more modest terms: I think you’re making a very important point. And that is that the language we use matters. And what we need to understand is, is that there are extremist organizations—whether Muslim or any other faith in the past—that will use faith as a justification for violence. We cannot paint with a broad brush a faith as a consequence of the violence that is done in that faith’s name. And so you will I think see our administration be very clear in distinguishing between organizations like al Qaeda—that espouse violence, espouse terror and act on it—and people who may disagree with my administration and certain actions, or have a particular view point in terms of how their countries should develop.103

In an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper a few days later, Obama again addressed his discursive drawdown of the Bush terror and security paradigm: “I think it is very important for us to recognize that we have a battle or a war against some terrorist organizations. But…those organizations aren’t representative of a broader Arab community, Muslim community.…Words matter in this situation because one of the ways we’re going to win this struggle is through the battle of hearts and minds.”104 But careful observers would once more note that while the Bush-era rhetoric may have received a makeover, the central tenet of the previous incumbent’s worldview remained—the need to keep America safe from “an international security challenge of the highest order…and to defeat an enemy that heeds no borders or laws of war.”105 Announcing his comprehensive new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan on March 27, President Obama emphasized that he had a “clear and focused goal to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda” in that region. But his espousal of a more cautious approach and narrower focus was preceded by soaring rhetoric and lofty goals that had an eerily familiar ring:

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The safety of people around the world is at stake. For the Afghan people, a return to Taliban rule would condemn their country to brutal governance, international isolation, a paralyzed economy, and the denial of basic human rights to the Afghan people—especially women and girls. The return in force of al Qaeda terrorists who would accompany the core Taliban leadership would cast Afghanistan under the shadow of perpetual violence. As President, my greatest responsibility is to protect the American people. We are not in Afghanistan to control that country or to dictate its future. We are in Afghanistan to confront a common enemy that threatens the United States, our friends and allies, and the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan.… And to the terrorists who oppose us, my message is the same: we will defeat you.106

We began our inquiry with the question of whether George W. Bush’s perspective on the meaning and import of Iraq would persist as the conflict wound to a conclusion. It is apparent a few months into Obama’s term that his predecessor’s interpretation of Iraq as one with the war on terror—the central front in the epic national security contest of the first decade of the new century—has indeed been cast into the dustbin of history. But Bush’s larger narrative about the need for a militarized global assault on terrorism seems, at this juncture, merely to have been swept under a rhetorical rug as our open-ended battle against terrorist evil, now centered in mountainous areas to the east of Iran, grinds on.

Notes Introduction 1.

2. 3. 4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9. 10. 11. 12.

Bush 2001f. The enormity of the task confronting us was succinctly stated in the National Security Council’s September 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States: “The United States of America is fighting a war against terrorists of global reach. The enemy is not a single political regime or person or religion or ideology. The enemy is terrorism—premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against innocents.” Bush 2001f. Bush 2003l. Among the earlier works by ex-officials in the Bush administration are O’Neill (as told to Suskind 2004), Clarke 2004, and Wilson 2004. By the fall of 2004, Bob Woodward had written two best-selling accounts of President Bush, the war on terror, and the Iraq War (B. Woodward 2002, 2004). See, for example, Massing 2004, Packer 2005. Other accounts of the many problems we faced in Iraq would quickly follow. See, among numerous others, Isikoff and Corn 2006, Rich 2006, Ricks 2006, Suskind 2006, Chandrasekaran 2007. Political scientist Ian Lustick (2006, 2007) cogently argues that the war on terror has achieved the status of a “background narrative” (2006, 17). Its precepts are accepted without question and form the basis of this country’s post9/11 belief systems; thus, there is no public debate over the assumption that the problem of terrorism must be addressed by a “war” and that its rationale and global scale are appropriate. Also see Lemann 2002; Krebs and Lobasz 2007, 423; Western 2005a, chap. 6; Western 2005b; Kuypers 2006, chap. 2 and 8. Anker 2005; Coe et al. 2004; Domke 2004; Hutcheson et al. 2004; Karim 2002; Silberstein 2002; Waisbord 2002; Lule 2002; Jackson 2005; Norris, Kern, and Just 2003; McChesney 2002; Gershkoff and Kushner 2005. McClellan 2008 and Feith 2008 are two recent examples of the behind-thescenes insider genre. Also see Draper 2007, Greenwald 2007, and Weisberg 2008 for examples of recent works that deconstruct Bush’s psychology. Jackson 2005, 18; Jorgensen and Phillips 2002, 66, 157. Jackson 2005, 16–19. Gamson and Modigliani 1987, 143. Also see Iyengar 1991; Iyengar and Kinder 1987; Entman 2003, 417; Entman 2004, 5–6; Bennett, 2009, 37–38. Bennett 2009, 38 and 124; Pan and Kosicki 1993.

218

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24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45.

Notes

Entman 2003, 417–18. Ibid., 417. Ibid., 417–18; Entman 2004, 14–18. Lule 2002; Karim 2002; Silberstein 2002; Waisbord 2002; Anker 2005; Jackson 2005; Krebs and Lobasz 2007, 421–32. Jackson 2005, 19. Ibid., 19–20; Entman 2003, 418–419; Entman 2004, 13–17. Graber 2006, 340–41; Entman 2004; Western 2005a, 2005b; Iyengar and McGrady 2007, 90–102. Krebs and Lobasz 2007, 412; Krebs and Jackson 2007. Krebs and Lobasz 2007, 412; Krebs and Jackson 2007. Iyengar and Kinder 1987; Iyengar 1991. See Kernell 2007, chap. 5, for a discussion of the growth of “going public” to promote the president’s agenda. Johnson-Cartee 2005, chap. 5. Jamieson and Waldman 2003, xiii, write, “the metaphor of a frame—a fixed border that includes some things and excludes others—describes the way information is arranged and packaged in news stories. The story’s frame describes what information is included and what is excluded.” See also Edwards 2003, chap. 7, for a discussion of the problems that contemporary presidents face in getting their desired frame through an interpretive media to the public. B. Cohen 1963, 13. Also see McCombs and Shaw 1993; Iyengar 1991; Iyengar and Kinder 1987. Gamson 1989; Iyengar 1991; Iyengar and Simon 1994, 170–72; Iyengar and McGrady 2007, 219–23. Bennett, Lawrence, and Livingston 2006 and 2007, 57–59. West 2001, chap. 4; Bennett 2009, chap. 6; Cook 2005, chap. 4 and 5. West 2001, chap. 4; Bennett 2009, chap. 5; Cook 2005, chap. 4 and 5. West 2001, chap. 4; Bennett 2009, chap. 5; Cook 2005, chap. 4 and 5. Hallin 1989, chap. 3. Ibid. Ibid., chap. 5. West, 2001, chap. 5. Ibid.; Bennett 2009 chap. 5 and 6; Edwards 2003, chap. 7; Patterson 1993. West, 2001, chap. 5; Bennett 2009, chap. 5 and 6; Bennett, Lawrence, and Livingston 2007, chap. 1 and 2. Mermin 1999. See also Zaller and Chiu 1996. Mermin 1999. Mermin 1999, chap. 4; Hallin and Gitlin 1994; Entman and Page 1994; Bennett 1994; Entman 2004, chap. 4. Entman and Page 1994; Hallin and Gitlin 1994. Althaus 2003, 282; Cook 2005. West 2001, chap. 6. Bennett, Lawrence, and Livingston 2007, chap. 5; Bennett 2009, chap. 1. Bennett, Lawrence, and Livingston 2007, 56–57. Ibid., chap. 2; Cook 2005, afterword. Cook 2005, chap. 4 and 5.

Notes

46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54.

219

Carragee and Roefs 2004, 221–22; Gramsci 1971; Herman and Chomsky 2002; McChesney 2002. Artz and Murphy 2000; Condit 1994; Gitlin 2003; Hall et al. 1978. Bennett 1991; Bennett, Lawrence, and Livingston 2007, 49–51; Graber 2006, 341–43. Althaus 2003; Cook 2005; Bennett 2009; Entman 2006. Livingston and Bennett 2003; Entman 2006. Entman 2003; Entman 2004. Entman 2004, chap. 1. Entman 2006. Edwards 2007, chap. 1 and 2; Kumar 2007.

Chapter 1 1. 2. 3. 4.

5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

Bush 2001b. Ibid. Bush 2001c. As ethicist Peter Singer (2004, 1–2) and Krebs and Lobasz (2007, 426) note, the “language of evil” in Bush’s post-9/11 speech has been ubiquitous and “no other president in living memory has spoken so often about good and evil, right and wrong.” Also see Coe et al. 2004 and Domke 2004, chap. 2. Bush 2001j. Bush 2001h. Bush 2001e. See Rojecki 2008 for an excellent analysis of American exceptionalism and the war on terror. Bush 2001k. Domke 2004, chap. 2–4; Jackson 2005, 143–46. Bush 2001a, 2001b, 2001e. Domke 2004, chap. 2–4; Jackson 2005, chap. 5. Bush, 2001a, 2001b, 2001c, 2001d, 2001e, 2001f, 2001g, 2001h. Anker 2005, 25. Bush 2001e. Jackson 2005, 35–36. Bush 2001h. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Bush 2001k. Bush 2001h. Bush 2001i. Bush 2002a. Bush 2002b. Nacos 2007, 160–61. Domke 2004, 19. Kernell 2007, 185–86. Manheim 1991.

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29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49.

50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67.

Notes

Gershkoff and Kushner 2005. Western 2005a, chap. 6, and Western 2005b. Domke et al. 2006, 299–300. See Huddy, Khatib, and Capelos 2002. Cited in Nacos 2007, 161–62. Lustick 2006, chap. 2; Lustick 2007, 3. Kennedy 2001a. Kennedy 2001b. Pelosi 2001. Pelosi 2002. Krebs and Lobasz 2005. Quoted in Domke et al. 2006, 305. Lemann 2002, 2. Ibid., 1. Krebs and Lobasz 2005; Krebs and Jackson 2007. Graber 2006, chap. 5. Ibid., 130–31. Carey 2002, 73. Zelizer and Allan 2002, introduction. Ibid., 8–9. See, for example, Domke 2004; Coe et al. 2004; Hutcheson et al. 2004; Domke et al. 2006; Jackson 2005; McChesney 2002; Entman 2003, 2004; Kellner 2002; Norris, Kern, and Just 2003; Gershkoff and Kushner 2005; Nacos 2007; DiMaggio 2008. Jackson 2005, 166–68. Rojecki 2008, 75–82. Domke et al. 2004, 237–38. DiMaggio 2008, 267–68. Nacos 2007, 159. See, for example, Domke 2004; Coe et al. 2004; Hutcheson et al. 2004; Gershkoff and Kushner 2005; DiMaggio 2008, 267–68. See, for example, Entman 2004, 107–22; Bennett 2009, 112–14, 159–63; Bennett, Lawrence, and Livingston 2007, chap. 5. Nacos 2007, 164–66. Ibid., 167–68. Sontag 2001. See Hertsgaard 2002, 46; Bennett 2009, 15; Domke 2004, 118; Entman 2004, 174n50. Domke et al. 2006, 302. Ibid., 309. Sontag 2001, 6. Jackson 2005, chap. 4. Bush 2002a. Gershkoff and Kushner 2005. Bush 2003a.

Notes

68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81.

82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87.

221

Gershkoff and Kushner 2005, 527. Cheney 2002. Quoted in Blitzer 2003; Rice 2003. Powell 2003. Althaus and Largio 2004. Western 2005b, 197–98. Ibid., 198–99. Cheney 2002. Rumsfeld 2002. Bush 2002c. Bush 2002d. Western 2005b, 204. Bush 2002e. See Jackson 2005, chap. 6; Domke 2004; Gershkoff and Kushner 2005; Coe et al. 2004; Bennett, Lawrence, and Livingston 2007; Krebs and Lobasz 2007; Krebs and Jackson 2007; Massing 2004. Rojecki 2008, 75–82. Massing 2004, 28. DiMaggio 2008, 69–70. Gershkoff and Kushner 2005. Cited in Cunningham 2003/4. Entman 2003; 2004, chap. 5.

Chapter 2 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

Bush 2003a. Ibid. Ibid. Bush 2003d. Bush 2003e. Bush 2003f, 2003g. Bush 2003h. Bush 2003k. Bush 2003l. DiMaggio 2008, chap. 3. Farnsworth and Lichter 2006, 91. Pew Research Center 2003b. Pew Research Center 2003a; Graber 2006, 334–35; Farnsworth and Lichter 2006, 95–96. Rendall and Broughel 2003; see also DiMaggio 2008, 142. Chinni 2006. Aday, Cluverius, and Livingston 2005, 319. Ibid., 325–27. Entman 2004, 117.

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Notes

See, for example, the New York Times editorial, “The Times and Iraq.”20 Bennett, Lawrence, and Livingston 2007, 29. Bennett, Lawrence, and Livingston 2007, 29. Byrd 2003. See, for example, DeYoung 2003. See also Bennett, Lawrence, and Livingston 2007, 16–17. Bush 2003m. Ibid. Bush 2003n. Bush 2003o, 2003p, 2003q. Bush 2003r. Bush 2003s. Farnsworth and Lichter 2006, 92–93. Ibid., 93. Quoted in Schmitt 2003. Ibid. Priest 2003; Milbank 2003. Farnsworth and Lichter 2006, 93. Pew Research Center 2003c. Ibid. Bush 2003u. Ibid. Bush 2003v. Bush 2003w. Bennett, Lawrence, and Livingston 2007, chap. 1 and 2. Lustick 2007. Suskind 2004; Kennedy, as quoted in Stolberg 2004. Bush 2004a. Bush 2004b. Entman 2006. Ibid., 221–22. Bush 2001b. Bush 2003t. Bennett, Lawrence, and Livingston 2007, chap. 3. Bush 2004e. Rice 2004. Bush 2004f. Bush 2004g. Levin 2004. Ibid. Biden 2004. Bennett, Lawrence, and Livingston 2007, 92–94, 113–15; see also Bennett, Lawrence, and Livingston 2006. Bennett, Lawrence, and Livingston 2007, 100. Ibid., 78–81.

Notes

61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88.

223

Danner 2004a; see also Danner 2004b. Clarke 2004. Quoted in Stevenson 2004a. Ibid. Quoted in the September 26, 2004, Washington Post editorial, “The Iraq Debate”; see also Toner 2004. Abramson, Aldrich, Rohde 2005, 40–41; see also Campbell 2005. Bush 2004b. Ibid. Bush 2004d. Bush 2004h. Quoted in Allen 2004. Quoted in Allen 2004 and Nagourney 2004. Allen 2004. Quoted in Halbfinger 2004. Quoted in Balz 2004. Quoted in Stevenson 2004b. Pew Research Center 2004. Abramson, Aldrich, and Rohde 2005, 51. Campbell 2005, 225; Abramson, Aldrich, and Rohde 2005, 49–51. Farnsworth and Lichter 2007, 53, 162. Ibid., 162. Bush 2004j. Ibid. Abramson, Aldrich, and Rohde 2005, 49–51. Bush 2004i. Bush 2004j. Bush 2004k. Quoted in Hirsh 2004.

Chapter 3 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

Vick and Sebti 2004; Graham 2004. Bush 2004k. Bush 2004l. Bush 2005a. Ibid. Bush 2005c. Bush 2005b; Bumiller 2005a. Bush 2005c. See B. Woodward 2006, 371–78, for a brief behind-the-scenes view of the production of the freedom agenda. Quoted in Lichtblau 2005; Eggen and Babbington 2005. Quoted in Lichtblau 2005. Quoted in Stolberg and Brinkley 2005. Babington 2005a.

224

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38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54.

Notes

Kennedy 2005. Ibid. Quoted in Hulse 2005; Sanger and Weisman 2005. Pelosi 2005. Bush 2005e. Pelosi 2005. Mandel 2005. See King and DeYoung 2008. Churchill 2001. Arendt 1977. Churchill 2001. King and DeYoung 2008. Text of House Resolution on Churchill, 2005. Text of Regents’ Resolution, 2005. King and DeYoung 2008. King and DeYoung 2006. Sanger and Schmitt 2005. Ibid. Bush 2005f. Bush 2005g. Bush 2005h. Bush 2005i. Ibid. Bush 2005j. Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction 2005 (also known as the Silberman-Robb Commission). Bush 2005k. VandeHei 2005; Stevenson 2005a. Edwards 2007, chap. 4. Ibid., chap. 3. Bush 2005l. Bush 2005m. Balz 2005a. Ibid. Schmitt and Shanker 2005. Ibid. Ibid. Stevenson 2005b. Ibid. Lexis-Nexis Major U.S. and World Publications, News Wire Services, and TV and Radio Broadcast Transcripts databases, August 1–31, 2005. Bush 2005n. Ibid. Bush 2005o, 2005p.

Notes

55.

56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68.

225

Bennett, Lawrence, and Livingston 2007, 168–69. Bennett and his colleagues found that of 133 New York Times articles on Hurricane Katrina published between August 29 and September 7, 2005, forty-six contained specific mentions of government failure or incompetence. Bush 2005q; se also Bush 2005r, 2005s, 2005t, and 2005u. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Bush 2005s. Ibid. Bush 2005q, 2005s. Hess 1986, 37. Biden 2005. See Cillizza and White 2005. Quoted in CNN.com. 2005. Bressler 2008.

Chapter 4 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

Dionne 2005. Murtha 2005a. Murtha 2005b. Quoted in Schmitt and Sanger 2005a. Babington 2005. McClellan 2005. Sidoti 2005b. Bush 2005k. Quoted in Hunt 2005. Quoted in Fletcher 2005. U.S. National Security Council 2005. Bush 2005w. Bumiller 2005b. Quoted in Milbank 2005a. Quoted in Yost and Hunt 2005. Cheney 2005. Kirkpatrick 2006. Quoted in Clymer 2003. Murtha 2008. Quoted in Cloud 2005. Iraq War Anniversary Resolution, HR 557 (March 17, 2004). D. Broder 2006. We recognize that in this era of media fragmentation, there exist numerous media organizations, but the New York Times and the Washington Post are widely recognized as offering the most comprehensive national and

226

24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41.

Notes

international news coverage, and the stories they present set the news agenda for other media outlets and are closely monitored by the national political establishment. The Associated Press (AP), a not-for-profit news cooperative that is owned by its 1,500 newspaper members, supplies a steady stream of national and international news around the clock to thousands of newspaper, radio, television, and online outlets; thus, it exerts influence through its extensive reach across the many organizations of the contemporary media. And although the viewership of network television news has declined in recent years, its nightly audience still remains vast, and television is the source of foreign affairs news for most Americans, with NBC currently commanding the largest average audience. See the Pew Research Center 2007a. All newspaper articles, op-ed pieces, and columns mentioning John Murtha and Iraq were analyzed, along with transcripts from NBC Nightly News and NBC’s weekday morning Today show and Sunday morning program Meet the Press. Our research strategy was not to analyze all media coverage of Iraq during this period, but to focus only on the media coverage that dealt specifically and substantively with Murtha and the endgame debate. Both the Times and the Post reprinted the full texts of the official statement released by Murtha’s office and the resolution he introduced in the House. In addition, the Post published twenty-six news articles and ten editorial and opinion pieces in which Murtha’s call for withdrawal from Iraq was mentioned in a significant manner, while the Times published sixteen news reports and five op-ed pieces, and the Associated Press provided twenty-nine news articles concerning the Murtha challenge. Murtha was featured prominently in four NBC evening news broadcasts, and he made three appearances on the Today show and one appearance on Meet the Press in the wake of his announcement calling for a troop drawdown. Williams 2005. Quoted in Murray 2005. Quoted in Schmitt and Sanger 2005b. Murray 2005. Daniel 2005. Kuypers 2006, 127. Quoted in Murray 2005. Quoted in Sidoti 2005d. Sidoti 2005a. Toner 2006b. Hefling 2005. Sanger 2005a. Fletcher 2005. Quoted in Sidoti 2005a. Milbank 2005a. Milbank 2005c. Quoted in Mitchell 2008, 188. Kurtz and Murray 2006; Webb 2006.

Notes

42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75.

76. 77.

227

Graham and Wright 2005. White 2006. Fletcher 2005. Raum 2005. Quoted in Lovering 2005. Stolberg 2005. Ibid. Quoted in Lovering 2005. “Congressman Murtha Discusses Iraq and President Bush,” NBC Today 2005. Ibid. Slevin 2005. Balz 2005b. Hulse and Kirkpatrick 2005. Schneider 2005. Balz 2005b. See, for example, Sidoti 2005d and Rich 2006. Quoted in Raum 2005. “Congressman Murtha, Democrat, Pennsylvania, Discusses War in Iraq,” NBC Meet the Press 2006. Fletcher 2005. Baker 2005. Milbank 2005c. Yost and Hunt 2005. Milbank 2005b. Schmitt and Sanger 2005a; Sidoti 2005a; Milbank 2005c. Media Matters 2006, “ABC, CBS, CNN aired Bush’s ‘cut and run’ attack on Democrats, ignored Democratic response.” Milbank 2005a. Ibid. Sidoti 2005a. Quoted in Cillizza 2005. Sanger 2005b. Ibid. Entman 2003, 418. Media Matters 2006, “Media coverage of Iraq steeped in GOP talking points.” Murtha’s propensity to utter “shoot from the lip” quips would come back to haunt him late in his 2008 reelection campaign when—in an October interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editorial board—he called voters in his district “racist” and then corrected himself in a television interview with the equally unfortunate label “redneck.” Bennett 2009, 15–16. Kinsley 2005.

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Chapter 5 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43.

Bush 2006c. Bush 2006d. Ibid. Risen and Lichtblau 2005. Bush 2006a. Bush 2006d. Bush 2006f. Bush 2006b. Cheney 2006. Ibid. Bush 2006e. Bush 2006f. Ibid. Ibid. “Company’s takeover of U.S. ports raises security concerns,” 2006. Quoted in Blustein 2006. Quoted in McAuliff 2006. Quoted in McGeehan 2006. Quoted in Sanger 2006a. Quoted in Hulse 2006a. Quoted in Blustein 2006. Quoted in Bridis 2006. Quoted in Blustein 2006. Quoted in J. Weisman 2006a. Quoted in VandeHei and Weisman 2006. Quoted in Bridis 2006. Quoted in Hulse 2006b. Quoted in Stolberg 2006a and J. Weisman 2006b. Quoted in J. Weisman 2006b. Ibid. Ibid. Quoted in Hulse and Shane 2006. Quoted in Stolberg 2006a. Corsi 2006. “Port deal dead; Congress responds to will of people on ports,” 2006. Bumiller and Connelly 2006. Pew Research Center 2006c. Lexis-Nexis Academic, February 13–March 15, 2006. Quoted in Baker 2006a. Kornblut 2006. Raum 2006. “The president and the ports,” 2006. VandeHei 2006.

Notes

44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88.

Nagourney and Elder 2006. Ibid. Pew Research Center 2006b. Pew Research Center 2006g. Lichtblau 2006. Pew Research Center 2006a. Weisman and Birnbaum 2006; Stolberg 2006b. Bush 2006g. Tyson 2006a. Shanker 2006a. Wong and Worth 2006. Bush 2006h. National Security Council 2006. Bush 2006i. Bush 2006j. Schieffer 2006 (interview of the vice president). Rumsfeld 2006. Bush 2006k. Bush 2006l. Quoted in Sanger and Shanker 2006. Bush 2006m. Bush 2006n. Ibid. Ibid. Schieffer 2006. Quoted in S. Weisman 2006. Kerry 2006. Ibid. Sanger and Rutenberg 2006; Toner 2006a. Quoted in Stolberg 2006c; Rutenberg 2006a. “United House and Senate Democratic Leadership” 2006. Weisman and Anushka 2006. Quoted in Shanker 2006b. Pew Research Center 2006a. Ibid. Pew Research Center 2006c. Ibid. Pew Research Center 2006d, 2006e. Edwards and King 2007. Edwards 2007. Pew Research Center 2006f. Bush 2006o. Bush 2006p. Bush 2006q. Bush 2006r.

229

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89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116. 117. 118. 119. 120.

Notes

Ibid. Sanger 2006b; B. Woodward 2006. Fletcher 2006; White House, Office of Press Secretary 2006. Bush 2006s. Pew Research Center 2006g. Ignatius 2006; Baker 2006b. Ignatius 2006; Rutenberg and Cloud 2006. Lakoff 2006. Edwards 2007, 80. Baker 2006c. Kohut 2006. Hulse and Connelly 2006. Broder and Balz 2006. Abramowitz 2006. Nagourney and Thee 2006. Slevin and Powell 2006. Quoted in ibid. Toner 2006c. Bush 2006t. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Bush 2006u. Bush 2006v. Iraq Study Group Report 2006. Quoted in Sanger 2006c. Bush 2006w. Bush 2006x. Bush 2006y. Gordon and Mazzetti 2006; Mazzetti 2006; Gordon 2006. Bush 2006z. Bush 2006aa.

Chapter 6 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Bush 2007a. Ibid. Ibid. Bush 2007b. Bush 2007a. Bush 2007d. “Rice Rejects ‘Escalation Language,’ Calls Bush Iraq Plan ‘Augmentation’” 2007. Bush 2007f. Bush 2007h.

Notes

10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41.

42. 43. 44.

231

Bush 2007m. Bush 2007n. Bush 2007a. Ibid. Bush 2007b. Bush 2007d. Bush 2007k. Bush 2007d. Bush 2007f. Bush 2007n. See, for example, Bush 2007d, 2007f. Bush 2007c. Bush 2007e. Bush 2007f. Bush 2007i. Bush 2007j. Bush, 2007l. Bush 2007m. Bush 2007o, 2007p. Bush 2007q. Baker et al. 2007. Pelosi and Reid 2007. Flaherty 2007a; Zeleny 2007. Quoted in Pincus 2007. Stolberg and Broder 2007. Pelosi 2007. Maze 2007. Pelosi 2007. Murtha 2007. Herzsenhorn 2007b. Rutenberg and Healy 2007. All news articles, op-ed pieces, and news broadcasts in the New York Times, Washington Post, Associated Press, and NBC News that mentioned David Petraeus and the surge in a significant manner (i.e., substantive discussion, commentary, or analysis rather than mere mention of a name) between January 6, 2007, and February 27, 2008, were analyzed. The Times and Post coverage during this period was quite extensive. The Times published 69 news articles, 6 editorials, and 41 opinion pieces that met the selection criteria, and coverage by the Post included 42 news articles, 9 editorials, and 39 opinion pieces. Also included in the analysis were 65 AP news articles and 23 NBC Nightly News, 13 Today show, and three Meet the Press broadcasts on Petraeus and the surge. Sanger 2007a. Baldor 2007. Shear 2007.

232

45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88.

Notes

Quoted in Balz and Cillizza 2007. Ricks 2007b. Sidoti 2007. Williams and Miklaszewski 2007a. Williams and Miklaszewski 2007b. Tyson 2007. Raghavan 2007. J. Burns 2007a. Baker et al. 2007. Sewall 2007. Ricks 2007a. Baker 2007. Ricks 2007c. Rutenberg 2007. Meyers and Thee 2007. Sanger 2007a. Sanger and Rutenberg 2007. C. Woodward 2007a. Quoted in J. Burns 2007b. Ricks 2007b. Sewall 2007. Hulse and Shanker 2007. Abramowitz and Baker 2007. R. Burns 2007. Washington Post 2007. Herzsenhorn 2008. Sanger and Zeleny 2007. Cloud and Gordon 2007. Priest and Hull 2007. Baker et al. 2007. Brooks 2007. Campbell, O’Hanlon, and Unikewicz 2007. R. Kagan 2007. F. Kagan 2007. Rodman and Shawcross 2007. O’Hanlon and Pollack 2007. “The road home,” 2007. “Wishful thinking on Iraq,” 2007. “The least bad plan; President Bush’s long-shot strategy is less risky than the alternatives,” 2007. “Hiding behind the general,” 2007. Quoted in R. Cohen 2007. Sanger and Shanker 2007. Milbank 2007. C. Woodward 2007b.

Notes

89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116. 117. 118. 119. 120. 121. 122. 123. 124. 125.

Stanley 2007. Cloud and Shanker 2007. Williams 2007a. Miklaszewski 2007. Hoyt 2007. Baker and Weismann 2007. Quoted in Krauthammer 2007. Williams 2007b. Gregory 2007. Baker and Weisman 2007. Dionne 2007. Gregory 2007. Stolberg and Myers 2007. Sanger 2007b. Bush 2007o. Ibid. Baker and Weisman 2007. Hulse 2007. Vieira and Russert 2007. Pew Research Center 2008a. Flaherty 2007b; Herszenhorn 2007c. Friedman 2007. Farrell and Moore 2007. Ignatius 2007. Quoted in Hefling 2007. Bacevich 2007. Bacevich 2008a. Gallup 2007a. Gallup 2008a. Pew Research Center 2007a. Gallup 2008b. Gallup 2007b. Quoted in Baker and Ricks 2007. “Toll of war,” 2008. Pew Research Center 2007b. Bush 2007a. Bush 2008a.

Chapter 7 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Saad 2008. Project for Excellence in Journalism 2008a. Londono and Paley 2008. Beaumont 2008. West 2008, 155.

233

234

6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50.

Notes

Obama 2002. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Obama 2005. Ibid. Ibid. Obama 2006. Obama 2007a. Obama 2007b. Obama 2008a. Quoted in Rich 2008. Kirkpatrick 2008. McCain 2002. Ibid. McCain 2003. McCain 2005. Ibid. McCain 2007. Quoted in Sanger 2008. McCain 2006. Diehl 2008. McCain 2008. Obama 2008b. D. Broder 2008. Quoted in Wheaton 2008. Reid 2008. Myers 2008. Quoted in Eilperin 2008. Obama 2008a Quoted in Rondeaux and Balz 2008. Quoted in Hart 2008a. Obama 2008c. Sussman 2008. Ibid. Quoted in Phillips 2008. Sanger 2008. McMahon 2008. Cooper and Sussman 2008. Wisconsin Advertising Project 2008. Baker and Zeleny 2008. Liasson 2008. Abramowitz 2008b. Ibid. Abramowitz 2008c.

Notes

51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95.

Project for Excellence in Journalism 2008b. Zeleny 2008. Project for Excellence in Journalism 2008b. Baker 2008. Gordon 2008. Biddle, O’Hanlon, and Pollack 2008. Quoted in Stanley 2008. Washington Post, Editorial, July 8, 2008. Cooper 2008. Hart 2008b. Gerson 2008. Washington Post, Editorial, November 4, 2008. Rich 2008. New York Times, Editorial, October 9, 2008. Washington Post, Editorial, November 4, 2008. Atkinson 2007. Kaiser 2008. Ignatius 2008. Bull 2008. Ignatius 2008. Pew Research Center 2008b. CNN.com 2008. Bush 2008b. Ibid. Bush 2008c. Bush 2008d. Bush 2008e. Bush 2008f. Ibid. Bush 2008g. Bush 2008h. Gibson 2008. Ibid. Bush 2009. Ibid. Bacevich 2008b. B. Woodward 2008, 411; also quoted in Diehl 2008. Bush 2008h. Obama 2009a. Ibid. Warrick and DeYoung 2009. Quoted in Savage 2009. Obama 2009f. Ibid. Ibid.

235

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96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106.

Notes

Ibid. Obama 2009e. Ibid. Obama 2009d. Obama 2009e. Robert Gates, quoted in Tyson 2009. See, for example, Priest 2009; Cohen 2009; Baldor 2009. Obama 2009b. Obama 2009c. Obama 2009g. Ibid.

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Index Abizaid, John, General Iraq could move toward civil war, 145 Iraq problems can be overcome, 139–40 Abu Ghraib, 64–68, Bush administration and avoidance of term “torture” in connection with, 66 frame as isolated act, 64, 67 success in news management of, 65, 67, 68, 73 as example of event-driven news, 64 an exception to implementation of Iraq policy, 71 media and congressional reluctance to use “torture,” 65–68, 80 Murtha’s response to, 108 Aday, Sean media coverage of Iraq “victory frame,” 54. See also victory frame Afghanistan al Qaeda and Taliban in, 30, 33, 167, 193, 198, 216 as focus of war on terror, 1–2, 30, 33, 35, 37, 38–39, 40, 63, 98, 116, 167, 174, 187, 192–93, 198, 204, 208, 214–16 cost of war effort in, 60, 76 establishing democracy in, 75, 125 reemerges as war on terror central front, 69, 176, 187, 192, 197–99, 204, 207–8, 213–15 as subject of 9/11 media coverage, 38–39, 189, 202 supplanted by Iraq as the central front of war on terror, 31, 40–48, 52 agenda setting, 9–11, 13, 16, 22, 60, 78 Allawi, Ayad civil war in Iraq, 142

al Qaeda, 2, 30, 31, 34, 52, 71, 77, 116, 127, 133, 141, 167 Bush references to, 30–31, 45, 92, 97–98, 103, 128, 158, 162, 181, 206–7 Obama references to, 191, 193, 197–98, 214–16 Petraeus references to, 179–80 Althaus, Scott, 15 public makes connections between Saddam and terrorism, 43 Anker, Elizabeth, 28 Arendt, Hannah banality of evil, 84 Ashcroft, John PATRIOT Act, 32, 39 Associated Press (AP), 111 as elite media outlet, 20, 110, 226n23 Atkinson, Rick Petraeus’s “tell me how this ends” request, 204 attacks of 9/11. See Bush, George W., reaction to 9/11 attacks axis of evil, 20, 30, 41, 45 Ayers, William McCain-Palin 2008 campaign rhetoric role in, 199–200

Bacevich, Andrew condemnation of Iraq War, 183–84 Obama and McCain agree on need for global war on terror, 209 surge success narrative as myth, 184 Baker-Hamilton Commission. See Iraq Study Group Baker, James as ISG co-chair, 154

266

Index

Baker, Peter analysis of Bush’s post-Murtha speech, 118–19 surge has been successful, 202 Bali bombings, 96, 142 Balz, Dan Bush reemphasizes Iraq-as-war-onterror, 93 highlights Iraq challenges, 117 Bennett, W. Lance Bush-Murtha coverage as media indexing, 123 event-driven news, 18 indexing model, 18 information flow, 16 media coverage of Abu Ghraib, 66–67 media look to official authorities, 55 political frame defined, 7 Berger, Samuel criticizes Bush for exacerbating terrorism, 69 Biden, Joseph criticizes Bush’s plans for Iraq, 76, 99, 145 criticizes Giuliani in 2008 primaries, 194 declares surge is doomed to fail, 169, 173 framing Abu Ghraib, 66 supports troop drawdown, 115, 121 Biddle, Stephen surge has been successful, 202 Bin Laden, Osama, 41, 78, 116, 132, 141 in Afghanistan, 2, 52 Bush references to, 92, 97, 162, 207 enemy of freedom, 33 inability to capture, 2, 35, 52, 78, 124 Obama references to, 191 supplanted by Saddam as public enemy number one, 43, 46 Blackwater USA, 182 Blair, Tony appearance with Bush, 154 concurs with Bush’s 2004 freedom agenda, 77 bloggers, 15–16, 165 questioning Murtha’s military service, 113–14

blogosphere focus on Murtha’s redeployment announcement, 109 as part of fragmented media universe, 15, 66, 83 Blunt, Roy criticism of Murtha, 120 Bressler, Michael GOP dissension in fall 2005, 99 Broder, David Murtha’s military connections, 109 Brooks, David Iraq “endgame deadlock,” 175 Bull, Bartle Breese Afghanistan as the “right war,” but prospects for success slim, 204 bully pulpit, 20, 32, 82, 91, 96, 148 Bush, George W. age of terror, 28–29, 47 American exceptionalism, 27–28, 46, 63 appeasement, dangers of, 29, 149 discourse of danger, terror, and security, 41, 43, 47–48, 49–50, 56–58, 62–63, 78–79, 95, 136–37, 139, 150, 152, 155–56, 187–88 failure to find WMD, 56–57 frame of Abu Ghraib, 64–68 freedom agenda, 21, 77–79, 82–83, 88–89, 98, 159 Iraq endgame narrative, 23, 205–9 Iraq War frame Iraq as central front in war on terror, 22, 40, 49, 79, 118, 124, 147–49, 158–59, 187–88, 205–9 Iraq-as-war-on-terror, 2, 23, 31, 40–41, 46, 50–52, 56, 60, 70, 74–75, 78–79, 91, 92–93, 103, 106, 124, 140, 147–50, 159, 181, 187–88, 205–10 Iraq victory frame, 103–6, 125–26, 158–59, 161, 181, 187, 206–7 dire consequences of defeat theme, 161–62, 172 Manichean worldview, 8, 26–27, 206, 208 “mission accomplished.” See “Mission Accomplished”

Index

9/11 frame (narrative, worldview), 4–5, 7–9, 25–26, 37, 158, 161 rationale for Iraq War, 1–2, 30, 41–42, 50, 61 part of axis of evil, 41 Saddam and WMD, 41–45, 49, 51–52, 54–55, 141 Saddam as evil, 49–50, 141 Saddam and terrorism, 42, 49–51, 140 reaction to 9/11 attacks, 1, 4, 25–27, 47–48 Bush’s mission, 28 good versus evil theme, 8–9, 25–27, 30, 32, 44, 47–48, 49–50, 63, 96–97, 147–49, 208, 219n4 necessity for war, 4–5, 25–29, 50 religious foundation, 27–29 threat to civilization theme, 26–27, 44, 50, 148 strategy of going public Abu Ghraib damage control, 64–66 aftermath of Golden Mosque bombing in Samarra, 140 rebuttal to charge of civil war in Iraq, 140–41 in aftermath of 9/11, 20, 31–33, 36 agrees to Status of Forces Agreement/“general time horizon” for Iraq withdrawal, 198 in build-up to Iraq War, 20, 41–42, 45, 50 considering a “new way forward” in Iraq, 155–56 defines success in Iraq and war on terror, 205–9 Democrats fail to keep America safe, 149–50 discursive shift on war on terror, 93–94 Dubai Ports (DP) World agreement as part of war on terror, 130–36 DP World agreement as framing failure, 135–37 in early days of Iraq War, 50–52, 56–58 embedding Iraq in terror-and-security frame, 125–26, 129, 147–49

267

evil of Islamo-fascism/Islamic radicalism, 96–97, 104 failure of terror-and-security frame in 2006 campaign, 150 in fall 2003, 59–61 Iraq as central to war on terror; Democrats as terrorist appeasers, 148–49 Iraq victory frame, 54, 103–6 modifies “stay the course” in fall 2006, 149–50 NSA terrorist surveillance program, 137–38 PATRIOT Act renewal, 138–39 Petraeus will insure surge success, 162–65, 171–72, 179 progress in Iraq, 141–44 reaffirming Iraq as war on terror, 92–93 reemergence of bin Laden and al Qaeda in Bush rhetoric, 97 refuses to consider rapid troop drawdown, 153–55 response to Murtha Iraq counterframe, 103–6 “cut and run” versus “stay the course,” 102–6 strategy for victory theme, 98, 125–26 surge policy and rationale, 157–62 avoids “civil war” and “escalation” terms, 159–60 surge as only formula for victory in Iraq, 160–62 terrorist surveillance program as protection against terrorists, 127–29 2004 presidential campaign, 68–71 2005 freedom agenda, 74–80, 82–83, 88–90 in winter and spring 2004, 61–63 surge narrative (frame), 158, 160–65, 179–81 Petraeus-as-surge-savior narrative, 162–65 rhetorical shift in summer 2005, 93–94 success in framing surge and endgame debate, 180–81, 184–86, 206–7

268

Index

Bush, George W. (continued ) terrorism and Iraq in 2004 campaign narratives, 68–74 victims of 9/11, 28 war-on-terror master narrative, 4–5, 23, 26–27, 32, 45, 50, 51–52, 61–63, 69, 74–75, 87, 103–4, 128–29, 139, 142–43, 147–48, 155–56, 205–10 Byrd, Robert criticism of Bush’s aircraft carrier landing, 57 criticism of Iraq downward spiral, 139 dissenting remarks about rationale for Iraq War, 55–56, 194 vote against Rice’s confirmation, 81

cascade model, 18–19 Casey, George, 139 Castle, Michael criticism of Dubai Ports agreement, 133 Cheney, Richard criticizes Kerry’s “sensitive” war on terror, 72 criticizes Murtha, 106, 111 defends Iraq policy, 141 defends PATRIOT Act and terrorist surveillance program, 128 Saddam’s efforts to acquire nuclear weapons, 42–44 Saddam’s possession of WMD, 42–43, 45 Churchill, Ward, 83–87 Bush 9/11 frame inverted and transgressed, 85 victims of 9/11 as “Little Eichmanns,” 84 Clinton, Hillary criticism of Dubai Ports agreement, 130–31 criticizes Iraq surge policy, 166 Iraq War positions in 2008 primaries, 190–91 Coburn, Tom criticism of Dubai Ports agreement, 131 Cohen, Bernard media agenda setting, 10

Congress criticisms of Bush’s Iraq endgame strategy, 98–100 debates over Bush 2003 war funding request, 60–61 Democrats assail failed Iraq policy, 144–45, 149–51 Democrats claim 2006 mandate, 152 Democrats’ efforts to decouple Iraq from war on terror, 209 Democrats’ embrace of global war on terror, 209–10 Democrats’ Iraq challenge in 2004 campaign, 68 Democrats’ negative frame of Iraq, 80 Democrats’ support for war on terror, 33–35 Democrats’ surge counterframe/withdrawal narrative, 165–66, 172–74 Dubai Ports World agreement controversy, 130–36 failure to construct effective Iraq counterframe, 82 GOP attacks Democrats as soft on terrorism, 144 increasing discontent with Iraq, 143–44 Iraq concerns in summer 2003, 58–59 NSA terrorist surveillance program response, 138 opponents deny Iraq is one with war on terror, 167 PATRIOT Act renewal response, 138–39 positive response to Petraeus testimony, 177–80 postelection Iraq policy concerns, 81–82 problems with Iraq withdrawal narrative, 186 questions in Gonzales and Rice confirmation hearings, 80–81 Rep. Murtha’s Iraq counterframe, 101–24 divided response to Murtha, 109, 113–15 response to Abu Ghraib, 65–66 response to Bush frame of 9/11, 33–35, 38, 83

Index

response to Bush Iraq War buildup, 4, 43–44, 45, 47, 50, 55–56 rhetorically coerced/trapped in war-onterror narrative, 61 surge opponents in disarray, 168, 181–83 troop redeployment/withdrawal debates, 87–88 Cook, Timothy mainstream media as single institution, 16 Cooper, Anderson interview with President Obama, 215 Cooper, Helene assessment of Obama and McCain’s Iraq and Afghanistan positions, 202 Cordesman, Anthony importance of surge and Petraeus report, 177 Corsi, Jerome attacks Dubai Ports agreement, 133 Coulter, Ann attacks Murtha’s service and character, 113 counterframe defined, 8 Iraq counterframe, 21 Murtha counterframe, 101, 104, 109–10, 114 surge counterframe, 165–66 Couric, Katie Murtha interview, 116 Craig, Gregory Obama’s new way forward, 212 Crocker, Ryan A. little mentioned by Bush, 171 report on status of the surge, 23, 168, 180, 182 Cronkite, Walter Vietnam as stalemate, 12, 117 “cut and run,” 102–5, 109, 119, 122, 144

Danner, Mark Abu Ghraib inappropriately framed, 68 Daschle, Tom initial reaction to 9/11 attacks, 35

269

Davis, Geoff attacks Murtha’s redeployment proposal, 112 Dean, Howard Iraq as Vietnam-style quagmire, 115, 117–18 DeYoung, Mary Churchill’s “little Eichmanns” as attack on 9/11 victims, 86–87 Diehl, Jackson Petraeus role in McCain campaign rhetoric, 196 DiMaggio, Anthony media frame of Afghan airstrikes, 38 prewar media coverage of Iraq, 46–47 Dionne, E. J. assessment of Petraeus testimony, 180 Murtha wrests Iraq War debate from Bush, 101 discourse defined, 6 political discourse, 6 war and terror discourse, 6, 9, 21 Dobbs, Lou criticism of Dubai Ports agreement, 133 Dodd, Christopher criticism of Dubai Ports agreement, 130 Domke, David Bush’s religious rhetoric, 27–28 media use of Bush’s binary discourse, 37 PATRIOT Act, 34–35, 39–40 Dowd, Maureen negative surge assessments, 176 Dubai Ports World, 130–37 negative impact on public opinion, 146

earmarking/congressional earmarks, 107 Edwards, George C., III Bush as polarizing president, 146 Bush preaching to the choir, 146 Bush use of bully pulpit, 20 2005 erosion in Bush and Iraq public approval, 91–92 Edwards, John Iraq War positions in 2008 primaries, 190

270

Index

Eichmann, Adolf, 84 elite media coverage of Dubai Ports agreement, 134–36 coverage of Iraq War lead-up, 46–47 coverage of Vietnam, 11–12 defined and role of, 10, 16 depictions of competing surge narratives, 168–70 framing Bush response to Murtha, 118–20 Murtha coverage, 110–18 New York Times, Washington Post, NBC News, Associated Press as examples of, 20, 225–26n23 embedded journalists, 52–53 Entman, Robert cascade model, 18–19 counterframe, 8 frame contest, 8–9, 121–23 frame parity, 8 media coverage of Fallujah killings, 62–63 media coverage of Iraq War lead-up, 47 political frame, 7–8 event-driven news Abu Ghraib as example, 64 defined, 18

fairness and accuracy in reporting McCain’s advantage on the surge, 203 media coverage of U.S. sources, 53 Fallon, William military stretched too thin, 175 Fallujah 2004 killings of American workers, 62 2004 offensive against insurgents, 77 Farnsworth, Stephen Iraq as main war on terror media focus, 52 media trend to negativity in 2003, 58–59 Fletcher, Michael Bush response to war critics, 113 Foley, Mark criticism of Dubai Ports agreement, 131, 134–35 Fossella, Vito criticism of Dubai Ports agreement, 132

fragmented media, 15 frame Bush frame of success in Iraq and war on terror, 205–9 Bush’s surge frame, 158, 161–65, 172 Democrats’ surge counterframe/ withdrawal narrative, 166–68, 172–75 framing General Petraeus, 170–72, 177–80 framing surge outcome, 172–80 counterframe, 8 defined, 6–7, 218n23 episodic frame, 10 frame contest, 8–9, 19, 121–23, 209 frame enforcers, 87 Iraq War victory frame, 54, 122–23 Murtha Iraq counterframe, 101–9 media frames (narratives), 9–10 9/11 frame, 7–8, 25–26 Obama endgame frame, 211–14 political frame, 7 thematic frame, 10 triumph of Bush global war on terror frame in 2008, 209 freedom agenda, 21, 77–79, 82–83, 88–89, 98, 159 Friedman, Thomas declining interest in Iraq, 183 Frist, William problems with Bush frame in 2006 campaign, 152

gatekeepers, media as, 15–16 Gates, Robert Afghanistan is greatest military challenge and should be top priority, 214 cannot create a “central Asian Valhalla,” 214 informed military is stretched too thin, 175 nominated as Secretary of Defense, 153 Gershkoff, Amy Bush Iraq-as-war-on-terror rhetoric, 41–42 New York Times coverage of Iraq, 47 Gerson, Michael surge advantages Obama, 203

Index

Gibson, Charles interview with Bush, 208 Giuliani, Rudy, 194 global war on terror. See war on terror Golden Mosque of Samarra, 129, 139–40 Gonzales, Alberto 2005 confirmation hearings and torture policy, 80 Gordon, Michael surge is successful, 202 Graber, Doris media and public response to 9/11 attacks, 36 Graham, Lindsey criticism of detainee treatment, 80 losing our way in war on terror, 80, 83 surge as “Petraeus doctrine,” 171 Gregory, David assessment of Petraeus testimony, 180 Guantanamo Bay prison Obama executive order closing, 211, 214 Gulf of Tonkin incident, 12 Gulf War conclusion of, 29 media coverage of, 14–15

271

Hess, Stephen congressional experts-cum-insiders, 99 Hilla, Iraq, 90 Hurricane Katrina, 22, 95–96 Hussein, Saddam Bush comments about toppling of statue, 90–91 Bush 2004 narrative that world is safer without Saddam, 61 capture, 52, 59 conviction, 151 as depicted by McCain, 194 as depicted by Obama, 191 erroneous intelligence reports about stockpiling WMD, 90 as evil incarnate, 43, 49–50 execution, 155–56 as linked to terrorism, 4, 41–42, 49–51, 194 media coverage of toppling of statue, 54 possessor of WMD, 41–44, 49, 51 public perceptions of, 43 as target of war, 2, 21, 41–44, 46, 61–62, 194

Ignatius, David Haditha, Iraq shooting of civilians, 142 Hadley, Steven shifting language on war on terror, 93 Hagel, Chuck criticism of Iraq policy, 99 supports Iraq withdrawal timetable, 198 Hamilton, Lee as ISG co-chair, 154 Hart, Peter McCain’s advantage on surge, 203 Hastert, Dennis criticism of Dubai Ports agreement, 132 response to Murtha redeployment proposal, 113, 120 hegemony model and theorists, 17–18 Hersh, Seymour framing Abu Ghraib, 68

assessment of surge success, 183 Obama/McCain consensus on more troops to Afghanistan, 204 indexing model and theorists, 16 Bush–Murtha debate as example of, 123 responses to 9/11 as example of, 38–40 infotainment, 16 interpretive media, 13–14 Iraq as central front in war on terror, 22, 31, 59–60, 79, 98, 104, 118, 124, 196 as home base for terrorists, 98 as part of axis of evil, 20, 30 role in 2004 presidential campaign rhetoric, 68–75 role in 2008 presidential primary rhetoric, 190–96 surge an issue in 2008 general election rhetoric, 196

272

Index

Iraq Study Group (ISG), 22, 153 ISG Report, 153–55 Iran as part of axis of evil, 30, 79 Islamo-fascism, 96–97

Jackson, Patrick rhetorical coercion, 9 Jackson, Richard Bush’s religious discourse, 27–28 discourse defined, 6 media in “semantically complicit mode,” 26–27 moral exceptionalism, 27 9/11 myth of exceptional grievance, 28 Jorgensen, Marianne discourse defined, 6

Kagan, Frederick surge success assessment, 175 Kagan, Robert surge success assessment, 175 Kean, Thomas criticism of Dubai Ports agreement, 131 Keane, Jack U.S. strategy in Iraq locked in regardless of 2008 election outcome, 209 Kennedy, Edward criticizes Iraq policy, calls for troop redeployment, 81–82 initial response to 9/11 attacks, 33–34 Iraq as analogous to Vietnam quagmire, 117–18, 121 statement on Iraq War third anniversary, 143 vote against Rice confirmation, 81 Kernell, Samuel presidential going public strategy, 31 Kerry, John criticism of Dubai Ports agreement, 131 Iraq and terrorism frame in campaign 2004, 68–74 balancing act on Saddam and Iraq, 68–69 Bush flip-flopping on Iraq, 72

Bush lying about Iraq, 68 sensitive war on terror, 72 supports war on terror, 69 Iraq and Vietnam analogy, 144 redeployment proposals, 99, 121, 144 supports Murtha, criticizes Bush policy, 112, 117 as 2004 Democratic nominee, 68–69, 72–74 King, Desmond Bush as polarizing president, 146 King, Erika Ward Churchill’s “little Eichmanns” as attack on 9/11 victims, 86–87 King, Peter criticism of Dubai Ports agreement, 131–32 Kohut, Andrew pessimistic assessment on Iraq, 117 public discontent with Iraq trumps terrorism issue, 150 Kosovo War, 29 Krauthammer, Charles surge success assessments, 176 Krebs, Robert rhetorical coercion, 8–9, 34–35 Krugman, Paul negative surge assessments, 176 Kucinich, Dennis, 122 Kull, Steven pessimistic assessment on Iraq, 117 Kumar, Martha Joynt Bush’s use of bully pulpit, 20 Kushner, Shana Bush’s Iraq-as-war-on-terror rhetoric, 41–42 New York Times coverage of Iraq, 47 Kyl, Jon criticism of Dubai Ports agreement, 133

Lakoff, George problems with modifying “stay the course,” 150 Lauer, Matt, 72 Lawrence, Regina, 16, 55 Leahy, Patrick Iraq War failed, 166

Index

Lehrer, Jim interview with President Obama, 213–14 Lemann, Nicholas infusion of “war on terror” in political discourse, 35 Levin, Carl criticizes Iraq surge policy, 145, 150, 166 criticizes Rice at confirmation hearings, 81 framing Abu Ghraib, 65–66 questions Crocker, 180 redeployment proposal, 99 Lichter, Robert Iraq as major media focus in war on terror, 52 media trend to negativity in 2003, 58–59 Lincoln, Blanche concerns about the surge, 174 “Little Eichmanns,” 84–86 Livingston, Steven, 16, 55 Lobasz, Jennifer rhetorical coercion, 9, 34 London bombings, 142 “long war” against terrorism, 129, 142, 167 Lugar, Richard hearings on postwar problems in Iraq, 58 Lustick, Ian dominance of Bush war-on-terror narrative, 33, 61 war on terror as “background narrative,” 217n6 Lynch, Jessica media coverage of capture and rescue, 53–54

Madrid bombings, 62, 142 Maher, Bill challenge to Bush 9/11 frame, 39 mainstream media defined, 15–16 war coverage of, 15–16 Maliki, Nouri al-, 142, 153, 166 supports Obama’s withdrawal timetable, 197–98

273

Manheim, Jarol strategic political communication, 31–32 Massing, Michael criticizes elite media coverage of Iraq War lead-up, 46 McCafferty, Barry doubts about surge, 169 McCain, John as cosponsor with Murtha of antitorture proposal, 112 criticism of Iraq troop reductions and training, 88 Iraq and terrorism supplanted by economic issues, 201 Iraq in presidential campaign rhetoric, 193–96 contrast with Obama’s Iraq narrative, 198–99 defines victory in Iraq, 196 embraces Bush freedom agenda, 195 Iraq as central front in war on terror, 196 pivotal role of surge, 195–97 Saddam as clear and present danger, 194 transcendent importance of Iraq, 195 William Ayers, 199–0 role of Afghanistan, 204 McClellan, Scott Bush tactical error in redefining war on terror, 72 response to Murtha press release, 102 McMahon, Robert financial issues overwhelm Iraq and terrorism in 2008 campaign, 200 media coverage Abu Ghraib, 66–67 battle for control of war and terror agenda, 60–61 Bush Iraq-as-war-on-terror frame, 4–5 Bush–Murtha frame contest, 121–23 Bush rebuttal of Murtha, 109–10, 118–20 Cindy Sheehan, 94–95

274

Index

media coverage (continued) “cut and run” versus “stay the course,” 119–20 declining media interest in Iraq and surge, 182, 189–90 Democrats in disarray over surge opposition, 168 depictions of Iraq in 2008 campaign, 201–5 economic issues outpace Iraq coverage, 201–2 McCain and Obama positions on the surge, 202–3 dominance of Bush surge frame, 180–82 Dubai Ports agreement, 134–36 failure to find WMD, 56–57 focus on war in Afghanistan, 204 General Petraeus, 170–72, 177–80 Gulf War, 14–15 Hurricane Katrina, 95–96 Iraq as major 2006 campaign issue, 152–53 Iraq’s first year, 52–54, 56 Iraq coverage outpaces Afghanistan’s, 52 Iraq surge and opponents, 168–81 dire consequences of surge failure, 172 media doubts about surge, 169–70 surge reports mixed, then favorable, 170–71, 175–81 Iraq–Vietnam analogies, 38–39, 117–18 killings of U.S. contractors in Fallujah, 62–63 lead-up to war with Iraq, 3, 46–47, 50, 52 Lynch, Jessica, 53–54 media consensus on Iraq endgame, 203–4 models of. See cascade model; hegemony model and theorists; indexing model and theorists Murtha Iraq challenge/counterframe, 109–18, 120–24 negative news about Iraq in 2005, 90–91

9/11 attacks, 2, 35–40, 46 support for Bush frame, 36–40 NSA terrorism surveillance program, 127–30, 137 Obama drawdown of war-on-terror rhetoric, 214–15 PATRIOT Act renewal, 127–30, 138–39 postelection focus on Iraq, 74–75, 78 Saddam and WMD, 54–55 shift to negative tone in 2003, 58–59 toppling of Saddam’s statue, 54 2004 candidates’ stands on Iraq and terrorism, 74 2006 campaign-as-war narrative, 150–52 U.S. response to 9/11, 38–40 Vietnam, 11–13 war, 9–16 Ward Churchill and “little Eichmanns,” 85–87 Media Matters media adoption of cut-and-run frame, 120, 121–22 media objectivity, 11, 13, 15–16 Menendez, Robert criticism of Dubai Ports agreement, 130–31 Mermin, Jonathan media coverage of post-Vietnam wars, 14 Miklaszewski, Jim doubts about surge, 169 Petraeus testimony, 179 Milbank, Dana analysis of Cheney post-Murtha speech, 119 Murtha deserves another Purple Heart, 113 repetitive themes in post-Murtha Bush speeches, 119 militant jihadism. See Islamo-fascism military tribunals, 148–49 “Mission Accomplished,” 1–3, 52, 58, 87, 101, 116, 142, 162, 164 Moskos, Charles “patriotism lite” on Capital Hill, 112

Index

Mosul, Iraq insurgent rampage, 77 MoveOn.org ad criticizing General Petraeus, 164–65, 178, 180, 185 Mueller, John pessimistic assessment of Iraq, 117 Murtha, John, 101–24 admits surge is working, 183 challenge/counterframe to Bush war narrative, 22, 101–9, 114 criticizes Abu Ghraib, 108 criticizes Iraq policy, 145 ethical questions surrounding, 107 Iraq harms military readiness elsewhere, 167–68 military background, 107–8 “Murtha plan” to limit troop deployments, 166 support for military, 107–8 troop redeployment proposal, 101 Myrick, Sue criticism of Dubai Ports agreement, 132

Nacos, Brigitte television coverage of U.S. response to 9/11, 38, 39 National Security Agency terrorist surveillance (warantless wiretapping) program, 127–28, 137–38, 148–49 National Security Strategy of the United States global terrorism is enemy, 217n1 National Strategy for Victory in Iraq, 104–5 NBC News as elite media outlet, 20, 226n23 new direction for Iraq, 149 New York Times coverage of Iraq War lead-up, 46–47 coverage of 9/11, 37 coverage of Vietnam War, 12–13 as leading elite media outlet, 11, 20, 225–26n23 Murtha and Bush’s response, 111–12, 114–17, 121

275

“Portraits of Grief ” post-9/11 memorial section, 36 shifting tone of Iraq coverage in 2003, 59 New Yorker as alternative publication, 39 coverage of 9/11, 39 New Way Forward on Iraq, 22, 154–55, 158, 168 North Korea as part of axis of evil, 30

Obama, Barack economic issues overwhelm Iraq and terrorism, 200–201 economic issues supplant Iraq and terror in victory speech, 189 Iraq and war on terror narratives, 210–16 Afghanistan as central front in war on terror, 192, 213–14 changes in treatment of terror detainees, 211–12 close Guantanamo Bay detention facility, 211–12 end combat mission in Iraq, 212 end harsh interrogation techniques, 212 Iraq as distraction from wider fight against extremism, 214 Iraq endgame, 212–13, 215 Iraq War positions in general election campaign, 197–99 Iraq War positions in primary campaign, 190–93 Iraq endgame narrative, 192–93 necessity for war on terror, 191–92 new Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy, 215–16 similarities with Bush frame, 216 role of Afghanistan in 2008 campaign, 204 as successor to George W. Bush, 23 Obama-Biden campaign, 197 objective media, 11 O’Hanlon, Michael positive Iraq and surge assessments, 176, 202

276

Index

O’Neill, Paul criticism of Bush Iraq rationale, 61 O’Reilly, Bill Obama agrees surge has succeeded, 202 Operation Enduring Freedom, 29 Operation Iraqi Freedom, 50, 141

Pace, Peter criticism of Murtha, 115 Pakistan as focus of Obama rhetoric, 198 Obama Afghan and Pakistan strategy, 215–16 Palin, Sarah depiction of William Ayers, 200 PATRIOT Act, 34–35, 39–40, 92 Bush criticizes Democrats over refusal to support, 148–49 renewal debate, 127–28 Paul, Ron, 194 Pelosi, Nancy call for credible Iraq exit strategy, 82 criticizes Iraq policy, 144–45 criticizes surge, 166 defends Murtha, 111, 112, 114, 115 denies Iraq is part of war on terror, 167 initial response to 9/11 attacks, 34 supports war on terror, criticizes Bush’s strategy, 83 Petraeus, David H. as Iraq commander, 23 May 2008 congressional testimony, 189 notes decrease in Iraqi violence, 183 “Petraeus effect” on surge policy, 23, 185–86 report on status of surge, 23, 176–82 role in Bush’s Iraq endgame narrative, 207 role in McCain campaign rhetoric, 196 as surge face/embodiment/architect, 158, 162–64, 185 “Tell me how this ends,” 204 2007 congressional testimony, 177–82 pivotal role of testimony, 184 Phillips, Louise discourse, definition of, 6 Pollack, Kenneth positive Iraq assessment, 176 success of surge, 202

Powell, Colin media coverage turns negative in 2003, 58 Saddam’s lies about WMD, 43, 47 President’s National Security Strategy, The, 140 prestige press defined, 10–11 Price, Deborah criticizes Dubai Ports agreement, 132 Prince, Erik, 182 public opinion Bush post-9/11, 2, 33 Dubai Ports agreement, 133–34 early months of Iraq War, 52 economy top issue in 2008 campaign, 205 GOP in 2006 campaign, 151–52 Iraq-as-war-on-terror frame, 4, 43, 45 necessity for war, 33 PATRIOT Act, 138 partisan divide on Iraq and Bush, 146–47 Petraeus and Iraq War ratings, 184–85 Petraeus 2007 testimony, 184 terrorist surveillance program, 137–38 2003 war support, 59 2004 terrorism and Iraq, 73, 74–75 2005 Bush, Iraq, terrorism, 91–92, 116 2006 Iraq, Bush approval, 145–47 2008 public interest in Iraq, 189, 200

Real Security: Protecting America, 143 Reed, Jack criticizes Iraq policy, 117 supports Iraq withdrawal timetable, 198 Reid, Harry calls for Iraq exit strategy, 82 criticizes Iraq policy, 117, 144 criticizes surge, 166, 169 rendition, 89, 212 rhetorical coercion, 9, 34–35, 136 Rice, Condoleezza Abu Ghraib as isolated incident, 64 Iraq failure to disarm, 43 smoking gun and mushroom cloud, 43 2005 confirmation hearings and criticisms of, 81

Index

Rich, Frank Americans want out of Iraq, 203 negative surge assessments, 176 Robinson, Eugene skepticism about surge, 176 Rodman, Peter dire consequences of failure in Iraq, 175 Rojecki, Andrew media coverage of American exceptionalism, 37 Rumsfeld, Donald defends Iraq policy, notes successes 139, 141 embracing war-on-terror discourse, 94 questioned on Abu Ghraib, 66 rebuttal of Murtha, 106 resigns, 153 Saddam and WMD, 44 shifting language on war on terror, 93 2003 media coverage of, 58 Russert, Tim Bush surge success, 182 Murtha compares Iraq to Vietnam, 118

Sanger, David Bush administration attacks Murtha, 112–13 Savage, Michael criticizes Dubai Ports agreement, 133 Schieffer, Bob interview with Cheney, 141, 143 Kennedy anti-Iraq statement, 143 Schmidt, Jean attack on Murtha, 102, 113 Schultz, Debbie Wasserman criticism of Dubai Ports agreement, 132–33 Schumer, Charles criticism of Dubai Ports agreement, 130–32 Sestak, Joseph military leader should not set terms of Iraq debate, 185 Sharm el-Sheikh bombings, 96 Shawcross, William dire consequences of Iraq failure, 175 Sheehan, Cindy, 22, 94–95

277

60 Minutes II Abu Ghraib photographs, 64 Skelton, Ike Iraq not part of war on terror, 167 Slevin, Peter Obama criticism of Iraq as war without end, 117 Snow, Tony, 149 Snowe, Olympia call for Bush strategy shift, 152 SOFA. See Status of Forces Agreement soft news, 16 Sontag, Susan alternative explanation for 9/11 attacks, 39 criticism of Bush response to 9/11, 40 SourceWatch, 113 Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), 198, 207, 212 “stay the course,” 22, 57, 102, 121–22, 125, 149–50, 152 Stephanopoulos, George, 149

Taliban, 30–31, 33, 34, 38, 39, 167, 198, 216 Tenet, George 2003 media coverage turns negative, 58 Today show 2004 Bush interview, 71–72 Tyndall, Andrew television news coverage of Iraq War lead-up, 47

United Arab Emirates (UAE) Dubai Ports agreement controversy, 130–37 USS Abraham Lincoln, 1, 51

victims of 9/11 as sacred core of 9/11 frame, 28, 83, 86–87 Ward Churchill’s attacks on, 83–87 victory frame, 54, 104–5, 110, 114, 120–24 Vieira, Meredith Bush surge success, 182

278

Index

Vietnam War Iraq as analogous to Vietnam quagmire, 117–18, 169 McCain says failure in Iraq worse than failure in Vietnam, 195 McCain Vietnam service, POW status, 199 media coverage of, 12–13, 37 media mentions of Vietnam/Afghanistan parallels, 38–39

Walter Reed Army Medical Center, 22 Murtha visits to, 120 outpatient mistreatment scandal, 174–75 war against terror. See war on terror war on terror, 1, 2, 4–5, 29, 47–48, 49–52, 87, 91–95, 187–88 Afghanistan as central front in, 214 Bush summer 2005 rhetorical shift on, 92–94 Bush war-on-terror master narrative dominant in campaign 2008, 209–10 as foreign policy paradigm, 21 impact on public opinion during 2004 campaign, 73–75 in McCain campaign rhetoric, 196 in Obama campaign rhetoric, 192 Obama drawdown of war on terror rhetoric, 210–15 paying homage to victims of, 83–87 role in 2004 presidential campaign, 68–75 war on terrorism. See war on terror Warner, John criticism of Iraq, 88 doubts about surge, 169 Washington Post coverage of Murtha and Bush’s response, 101, 109–19, 124 coverage of 9/11, 37–38 as elite media outlet, 20, 225–26n23 investigative report on Walter Reed Hospital mistreatment of outpatients, 174–75

shifting tone of Iraq coverage in 2003, 59 Watergate media coverage of, 13 weapons of mass destruction (WMD) failure to find, 56–57, 59, 90 public opinion about Iraq and WMD, 45 as rationale for Iraq War, 41–45, 49, 51–52, 54, 98 Saddam as possessor of WMD, 41–45, 49, 51–52, 54–55 Webb, James criticizes GOP for attacking Murtha, 114 Weldon, Curt support for Murtha, 112 West, Darrell objective, interpretive, and fragmented media eras, 11–15 Western, Jon declining public support for Iraq War, 43 public opinion about Iraq and WMD, 45 Williams, Brian Murtha description, 110 surge doubts, 169 Wisconsin Advertising Project candidate ads focus more on economy in 2008, 200 Wolfowitz, Paul questioned about mistakes in Iraq, 58–59 Woodward, Bob 2006 book on deteriorating situation in Iraq, 148 U.S. strategy in Middle East locked in, 209

Zarqawi, Abu Musab alcapture and death, 144–45 reemergence in Bush rhetoric, 97 Zawahiri, Ayman alreemergence in Bush rhetoric, 97 Zeleny, Jeffrey shifting role of economic issues in 2008 campaign, 201