ABSTRACT
War demands an enemy. The object of war is to defeat the enemy; in total war, all sectors of society are called upon to participate in that defeat. But who is this enemy? War requires an obsession with the idea of the enemy, yet, despite this obsession, communities tend to avoid deep or sustained thought on the subject, gleaning their ideas from headlines, sound-bites, pop-culture representations, and other forms of truncated information. Communities often resist thinking too deeply about the enemy because to do so might reduce their necessary sense of moral clarity; wartime images of the enemy, in propaganda and popular culture, are therefore typically simplified and reduced. In the face of a foreign enemy who remains largely alien, unknown, or mysterious, a society will collectively construct an image, fabrication, or representation of the enemy that serves its own martial purposes. The kinds of language, metaphors, and imagery through which governments, military, and communication media consistently speak of the enemy constitute a coherent discourse, a framework through which the enemy might be understood. This discourse may emphasize the enemy’s incomprehensibility, or his inhuman, demonic, indistinguishable, or bestial nature. This discourse may then be used to create emotions, direct choices, and animate collective action. In times of war, propaganda can expertly mobilize the image of the constructed enemy to serve the needs of national governments in generating a rationale and momentum for war. Using strategies subtle and overt, propaganda deploys the image of the constructed enemy much as a government deploys its troops. Critics of the war on terror assert that the American public has been manipulated and
deceived by a “covert disinformation campaign” orchestrated by professional public relations consultants who “spin” the war and government messages to the public (Rampton and Stauber 2003). Spin is typically carried out in the name of the public good as a way of offering clarity. For example, in October 2001 Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that “we need to do a better job to make sure that people are not confused as to what this [war] is about” (quoted in Solomon 2001). Then-President Bush
echoed this when, on 24 May 2005, he noted, “See in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda” (quoted in Schuh 2006). Propaganda thus becomes the fuel that feeds the machinery of war, generating the public support that is one of war’s most essential requirements. The frames through which individuals and societies see the world are often built from
the language that propaganda offers, and that communication media, in recirculating it, ratify. Support for war is more powerful when it is emotional or visceral than when it is logical or intellectual. Likewise, the war on terror depends for support more on public “feeling” than public “knowing.” In particular, public feeling collects and crystallizes around the figure of the enemy. This intensifies a sense of national hostility that can be discursively produced and effectively marshaled by overt propaganda and by news media. The effectiveness of both is evident in the amount of misunderstanding and outright error that has informed discussion of the war on terror. When, in January 2002, the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain sponsored an opinion poll, it reported that although two-thirds of the respondents claimed they had a good grasp of the issues surrounding the war, “closer questioning revealed large gaps in that knowledge,” including serious errors of fact. For example, fully half of those surveyed thought that one or more of the 9/11 terrorists were Iraqi when, in reality, none of the terrorists was an Iraqi citizen (Rampton and Stauber 2003). The survey’s results suggest that the more accurate information people possessed about events surrounding the war, the less likely they were to assume a militaristic stance. Survey authors noted that “Those who show themselves to be most knowledgeable about the Iraq situation are significantly less likely to support military action” (Rampton and Stauber 2003). When news media, like propaganda, not only fail to provide complex, contextualized, or nuanced analysis but actively suppress, overlook, or distort information, they join other social processes in producing a constructed, caricatured, and usually culturally (or socially) marked enemy, a figure of immense consequence to both sides in a conflict, as well as to international observers. This chapter examines some implications of the construction of the enemy within the
public discourse of the war on terror, focusing on how the Muslim “enemy” has been produced and then generalized from the specific actors and planners of the 9/11 attacks to entire groups marked by their perceived “otherness” as antagonists. When the enemyOther is constructed as oppositionally different from “us,” especially when that difference takes the essential form of non-humanity (as in the dehumanizing animal and disease metaphors that predominate in the war on terror), national policies, military strategies, and public attitudes and behavior may be significantly shaped and influenced in ways that demand critical attention.
