Symbolic security: Rhetoric, politics, and national identity after September 11th, 2001

In the days after September 11th, 2001, the Bush administration pledged to fight a "new" War on Terror to make Americans more secure. This study evaluates the public arguments advanced to support the administration's War on Terror and the subsequent homeland security initiatives. The study details how homeland security policies such as the U.S.A. Patriot Act constituted symbolic actions in the War on Terror. The study also reveals that President Bush and his advisors crafted a rhetorical "homeland security" campaign to maintain a political environment that insulated these policies from strong criticism. As a result, the formal and informal spaces for deliberation on homeland security measures were constrained after September 11th, and the public was prevented from deliberations about the wisdom of these new policies.; Second, this study examines how the need to protect homeland security was used to justify a shift in national security strategy and the creation of a "pre-emptive" war doctrine. The Bush doctrine tapped into America's historical support for exceptionalist ideology to fight the "new" global war. The War on Terror supported a casus belli for invading Iraq. Relying on argument a fortiori, the administration's war rhetoric cast Iraq as a dangerous node within a network of global terrorism. Although the Bush administration's arguments for war were supported by deceptive intelligence data, the data received insufficient testing in a public forum.; The administration's strategy in the creation of its homeland security policies diminished the vitality of the public sphere. Furthermore, the hasty and secretive creation of these policies prevented a search for more innovative political and moral solutions to security concerns. As a result, war became the only "thinkable" response. This study of public argument over homeland security illustrates both the United States' attempts to escape from deliberating upon the complexities of security concerns and the potential pitfalls of the Bush doctrine's legacy in international affairs. It argues that the failure to consider why so many people abroad consider the United States an arrogant and hostile nation may pose problems for U.S. public diplomacy in the years ahead.