US Strategic Narrative On War In Afghanistan:Power,Discourse,and Public Opinion

After Afghanistan fell to the Taliban,United States scrambled to rescue the relocation of allies.The hasty and chaotic withdrawal of US-led troops from Afghanistan aroused extensive attention worldwide.Except for breaking news like this,media and the public have paid little attention to the War in Afghanistan.As the longest war in American history,Afghanistan War is costly in terms of both casualties and spendings.It is expected that the war in Afghanistan should be a salient political issue under heated discussion.However,Afghanistan was rarely mentioned in public discussion over the past two decades.Why this long-lasting and costly war fail to cause public discussion and thus put a constraint on political elites? This study presupposes that political elites shape the public opinion towards the Afghanistan War,leading to the silence of the public.The author adopts discourse analysis to show how “material facts” are produced and prioritized.Firstly,it draws on the poststructuralism’s second reading to deconstruct official narratives.To answer the first-order factual questions,I use the strategic narrative as an analytical framework through which the strategy constructions can be studied.Based on previous literature on strategic narrative,the current study will use three criteria namely “a clear and cohere objective”,“the promise of war success”,and“resonate with existing national values” to examine the effective of strategic narrative.Secondly,to reveal the hegemony of official discourse,I compare official narrative with texts that challenge the official foreign policy discourse.The current study found that both Obama and Trump administration emphasized the clarity of objectives,framed domestic security with military presence in Afghanistan,expressed their confidence in the success of the war,and stress the core national value like human rights,rule in law,liberty and freedom.To some extent,strategic narrative concerning Afghanistan war influenced public’s perception through“depoliticization” strategy.By framing the military presence in Afghanistan as the“only”,“rational”,“necessary” solution to the problem,political elites excluded the public from policy-making discussion.I further argue that elites have a broad space to maneuver.Almost all previous studies presuppose the end goal of persuasion as either support of or opposition to the war.This dichotomy neglects the more complex and dynamic goals elites want to achieve.Rather than mobilizing the public to continually support the war,elites may choose to make them not oppose it.A “support VS.opposition” paradigm puts a limit on our views of elite power.