W&J HIS 336: 9/11 & The War on Terror Fall 2018

Bush’s presidential rating was at an all time high after 9/11. It was close to 73% approval, but during the War in Iraq, it dropped way down. The American people had realized President Bush was not doing a great job. Experts on war and combat discussed how the war was being fought wrong, congressmen and congresswomen discussed how the war was unnecessary, and Bush himself realized that seeking out Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction was a waste of time. All of these people knew he had made a very large mistake that cost the lives of over one hundred thousand Iraq civilians and thousands of American lives, but the apparent reasoning does not make sense. Why did Bush really invade Iraq?                 Some critics claim that he only invaded Iraq to protect the United States’ oil interest in the region which is a pretty low criticism of President Bush. I do not believe Bush would risk the lives of American tro...

In The Iraq Papers , documents 4.6 and 4.7 raised many questions for me based on the lack of communication between the Bush Administration and its effect on the Iraqi people. In the weeks prior to May 12, 2003 the State Department, the Department of Defense, the CIA, as well as the vice president's office were divided on how far was to far with the “de-Baathification”. The State Department and the CIA advocated for a moderate policy, whereas the Department of Defense and the vice president's office advocated for a radical purge of the Baath Party. Condoleezza Rice’s proposed compromise passed with only 1% of the Party would be fired and barred from further employment in the public sector. However thanks to Rumsfeld, Cheney, and L. Paul Bremer who “repeatedly insisted that he had his orders to do away with the Baath Party, the Iraqi Government, and the armed forces” (183). Which he claimed “that he had cleared the matter at the highest levels of government” (183). Observers h...

My favorite piece of the material we read for this class is O’Hanlon’s piece “Iraq Without a Plan.” I liked O’Hanlon’s writing style, but his message also resonated with me, as he argued that the real problem with U.S. intervention in Iraq was the lack of planning beforehand. His first argument on this comes right at the beginning of the article when he calls it a tragedy “that one of the most brilliant invasion successes in modern military history was followed almost immediately by one of the most incompetently planned occupations” (O’Hanlon). O’Hanlon then continues to diagnose the issues he found to be associated with occupation and he questions why the U.S. government had oversights, such as not considering the fact that there would be a problem with security after the Hussein regime fell.             O’Hanlon comments on how the United States involved in Iraq with a metaphor. He says, “entering into this conflict ...

It is clear to me that the complete disconnect between the Intelligence Community (IC) and Presidential Administrations lead to the poor policy decisions in the 1990’s and early 2000’s regarding Iraq, Afghanistan, and Osama bin Laden. Immerman clearly lays out the failures of the IC and its un-comprehensive intelligence gathering and disconnect between intelligence gathering agencies, and while he argues that the Bush Administration, specifically, is “culpable for the grief that befell the United States in both Iraq and Afghanistan”, the disconnect within the IC should take as much of the blame as well (77).  When you have the Director of the CIA share the same assessment as the Bush Administration did, that Saddam Hussein “intended to augment a cache of WMDs that he had successfully concealed since expelling the UN inspectors in 1998 with a nuclear capability”, while being the director of an agency that resists that assessment leads to some miscommunication (84-85). Something must...

The Bush administration clearly had their minds set on invading Iraq and overthrowing Saddam Hussain’s regime. The Bush administration framed intelligence to support their agenda of invading Iraq. Several pieces of intelligence were used while know to be of suspicious backgrounds or completely false. The administration knew it needed to create a threat of Iraq using weapons of mass destruction to legalize a means for a preemptive war. In the State of Exception by Agamben he discusses that when nations are in exceptional times the citizens turn to their leader and to make decisions. People also give up their rights to the government in times of exception to the government for protection in the state of emergency. In both Counter Jihad and Understanding the U.S. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan there is discussion of the use of intelligence to portray the need for an invasion into Iraq. Falsified papers claiming a sale of five hundred tons of Yellow Cake Uranium from Nig...

While going through the readings for tomorrow’s class, one of the sentences that impacted me the most were the ones that Barak Obama said: that the war of Iraq was a «war of choice» (Immerman, 2015, p. 89). And also made me reflect once again about the essay of Giorgo Agamben about the State of Exception . Although the IC was unable to find crucial evidence regarding the WMD (weapons of mass destruction), the Bush administration pushed the events. Was it because it was easier for them to push that war, using the more comfortable situation t he state of exception provided? The Congress, which should be the independent legislative power, was not able to stop the executive, making the division of powers more diffuse. The CIA felt the need change the focus to the Republic of Iraq instead of Al Qaeda with the pressure of the vice-president Dick Cheney’s office. As it usually happens during the State of Exception : the borders for what is considered legal become more difficult to define, a...

The reading that most interested me was Immerman, "Intelligence and the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan," Understanding the U.S. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan . One of the topics Immerman discussed was how Clinton kept bin Laden and Al Qaeda as higher priorities than Iraq and Afghanistan (Immerman, 81). I believe that the Clinton administration was right to keep bin Laden and Al Qaeda as higher concerns. Terrorists, with the mastermind bin Laden, had bombed multiple U.S. embassies and the USS Cole harbored in Yemen (Immerman, 81). Personally, if a group is targeting U.S. owned places, things, or people, I would consider them a dangerous threat to American citizens and people of other nationalities, who happen to be near or in the areas affected. Thus, this would eventually lead to the attack on the U.S. on U.S. mainland and soil. After Clinton was impeached, Bush took office and discharged Clinton's search for bin Laden and Al Qaeda to focus on defense against nuclear weapo...

             In Counter Jihad, the “state of exception” plays a huge role in the chapter. Since there was a war and there was a threat of weapons of mass destruction, CIA agents had the excuse to torture prisoners without the concern of getting in trouble in their own countries for it later. I thought it was interesting how Bush convinced the American people that Saddam Hussein had nuclear weapons and was ready to use them against us. This “proof” was extremely manipulated and most of it was not confirmed. Then, they combined Saddam Hussein’s name with Osama Bin Laden’s name to show that they were both dangerous. I think when the American people heard this phrase, it made them assume that Saddam Hussein could potentially do what Osama Bin Laden did. This also relates to the “state of exception.” We technically did not have enough proof to prove that Iraq was making these weapons of mass destruction, but because we are going to war wi...

“… the sense that we make becomes ‘real’, and… these systems of meaning-production are intimately related to practices of power - the power to define and defend ‘reality’” (Shepard, 20). In this piece, Shepard argues that the narratives and identities created following the 9/11 attack allows the nation to produce its own reality, which, in turn, permit and enable the narrative of war. The framing and perpetuation of nation identities work in this process of “meaning-production” to “make certain responses, actions, and attitudes permissible and censor others” (19). Displays of gender in this process, Shepard argues, become vital to the public support for the US to respond to the attack with war. The process of “gendering” is seen present in the assigned identities of “the nation”, “the enemy”, and “the intervention”. To demonstrate this, Shepard points to the immediate masculinization of the US after the attack, through overly dominate displays of identity and values; this masculin...

The Bush administration was extremely bent on convincing the American public that invading Afghanistan was the right choice. Even though the events of September 11 th and the destruction of the twin towers were highly televised, this administration believed that they needed to get the United States population behind them. Bush may have felt the need to convince them because he barely won the presidential election and he felt vulnerable. He may have also felt the need to convince the American public that invading Afghanistan will not be another Vietnam in that it is an invasion without an end. One aspect he used to convince the American public is by using the violation of women’s rights in Afghanistan. He publicized the strict Taliban government’s treatment of women in what Stabile and Kumar deemed a gender apartheid. By portraying the women of Afghanistan as victims that needed to be saved from the irrational barbarian, the media supported Bush’s agenda because it reflects the notio...

In Understanding the U.S. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,  Horwitz describes a strategy used by politicians and the media regarding the justification of war in Afghanistan. The strategy involves “detailing the opponent’s human rights abuses, emphasizing U.S. human rights support” (Horwitz 152). By doing this, the United States begins to assume the role of the “good guy” or the hero, implying that anyone who oppresses human rights is a villain and the United States is good simply by virtue of being the opposite. This also contributes to a sense of American Exceptionalism, the feeling that the United States is morally superior and has not only the right but also the responsibility to intervene in other countries that are in need of a hero to protect their rights.  A major part of the human rights strategy is its focus on women and children as the oppressed groups in Afghanistan. Women and children are seen and characterized as weaker groups who are in need of protection. The us...

The Baudet brother’s documentary gave me chills. One line of the film, “it’s either this or the army, and I like saving lives, not taking them. But after what I saw, if my country sent me out to go kill, I’d do it now”, really expressed a sentiment that was common in the aftermath of the attacks among males. It’s hard to write a response to watching a video where you can hear bodies hit the ground. That is just something I don't think you could get used to. We talked briefly about how the firefighters were portrayed and I would argue that we don’t do them justice. The things they did and had to do in order to get people out were just absolutely incredible. The narrator expressed it best, “a firefighter in full gear, caring about 60 pounds of equipment, takes 1 minute to climb a flight of stairs. These guys have 80 stories….just to get there”. The physical and emotional toll on the firefighters was tremendous. One of the brothers walked into the first tower and saw people burning a...

In the documentary there are many important issues to be discussed. This documentary has many connections to other readings from class. The main focus of the documentary is Tony a probationary firefighter who joins in June of 2001. Tony is an innocent young man who joins the fire department to do good and have a sense of meaning to his life. In many aspects Tony is a symbol for America. Tony is innocent, does not expect the terrorist attacks or has any influence over what happens that day. He steps up and acts “heroically” to save innocent people much like the narrative of an innocent country who goes to war to save innocent people in the middle east. The video of the people crying in the streets and the fire fighter rushing to save people shifts the focus of the documentary to the immediate effects on civilians and gives no background information of what has been happening. It focuses on making the event ahistorical. Also, in focusing on the stories of the firefighter it...