Bush's mythic America: a critique of the rhetoric of war

• Williamson, Larry A. ^[1]
  1. [1] University of San Diego

     University of San Diego

     Estados Unidos

     
• Localización: Southern communication journal, ISSN 1041-794X, Vol. 75, nº 3, 2010, págs. 215-231
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • This article offers a mythological critique of the Bush Administration's war rhetoric from 2003 through April 2006. I argue that during this period the administration adapted America's war myth into one shaped largely through opposition to the dissonant narrative known as “the Vietnam Syndrome.” This critique demonstrates how the Vietnam Syndrome functioned as the oppositional narrative premise for a revisionist war mythology composed of three central mythemes: righteous war, democratic salvation, and shock and awe. This critique further explicates rhetorical myth's form and function by revealing how the iconic agents, acts, and sacred scenes of this war myth served to transform the material complexities of the Iraq war into a negation of the cultural dissonance of the Vietnam Syndrome.