—George W. Bush, Presidential Debate, 2004 (“Transcript: Bush, Kerry closing statements,” CNN, last modified October 1, 2004.Footnote 1

The codification activities we have encountered in the previous case studies are pervasive in the modernized, public political discourses of today, albeit in hybridized forms. They exist in hybridized forms, I purport, because today’s powerful social actors have thoroughly mastered the techniques of both the empirical and ideational forms of codification, and the integration of these forms, creating synergistic usages. The aim of the following chapters is to render these manifestations more recognizable to the reader. The case in hand is the “War on Terrorism” (sometimes abbreviated as the “War on Terror”) project enacted by the George W. Bush Administration following the 9/11 attacks of 2001.

I divide the case analysis in accordance with three phases, temporally arranged. The first phase, spanning from 9/11 to the war in Afghanistan, relied heavily on ideationally driven codification. The second phase was the buildup to the war in Iraq, which involved significantly more activities of evidentially driven codification, primarily pertaining to the material proof of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) capabilities and ties to terrorist groups (and hence the tangible international threat). This section showcases how ideational codification was systematically and extensively commixed into evidentiary discourses. The third phase, presented in two chapters, pertains to two post-invasion scandals: the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal and the failure to attain physical stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in Iraq.

Because parts of the early research have been previously published elsewhere, these chapters abbreviate these parts and focus more on unpublished materials. Readers are advised to consult the previously published studies for additional demonstrative details.Footnote 2

From 9/11 to the War on Terrorism Script: Using the American Civil Religion

The events that transpired in New York City, Washington D.C., and rural Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001, had a deep and lasting impact on the American psyche. Having lived in an extended period of domestic peace, technological development, and economic boom since the 1980s—and having bathed in a general sense of national invincibility bolstered by the end of the Cold War around 1991—the U.S. experienced a series of shocking attacks on some of its most significant national icons. These events ruptured the existing beliefs and normal patterns of American life, generating the responses of panic, horror, confusion, and anger—revolving around not only individuals’ physical safety but also the meanings of things in general; in sociological terms, the events represented a “breach” of the normal order.

At this time of extreme ambiguity and uncertainty, the Bush administration presented a coherent representation of the events. I, with my coauthor Hugh Mehan, have termed this the “War on Terrorism script.”Footnote 3 This script represents the advent of an idea system; it contained not only meaningful contents but introduced a system of codification.

A complete script, again according to Kenneth Burke’s theory of dramatism, explains to an audience the act (what was done), scene (when or where it was done), agent (who did it), agency (how it was done), and the purpose (why it was done) of human actions. A repertoire has long been available to the politicians in the U.S., most notably its presidents, to form a cultural script (similar to a “grand narrative” or “overarching narrative”). Sociologist Robert Bellah argues that citizens in the United States of America, a secular nation with a constitutional separation of church and state, have historically been guided by a civil religion (or a “religion of the citizen”).Footnote 4 The “American civil religion” is associated with the mythology represented in the Declaration of Independence, especially with the notions of liberty, equality, justice, and human happiness. It is also based on the conception of a supreme being above the nation.Footnote 5 Like the civil religions of other countries, it plays a role in reconciling the highest political authorities with the highest religious authorities of the nation in specific ways, thereby synchronizing the political and moral lives of citizens, particularly in times of national disunity, uncertainty, and challenge.

In the first stage of its response, when detailed information about the attacks was still scarce, the Bush administration managed to swiftly and elegantly fit information in accordance with the grand narrative. Let us review the rapid development of the War on Terrorism script.

Days 1 and 2

President Bush’s first-day pronouncements had already encoded the events programmatically. A plot with actors, notably heroes and villains, was cast. Just as the American civil religion suggested a liminal connection between the natural and the supernatural, so too did the War on Terrorism script.

In supernatural versions, the script encoded enemies as “evil” and the conflict as one of “good vs. evil.” Natural versions described these enemies as barbaric and animal-like, or depicted them as possessing some essentialist characteristics—for example, the enemies “like” to terrorize, “like darkness,” like “to hide in shadows,” or are “cold-blooded” killers. This naturalistic description casts the conflict as being “civilization vs. barbarism.” These two kinds of distinction were not separate. Repeatedly mentioning them back-to-back, and sometimes mingling together within short pronouncements, these distinctions became merged into the same system. The supernatural and the natural characterizations were bridged, the identifications equated. The stable set of core ideas and images also had the potential to become highly elastic; the boundaries of it could be stretched with effort. By design, this stock of knowledge—the War on Terrorism script—afforded numerous cognitive processes and activities to later be activated.

In his address to the nation on the day of the attacks,Footnote 6 Bush explained the events as “a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts,” perpetrated on “our biggest buildings,” by terrorists who are “evil” and display “the very worst of human nature,” through the means of “mass murder” (as opposed to suicide bombings), because “we’re the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world.” He contrasted the evil acts with another set of good acts: rescuing victims, “caring for strangers and neighbors,” and “giving blood,” which occurred at the scene of “pictures of airplanes flying into buildings, fires burning, huge structures collapsing.” The agents of these good acts were “all Americans from every walk of life” and “the best of America,” who had the agency to “unite in our resolve for justice and peace.” Their purpose was to “defend freedom and all that is good and just in our world.”

The confluence of the natural and supernatural was bridged by an intermediary idea, involving an ideational construct called terrorism. “America and our friends and allies join with all those who want peace and security in the world, and we stand together to win the war against terrorism” (emphasis added), stated President Bush. “Good vs. evil” was a supernatural war, unlike the more mundane conflicts between states, such as “Germany vs. France” during World Wars I and II. This script promoted war not against terrorists, who are tangibly human and mortal, but also against terrorism itself, which is an abstract idea or concept. This concept could be related to the bureaucratic political institutions of the modernized world, yet part of it could be stretched to relate to the symbols pertaining to the supernatural world. And, without the need for many specific and empirical facts, a general explanation was already offered.

The 30 Days Following 9/11

While the basic building blocks of the War on Terrorism script were formed before September 12, the Bush administration solidified this script throughout the rest of the month of September by repeatedly elaborating and substantiating it with information. They primarily did so by applying the War on Terrorism script (a system of codes and codification) onto a wide range of ambiguous, and sometimes ordinary, events (pre-coded information). Those who were delivering sandwiches, drinks, and clothing were “leading the first phase in the war on terrorism” and “strengthening the home front” (emphasis added). The FBI publishing a list of wanted terrorists’ names and pictures became “unveil[ing] a new line of attack” in the War on Terrorism.Footnote 7 The grand narrative of the War on Terrorism, then, became supported and “evidenced” by coded things—by fitted images (see Table 14.1).

Table 14.1 The War on Terrorism script and its fitting images
Full size table

Establishing the Case for the War in Afghanistan

Once actual military action against the Taliban began, the word “war” was no longer merely an abstract, metaphorical expression. President Bush translated a war against terrorism from an abstract concept into the reality of war against a specific government as its target.

Equivalence Through Common Group Membership

Bush’s rationale was to enforce a doctrine that he had promulgated following 9/11: the U.S. administration would not only hold the terrorists who committed the attacks accountable, but also anyone who aided them. This doctrine in his exact words, as given on two occasions, was:

We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.Footnote 8

We will not only deal with those who dare attack America, we will deal with those who harbor them and feed them and house them.Footnote 9

These two statements established this conceptual equivalence: the 9/11 attackers and their purported harboring entities. Physically speaking, the immediate 9/11 attackers were already dead. But there might be additional planners, trainers, and other parties involved in causing the 9/11 attacks who had not yet been prosecuted. These supporting and “harboring” entities thus exhibited a functional equivalence to the 9/11 attackers—their actions had the same causal effect. Their resemblance was also enabled by the intermediary, elastic idea of “terrorism.” On numerous occasions, all these people were classified as one group, assigned with one identity: terrorists. Hence, in terms of essential qualities, these entities were possessing the same kind of characteristics.

After defining the aforementioned doctrine, without yet naming any specific entity, on September 17, Bush identified Osama bin Laden and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan as the next concrete target.

All I can tell you is that Osama bin Laden is a prime suspect, and the people who house him, encourage him, provide food, comfort or money are on notice. Last Tuesday—last week, I spoke clearly about our nation’s policy. And that is, we’re going to find those who—those evildoers, those barbaric people who attacked our country and we’re going to hold them accountable, and we’re going to hold the people who house them accountable; the people who think they can provide them safe havens will be held accountable; the people who feed them will be held accountable. And the Taliban must take my statement seriously.Footnote 10

At the initial stage, the U.S. government did not, and probably could not, substantiate the involvement of Al-Qaeda (Osama bin Laden’s terrorist group), instead relying on unverified intelligence information to assert that Al-Qaeda was the group that perpetrated the attacks. The “prime suspect” was thus the code applied to bin Laden. Deductively, “providing safe havens” [to the “prime suspect”] would be the action. With only minimal information being mentioned to the public, these conceptual linkages could nonetheless be established. The evidential threshold, in other words, was set to very low by the way the claim was constructed. If there was only the slightest bit of information that the Taliban “feed,” “house,” “comfort,” or “encourage” bin Laden and his group, then such information would be enough to prove the conceptual linkages. This equivalence is succinctly captured in a later speech when Bush stated: “By aiding and abetting murder, the Taliban regime is committing murder.”Footnote 11

Streamlining the Mode of Reasoning

Indeed, Bush had consistently shifted the debate from a legal or rational mode of discourse—which required a kind of strong evidentiary basis built on correlative empirical events and multiple sources of material evidence—to a (civil) religious mode of discourse that favored a strong ideational match between information and idealized conceptions and images. The “links” between the Taliban and the terrorists or terrorism could be established in the latter manner but not in the former. Consider the following interaction between Bush and a reporter on September 19, 2001; the reporter asked Bush to respond to the countries that expressed uncertainty about waging war on terrorism and cited China’s statement that “any strike must be preceded by irrefutable evidence.”

REPORTER::

Can I follow on one point? Do you to your mind have irrefutable evidence that links al Qaeda, and specifically Osama bin Laden to these attacks?

PRESIDENT BUSH::

When we take action, we will take action because we believe—because we know we’ll be on [in] the right. And I want to remind people that there have been terrorist activities on America in the past, as well. And there has been—indictments have been handed down.Footnote 12

Escaping the request for a legal-rational codification of the situation, which called for detailed empirical evidence (connecting Al-Qaeda and bin Laden to 9/11), Bush asserted “knowing one is on [in] the right” as sufficient justification for undertaking a military action. The codification process in idea-making was to be ideationally driven. Per this route, Bush proposed this intuitively justifiable idea: that the entity “on the right” (a coded thing) to act against “terrorists” (another coded thing). In finding information to support the notion, Bush elicited Al-Qaeda’s and bin Laden’s involvement in terrorist attacks from the past to substantiate the act, scene, agents, agency, and purpose. Any materials from historical memories, media reports, vivid images, or recollected incidents could thus be used.

The Design of Political Demands

The president’s address to the Joint Session of Congress on September 20, 2001, was the first time that the Bush administration openly condemned the Taliban government of Afghanistan, made official demands on the Taliban regime, and warned that if the Taliban did not “hand over the terrorists” then it would “share in their fate.” This list of political demands could be taken literally, simply indicating one government’s requests of another government’s actions. But we are interested in demonstrating how political demands could be used by idea systems’ users as devices to generate future information for use against an enemy. Bush stated:

And tonight, the United States of America makes the following demands on the Taliban: Deliver to United States authorities all the leaders of al Qaeda who hide in your land. (Applause.) Release all foreign nationals, including American citizens, you have unjustly imprisoned. Protect foreign journalists, diplomats and aid workers in your country. Close immediately and permanently every terrorist training camp in Afghanistan, and hand over every terrorist, and every person in their support structure, to appropriate authorities. (Applause.) Give the United States full access to terrorist training camps, so we can make sure they are no longer operating. These demands are not open to negotiation or discussion. (Applause.) The Taliban must act, and act immediately. They will hand over the terrorists, or they will share in their fate.Footnote 13

Besides predicating on the incorrigible assumption of the War on Terrorism script, these demands collectively exhibit several epistemic characteristics pertinent to codification. Some of these demands were vague; others were built on potential “facts” that might be erroneous, and therefore undoable; some called for actions that would be hard to verify even if executed; others suggested actions that were morally simplistic, and therefore problematic; and overall, they embedded demands that undermined the sovereign identity of the other governmental party. “Release all foreign nationals…unjustly imprisoned” assumed unjust imprisonment, and the determining party was essentially the United States. “Foreign journalists, diplomats and aid workers” were construed as monolithic entities with an all-innocent identity, no matter what they had done. “Giving the United States full access to terrorist training camps” could lead to open access permitting the U.S. to access, station, search, and collect information on anyone, anywhere in the country (as we will see more clearly in the case of Iraq). There were many reasons for refusal, and here lies a key epistemic implication: any sign of “refusal”—even acts that could merely be construed as a refusal—could be used for further ideational codification to fulfill the idea of the enemy’s villainy, by the very design of the list of demands.

The Design of “Draining the Swamp” Policy Metaphor

Aside from Bush himself, the members of his administration also demonstrated significant competence in the established mode of idea-making. Bush had previously declared a new policy doctrine to treat the supporting entities of the 9/11 attackers as equivalent to the attackers themselves. The doctrine was justified as a moral stance (regarding moral equivalence), rather than policy efficacy. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, a prominent figure among neoconservatives (and later nominated as President of the World Bank by Bush in 2005), explained both the moral justification and the prospective efficacy associated with this policy, using the vivid metaphor “draining the swamp”:

DEPUTY SECRETARY WOLFOWITZ::

[Al Qaeda are] involved in the [USS] Cole, they’re involved in the Philippine hijacking plot, they’re involved in the previous World Trade Center bombing. And then what I suppose is the main thing we know post-September 11, which is that some number of the people in those planes have been pretty clearly identified as members of al Qaeda. The other thing, which I tried to emphasize, is that while there’s a lot we know, there’s also a lot that we don’t know. We don’t know how they were able to organize an operation as sophisticated as that. We don’t know everyone involved. We don’t know all the networks that may have supported them. And while we expect to learn more as this campaign proceeds, we also have to recognize that—I think the metaphor of draining the swamp applies—you can work as hard as you can to find as many snakes as possible, but if you can dry up the place where they live, that’s even more effective than trying to do both.

REPORTER::

When you mentioned, when you first started talking to us, you said Al Qaeda and possibly, I think, other organizations or other networks—have you identified or do you have information that there was cooperation between al Qaeda and any other groups in the attack on New York and Washington?

DEPUTY SECRETARY WOLFOWITZ::

The important point is—and again, this is something I stressed to them, we know these groups cooperate with one another extensively, and we can’t wait until we prove that one particular group was involved in a particular operation before we consider them dangerous.…we’re not going to wait until they’re proven—in our view they’ve already been proven dangerous and deadly and we’re going to take them out wherever we can find them.Footnote 14

Wolfowitz here also reinforced the mode of idea-making, as expressed by Bush, that de-emphasized the need for direct, evidentiary proof pertaining to 9/11. It shifted the conditions of proof toward things that were (allegedly) already proven in two ways. First, 9/11 was to be conceived as merely being emblematic of broader class of negative acts—such as suicide bombing (USS Cole), hijacking, and bombing, basically acts that could be classified as terrorism. Therefore, as long as sufficient proof can be made about an entity having the tendency to forward acts of terrorism, then specific proof of connection to 9/11 was not needed. In fact, specific proof about any terrorist incident—let alone specific details regarding that entity’s involvement—would not be needed, as it would be too late to do so. Aggregate assessments regarding the enemy’s actions were deemed to be adequate—sufficient in justifying the U.S. administration’s actions to minimize the existential threat emanating from the enemy.

Wolfowitz’s discourse was not merely a justification for the attack against Al-Qaeda and Afghanistan; it was also an incredibly efficient effort to legitimate an open plan for future invasion and intervention—on every country that was to be associated with the label. For example, by sheer implication, Cuba, Iraq, Syria, Iran, North Korea, and Libya were suddenly elevated to potential targets because each was already officially listed as a “state sponsor of terrorism” in the U.S. government documents. Other countries that had ties with them now belonged to that expanded category—in varying degrees, they have “the likeness of” a threat. The snake-swamp metaphor characterized the symbolic, conceptual relationships between these groups and countries, even if the exact collaborative relationships between them and various governments may have been nonexistent.

Maneuvering over Contesting Epistemic Conventions

The development of the War on Terrorism script was met with some critical responses. Many community groups and individuals—particularly those established in progressive, grassroots politics or long-standing involvement with pacificist, religious, and human rights issues—generated their own scripts and ways of representing the events. Some—like the renowned critics Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky—sought to re-situate 9/11 in the scene of U.S. historical interventions worldwide; some sought to stress the need to use non-military means to deal with “terrorism” problems; yet others emphasized the need to act in accordance with international law.Footnote 15 The Bush administration counteracted them using similar approaches that all relied on the War on Terrorism script.

The following interaction between a reporter, Muslim leaders, and President Bush in the White House on September 26, 2001, exemplifies this containment strategy:

REPORTER::

Granted the extremism, do you—and I’d like to ask the Imam the same question—do you consider bin Laden a religious leader or a political leader?

PRESIDENT BUSH::

I consider bin Laden an evil man. And I don’t think there’s any religious justification for what he has in mind. Islam is a religion of love, not hate. This is a man who hates. This is a man who’s declared war on innocent people. This is a man who doesn’t mind destroying women and children. This is a man who hates freedom. This is an evil man.

REPORTER::

But does he have political goals?

PRESIDENT BUSH::

He has got evil goals. And it’s hard to think in conventional terms about a man so dominated by evil that he’s willing to do what he thinks he’s going to get away with. But he’s not going to get away with it.Footnote 16

In this interaction with the reporter, Bush quickly veered away from a path of sociopolitical thinking and discussions that would lead to detailed, evidentiary codifications. By insisting on the codes of “evil man” and “evil goals,” Bush removed the discussions from the contextual realm of politics and pushed it into the contextual realm of the constructed ideational situation. In a similar manner, in response to a reporter mentioning the staggering 90% of Japanese (based on a public opinion poll) worrying over possible terrorist retaliation, Bush asserted that “100 percent of the Japanese people ought to” support Japan’s involvement in the campaign against the Taliban regime. In the encoded idealized context, practical worries emanating from ordinary political conventions (political legitimacy and individual safety) were less important.Footnote 17 Cumulatively, Bush and his administrative staff skillfully designed and navigated a cognitive device, a device that enabled them to employ ideationally driven codifications to build their case against identified targets.