Introduction

Abstract

The President’s comments are arresting for the sense of absolute moral and political conviction that permeates through this short passage. That they were delivered in such proximity to the attacks of 11 September 2001, indeed, only adds to the impression of unfolding drama that he captures so powerfully here. Yet for those of us who watched his administration both declare and institute ‘War on Terror’ in response to those events, the tone and content of these remarks will also be instantly, depressingly, familiar. As we now know all too well, impassioned discussions of national unity and innocence, emotive demands to eradicate evil, and a continued reaffirmation of American politico-military supremacy have rarely travelled far from governmental discussions of this peculiar conflict. And, with that thought in mind, these remarks are clearly of interest as an early example of the aggressive, self-confident rhetoric that has now long characterised the Bush administration’s engagement with political violence. If not, necessarily, paradigmatic of the War on Terror’s structuration, they are certainly, and vividly, indicative of that conflict’s manufacture and sale from its earliest unfolding and some distance beyond.