Critical Speech analysis for College students: learning from chairman Bush about Althusserian "silences"

["Jurriaan Bendien" <bendien@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

BUSH'S SPEECH

On 16 August I posted a report on PEN-L on a pulpit speech that Bush held in
California. One way to look at this text is to say "well, it's all bullshit,
GWB is at it again, waffling along in the predictable manner, I am going to
switch to another channel". But another way to look at it, is to say, "what
is really going on here, and what can I learn from this, for socialist
politics".

Let's explore this second option for a moment. In this case, we start out
from the hypothesis, that Bush is not trying to fool people and is
deliberately talking bullshit, that he is trying to be sincere in his
convictions, on the basis that he genuinely believes he is doing the right
thing.

1. PRAISE

The first thing to notice then, is that Bush is praising and positively
rewarding his own troops. He says "You served with honor. You served with
skill. And you were successful". Qualities he likes to see. He is saying,
you are good at something, you are good people (positive reinforcement). And
because you are good people, you will fight for me, presumably (loyalty
factor).

He then gives an explanation for this: "Before you went in, Iraqis were an
oppressed people, and the dictator threatened his neighbors, the Middle East
and the world," "Today, the Iraqis are liberated people, the former regime
is gone, and our nation and the world is more secure." So the military have
successfully done their job already, they've done something good already,
there is no indication that they have to do some work in order to be good.

2. LIBERATION

You see here, that he is talking like a revolutionary. There were these
people, oppressed by a dictator (who is not named however), and they had to
be liberated from that (how ?). Implicitly, though not explicitly, he
suggests that the US military has liberated Iraq (how ?). Now, "the Iraqis
are liberated people". In what way ? It's a stunning achievement, whatever
it is, but anyhow, he adds that "the former regime is gone" (really ?).

The implied reasoning seems to be here that SINCE "the former regime is
gone" THEREFORE "the Iraqis are liberated people". No mention is made at
all, however, of any liberation process in itself, or evidence for it, it's
like magic, pow, a few bombs, a few shots, and wham ! people are liberated.
But the positive result is "our nation and the world is more secure". But
how ? He doesn't specify that. In fact, people do not feel more secure at
all, now that Americans are fighting Iraqi's. Rather they are more worried.

The president said furthermore that America is at war, with people who "hate
what we stand for." But who are these people ? What do we stand for ?
Implicitly, America is at war with anybody that hates America. "We love
freedom, and we're not going to change". Here, the dichtomy is between the
lovers of freedom, and the enemies of freedom. America stands for freedom.
Therfore America loves freedom. Therefore America stands for freedom.
Therefore, also, if you do not like America, you do not like freedom. You do
not love freedom, and quite possibly you do not love at all. The idea, that
freedom may involve change, is not admitted, or that change might mean
freedom etc. His idea is, that America makes a resolute, fixed stand for
freedom (what evidence is there for that ?).

This being the case, America depends on the military "to protect our
freedom", and as a rider, he adds "and every day, you depend on your
families". In other words, protecting the freedom of America, by serving in
the army, is analogous to guarding the protective atmosphere of the family.
But what does this family dependence consist in ? The fact that the wife and
kids have to do paid work to pay for all the extra bills that have to be met
as a result of the Bush government's policies ?

3. IDENTITY

In fact, you might as well assume, following Bush, that America IS the
family, sort of like "I-marry-car". This kind of social analysis has the
advantage, that you don't have to talk about difficult things like politics
or social/political institutions, never mind social classes, we are all one
big happy family.

A nation according to Bush, is sort of a large kinship system. Americans are
all brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, uncles and aunts, and cousins
and nephews and nieces, fathers and mothers and grandfathers and
grandmothers, altogether, united. "Families" could of course also refer to
mafia organisations, but presumably Bush does not intend this. Bush is
feminising the nation, and the military is the masculine force, which serves
to protect the nation.

The semantic linkage is soldier=family=America=defence of the
nation=liberation. If you are a soldier, then you care for your family. If
you care for your family, you want to protect your family. If you want to
protect your family, then you want to protect America. If you want to
protect America, then you are prepared to defend America. If you are
prepared to defend America, then you are prepared to attack Iraq. And you
are prepared to attack Iraq, because you want to liberate Iraq. You want to
liberate Iraq, because you believe in freedom. If you believe in freedom,
you are the enemy of those of oppose freedom. Those who oppose freedom are
dictators, and therefore if you support freedom you must oppose dictators
and liberate people from dictators. In order to liberate people from
dictators, you have to attack them, simple as that.  Iraq harbours a
dictator, who represents a threat "to his neighbors, the Middle East and the
world". The world includes America, so therefore it is not entirely
illogical to say that attacking Iraq means the defence of America, and
therefore the defence of your own family, and that is why you want to be a
soldier serving in a just cause.

4. THE GOOD CAUSE

According to Bush, America wants to remove threats all over the place -
neighbours, the Middle East, and elsewhere in the world. And wouldn't you
like to live in a safer world without all sorts of threats ? But what threat
exactly, what is this about ? This is not specified at all. Anyway, when the
threat is removed, the world is more secure, and if the world is secure,
then freedom can flourish. Implicitly, freedom is something the world wants,
and America will provide it, is providing it. By attacking Iraq. Of course
Bush does not say anything explicitly about attacking Iraq. His argument is
that America is engaging in defence, not attack. It is liberating Iraq
through defence. It is the other guys who do the attacking, they hit first.
We liberate.

So anyway, there is in truth a hard fight out there, a battle to win, an
enemy to defeat (oops, had already been defeated - but if the enemy has
already been defeated, then why the importance of the military at this point
in time ?). Naturally, this implies "a challenging time for military
families". Obviously, yes, because your son or your father or your wife
might come home in a body bag. But Bush says, "I know that".

He doesn't apologise, nor does he say they died in a just cause, in fact he
doesn't mention body bags at all.  Over the last year, he says, "our
families and our military" (US against THEM) have "met hardships" and "we"
met them "together" as one big family sharing solidarity. It's just that the
occasional soldier got his head blown off or whatever, but we are not
whinging. Bush says, "You've supported and looked out for one another", in
other words there has been solidarity, but in a "family" sort of way.
"You've been strong and faithful to the people you love", says Bush. What
however has this got to do with anything, and who are these "people you
love" and are "faithful" to ? It is not clear. The family ? America ?
Liberated Iraqi's ?

5. THE GLOBAL NATON

Bush says "Military families make tremendous sacrifices for America, and our
nation is grateful for your service to our country." This is really
interesting, because now (1) "sackrifices" are made for "Amerikka", (2)
"surfvices" are rendered to "our cunttry", and (3) "the nashun" is
"greatfull". "America", "our country" and "the nation" are different things
here. If you come home to your family in a body bag, it's "for America". If
you perform military service, then it's for your country. And gratitude
comes from the nation.

But WHY is "the country" different from "America", and different from "the
nation" ? I would suggest as a speculative hypothesis the following:

America = the multinational corporations
The nation = the government
Our country = the family

Obviously, "our country" could not be the "nation", because if your father
or son comes home in a body bag, then it is not clear that you would be
grateful, or how does that work ?

6. TRADITION

President Bush said that the Marine Corps Air Station and the military bases
of Southern California have long been crewseeall (crucial) to the deafends
(defence) of this country. So there is a precedent here, not a president,
but a precedent, we are working in a tradition here, a proud tradition
(conveyed by intonation). "We intend to keep it that way," Bush said. In
other words, we have a tradition, and we are going to preserve it, preserve
the trydishshun as it were. He is going into the past here. Previously he
has said, that Iraq has been liberated, but the idea here is, that we want
to carry on that tradition. The military are liberatory, liberators, freeing
humanity.

"Generations of Marines, and sailors, and pilots have trained and served
here. And for the veterans who are with us today, I thank you for your
service to our country," Bush added. A distinction is being made here,
between trainees and staff in the USA, and "veterans". The staff in the USA
is crucial to the defence of the USA; the veterans are thanked for service
to the USA overseas, but what are they defending there, exactly ? Staff
operating within the USA itself have not yet fought any wars, so they cannot
be veterans, obviously ?

Nevertheless, despite tradition, there is something new going on: the
current group of Marines and sailors are serving in "the first war of the
21st century," which is said to have begun with the terrorist attacks on
September 11, 2001. The first war in the 21 century ? I suppose it depends
from whose point of view you are looking at it.

7. START AND END OF WAR

According to Bush, the war is supposed to have begun with the 9/11 attacks,
in other words, not when war was officially declared or officially approved,
nor when Iraq was actually attacked, but rather when New York and the
Pentagon were attacked by terrorists. The idea here, seems to be that
whenever anybody attacks the USA in any way, war begins. This is a new
approach to the concept of the beginning and the end of a war. There is a
war if the President thinks there is a war.

It is at this point, that the President becomes truly dramatic and full of
pathos. "On that morning, the threats that had gathered far across the world
appeared suddenly in our own cities. The world changed on that day," Bush
said. This is a really complex thought. There are mysterious unnamed threats
"far across the world", these threats somehow fuse together, and then boom !
"they" explode in "our" cities.

Funny thing is, there has not yet been one systematic official explanation
of the causes of the 9/11 incidents, but anyhow you cannot make that
explanation now, because the permanent war on terrorism means, that you
cannot say anything openly anymore, you cannot talk openly about it, you can
only refer to unspecified threats, not to specified threats. The walls might
have ears, the enemy might be listening.

8. FIGHTING BACK

The President claims that "The world changed on that day", but did it really
? What exactly was changed ? Certainly, people died and were wounded,
buildings were razed, planes were destroyed, and everybody was shocked about
that, they came to the rescue, and so on. But what really changed apart from
that ? The President is trying to create a psychic reference point here, a
precedent which denotes a qualitative change in world history, and which
justifies his policy. This I assume is really the tradition he is talking
about, that he seeks to forge. But leaving aside emotionalis, how real is
this idea ?

Bush says, "The enemies of the United States showed the harm they can do and
the evil they intend. Since that September morning, our enemies have also
seen something: they have seen the will and the might of the United States
military, and they are meeting the fate they chose for themselves." The
presumption here is that the terrorists indeed considered the United States
AS A WHOLE as the enemy, but that has never been conclusively proven. But
for Bush that is a trivial point, if you bomb a building in New York and
kill people, you are an enemy of the United States, end of story.

He refers conspiratorially to "our enemies" but does not specify who they
are. It is a funny thing when you go out to fight wars, and you don't even
know who the enemy is, or why the enemy is an enemy. But okay, Bush has not
time to explain all that, and he cannot explain it, because that is a state
secret. His way of saying the military aren't stupid is to assume that they
know who they are fighting without telling them who they are fighting.

Anyhow, the point is that the military do not have to know why wars are
fought, they just have to make sure they win them. Which is what Bush said
in his initial consultations with the military leadership for the Afghan
campaign: "please help us win".

Another way of looking at it, is that "the will and the might" of the United
States military must be demonstrated, just in case people get funny ideas, a
sort of self-assertion exercise. And they can do this, because they are
"strong" and "faithful". The military have a faith, and Bush is there to
minister to it. Onwards christian soldiers, perhaps.

9. THE FATE OF NATIONS TO SELF-DESTRUCTION

Bush says, that the enemies of the United States are "meeting the fate they
chose for themselves". Again, this is a complex thought, because:

(1) the terrorists who executed the 9/11 incidents died in the act, so they
"met out their own fate" already, it is not as thought they are doing it now
or anybody else it doing it to them.
(2) the 9/11 terrorists had nothing to do with Iraq, nor directly with the
sovereign government in Afghanistan for that matter. (3) neither Afghani's
nor Iraqis chose American invasion as their "fate", and did not provoke it.
(4) fate is inherently not something you can choose, fate (kismet) is
something that is not under your control, it is the inevitability of what
happens to you, a total outcome known only retrospectively, and not in
advance (not to be confused with destiny, which can be influenced and
shaped). Fate is that which you cannot know in advance, it is what actually
happens.
(5) Bush is implicitly committed to the idea that the United States meets
out "fate" to other nations, even although, paradoxically, he says these
other nations have chosen this fate for themselves. Now how is this possible
? It seems that really what Bush is trying to say is, that nations bring US
attacks on themselves, they are to blame, by harbouring terrorists,
terrorist being defined as enemies of the United States, who attack the
United States in some way.

9. THE HIDDEN GLOBAL NETWORK OF TERROR

Bush adds, "Our nation is waging a broad and unrelenting campaign against
the global terror network, and we're winning."
This is a bit of a boast, for which he gives no evidence at all. Point is,
the US military as such have almost no active role at all in fighting a
"global terror network"  in reality, unless you define reality to be, that
anybody who attacks any US person or agency is a terrorist, or that any
enemy which the US government defines, is automatically a terrorist. Sure,
the US military did scratch around a bit in Afghanistan to find some, threw
some bombs, etc. but they found very few. They found none in Iraq. They
found a few in Pakistan, but very few. But officially there have been no
military campaigns anywhere else. Then what is he referring to ?  Of course,
they might have found or killed more, which aren't reported in the press,
because the war is "secret".

Notice also, finally,  the new idea, namely that of "the global terror
network". We are not simply talking terrorism here, we are talking terror in
general, anything that causes terror, there is said to be a network, and the
network is global. We are not simply talking about Al Quaeda here anymore,
we are now talking about a sort of "united fraternity" of absolutely anybody
who perpetrates terror of any sort to anybody else, and oppoeses the forces
of righteousness. Except the US military, they do not engage in terror, they
engage in defence. The line of the "broad and unrelenting campaign against
the global terror network" is DIFFERENT from the line of the permanent war
against terrorism, this is a different concept, a mutation in thought.

Bush asserts, "Wherever al Qaeda terrorists try to hide, from the caves and
mountains of Central Asia, to the islands of the Philippines, to the cities
in Pakistan, we are finding them, and we are bringing them to justice." The
idea here seems to be that Bush feels the US government has a mandate to
search for al Qaeda terrorists anywhere, to see if they can find some, using
any methods whatever as required.

There might be a terrorist in an Asian cave. Or on top of an Asian mountain.
Somewhere Central anyway. Or in an aisle of the Fill-lip-pines. Or in one of
the sit-tea's of Pack-I-stand. But what about this "bringing to justice"
thing ? The whole point is that the US government had decreed that a
terrorist or would-be terrorist does not even deserve an ordinary trial by a
court of law. Just have a look at the people incarcerated in Guantanamo.

10. THE MEANING OF JUSTICE

There is another slip involved here, because Bush is effectively saying that
IF we catch a terrorist or would-be terrorist, THEN BY THAT VERY FACT we
have brought them to justice, justice consists in catching terrorists or
would-be terrorists, not in bringing them to a trial in a court of law.

So what sorts of things can you conclude from this type of analysis ? Well,
for a start the American government is not strong on clear language and
intellectual honesty or rational thought, or anything like that. Rational
thought and evidential inquiry are out of fashion. You can forget it,
because justabout anything can mean anything here, it is just arbitrary,
anything can happen, and some words can be found to justify it. The US armed
forces decide matters of life and death, yet the president talks no sense at
all or is crucially vague. At the same time, it is evident that Bush makes a
strict separation between politics and the military troops. The military
troops do not have to know about politics, and the military troops are
subservient to politics, without knowing the politics behind what the troops
have to do. The politician gives the troops an objective, but no political
analysis.

A Bush supporter might object, (1) that I have misconstrued what Bush is
saying. But that is not true, I am merely exploring some possible
implications of what he is saying. If those implications are false, then
what IS Bush saying ? If we cannot agree anymore about what the President
means when he says something, then how can we verify the meaning of US
Government actions ? Somebody might say, (2) well, you just don't understand
our American language. But I have used an enormous amount of American media
in my life, including to learn English in the first place. So what is it
that I don't understand ? Well, somebody might say, (3) you haven't spent
enough time in America. But this is really interesting, because now in order
to understand American language, I have to be longterm in America to
understand it. Linguistic competency is based on territorial experience. But
mutatis mutandis, this would then also apply as well for Americans in their
relations with other countries, and the communication with those countries.
(4) somebody might say you don't understand the context in which Bush made
his speech. Maybe so, however, he was addressing military forces which can
decide life and death for large numbers of people, and the least I think we
can expect, is that the President talks clearly, exactly and truthfully.

11. SUMMARY

I think at least Bush's speechwriter or media-massager ought to be changed
in favour of somebody with a higher IQ and greater capability for cogent
thought. I think also that no US military troops should believe the rhetoric
of this speech Bush has given. It is lethal rhetoric, full of malformed
thoughts, which can cause death. Harry Truman had a sign in his White House
office, that said "the buck stops here". But what is the "buck" ? Well, in
reality, it is the almighty greenback, the American dollar, the store and
measure of capital.

In his book about Capital, Karl Marx treats capitalists only in terms of
their objective function, not as personalities. He feels this approach is
justified, because from the point of view of what happens to the capitalist
system, economic interests override personal ideosyncrasies. It is
justified, also because it is "money talking" through human beings. George
Bush is a voice of the US dollar, and those who "own" the US dollar.

Now as Karl Marx said, the capitalist system is full of "contradictions",
different conflicting forces which co-exist within the same system, and
which give the system its dynamics. These socio-economic contradictions are
actually reflected in the language use of President Bush. In fact, the
"socio-economic contradictions" are so great, that he cannot even say very
much at all, because as soon as he elaborates a serious line of argument, he
runs into massive contradictions, insurmountable complexities.

In effect, he is trying to square a circle, and it cannot be done. He is
pursuing a very partisan line, but then he wants to say, we're all one big
happy family, and this cannot be done without "sleight-of-mouth" and
"slip-of-the-tongue" procedures, denial of logic, denial of facts, mystique,
mystery, myth, rhetoric. Certainly, Bush is a human being. But a special
kind of human being, a kind of media-massaged animation in some ways.

You might say, well that just stuffs Bush, that shows that he is just
rubbish. But that is not the case, I am not arguing that, we are talking
about a social phenomenon here, the fact, that it is increasingly difficult
to talk any rational sense in politics. The more, and the more intense the
socio-economic contradictions become, the more it becomes impossible to talk
in a "neutral" language which denies these socio-economic contradictions.
The options are therefore twofold: either you talk nonsense, or you admit
that the socio-economic contradictions exist.

But in bourgeois politics, people always want to have it both ways. They
want to admit socio-economic contradictions when it suits them, and deny
them, when it does not suit them. So they end up talking a specific rhetoric
anyway, because they use concepts sufficient to indicate their own
operational requirements in lifestyle terms, but which give nothing else
away. The important thing to understand is, that there is a pattern in the
apparent nonsense, and that this pattern has social and material roots in
the problems of American society and the world political situation.

If it is increasingly difficult to talk any rational sense in politics, then
it is also increasingly difficult to have any kind of rational debate or
convince people with a rational argument. The deconstructionists have gone
mad, the deconstructionists have been deconstructed, they have turned on
themselves, and now there is nothing of substance left to say. Or is there ?

Jurriaan