Enemy to Paraphrase John Donne,

¶ … Enemy

To paraphrase John Donne, no speech is an island. And this is especially true of the best speeches, for while each speech is addressed to a specific audience and is a response to a particular moment in history, it is also an echo of other speeches made in similar and sometimes dissimilar times. Good speeches resemble each other in formal ways -- compelling imagery, rolling cadence, language keyed to the audience at hand. But they also resemble each other in intentional ways, for speakers are often intent on establishing the legitimacy of their claims by linking them to past speeches and speakers.

When President George H.W. Bush gave a speech on Jan. 16, 1991, arguing that the United States should and would invade Iraq because of that nation's invasion of Kuwait, he reached back to other important American speeches, connecting his own intents to the American past through his choice of phrasing and imagery. This paper presents a cluster criticism of the speech that was a central part of the launch of the first Gulf War, focusing on the ways in which Bush linked the proposed invasion to a specific narrative of American military history.

To understand the rhetorical choices that Bush and his speech writers made for this speech, it is necessary to give at least a very brief description of the historical context in which it was given. It is always difficult to begin a description of an event in the Middle East because every event has a thousand connections to other events. Of course, the history of every part of the world is connected to its past, but in some places it seems to be possible to begin again at times, to have a fresh beginning. This never seems to be the case in the Middle East, where the past can act like quicksand, sucking down into the past every attempt to right past injustices and to create a brighter future for the young people of the region (Bergen 27).

But given that one has to begin somewhere, an obvious beginning to this story is the invasion by Iraq of Kuwait on Aug. 2, 1990. The unprovoked invasion was widely condemned across the world, bringing immediate economic sanctions by the members of the United Nations Security Council against Iraq. An international coalition of military forces would eventually invade, although most of the troops would be American. The United States would be given economic aid to fund its military action, with the majority of the money coming from Saudi Arabia, with Great Britain and Egypt also making economic contributions (Simpson 41).

The reasons -- or justifications -- that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein gave for the invasion (although he generally did not elaborate his own reasons) were as complex as one might expect in the region. Probably the most compelling reason for the invasion was that Iraq was badly in need of money after the costs of the Iran-Iraq war and Iraq had its eyes on Kuwaiti oil revenue. There were also accusations by the Iraqi government that the Kuwaitis were drilling under the Iraqi-Kuwaiti international border and using pipelines to suck Iraqi oil back into Kuwait to sell (Leckie 31-3).

Iraq had also contested the legitimacy of its border with Kuwait for decades, since the British had laid down the border in 1932. Iraq at times considered Kuwait to be a colony or some other type of extension of its own territory, although it was historically unclear to what extent this was a claim made out of authentic belief in the territorial claim or was more a protest against the long-term imperialism of Great Britain in the area (Leckie 36).

The invasion by Iraq of Kuwait was also tied to the Cold War. Iraq had for most of this decades-long simmering conflict been an ally of the Soviet Union. As such, Iraq was a peripheral foe of the United States, which also distrusted Iraq's enmity with Israel. But more important than the latter were the Cold War politics running through the events. When Bush made his 1991 speech he was responding to this current, for the speech was in no small part an answer to the complicated and awful feelings that still haunted the United States after the end of the war in Vietnam. In both Korea and Vietnam, the United States and the Soviet Union had engaged in a proxy war, and in both cases the United States' proxy had lost. Riding in to save Kuwait from Iraq was in part a way to re-fight Vietnam and win.

Focal Terms

It is essential to understand the background of the speech to be able to analyze it. The opening of the speech is actually a jumble -- not something that was rare for the first President Bush -- as if Bush were trying to get six ideas on the table simultaneously. These ideas are: 1) the United States was joined with other nations in making an attack; 2) the attack was at that point an aerial one and not a ground war, which meant that American losses would therefore be limited and thus would not be like Vietnam; 3) Kuwait was an innocent victim of Iraq; 4) Kuwait is a member of the United Nations and so in an alliance with the United States; 5) Iraq is a brutal aggressor; 6) the Kuwaitis have been "crushed" and so in their vulnerability deserve -- and need -- to be rescued.

Each of these ideas provides an entry-point for a cluster critique. The idea of this form of rhetorical criticism was developed by Kenneth Burke, who posited that analyzing key terms allows one to find points that resonate for both speaker and listeners. Finding these resonant terms can be likened to a small, quite weak black hole: These terms pull into themselves parts of the speech that are related to it in the same way that black holes pull everything to them.

Foss (pp. 367-68) describes a cluster critique as consisting of three steps, as follows:

1) Identify the speech's key terms. These tend to appear in the introduction of the speech (or other text) and are generally repeated more than any other element

2) Identify surrounding elements that are associated with each of the key terms. These collections of associations are called "clusters."

3) Each cluster is then compared to all other clusters with their key terms, a process that allows an assessment of which of the key terms is central and how the key terms can be ranked hierarchically.

Of course, a cluster criticism is not the only way in which to analyze this speech or any other text. After the cluster criticism of this speech is presented, other forms of analysis will be touched upon to create a fuller assessment of this speech.

Diplomacy

One of the key terms in the introduction of this speech is "United Nations." This organization is cited repeatedly. Here are some of the references:

1) In the introduction: Kuwait is described as a member of the United Nations

2) In the second paragraph, Bush states that the invasion is being "taken in accord with United Nations resolutions" and that it "follows months of constant and virtually endless diplomatic activity on the part of the United Nations"

3) In the fourth paragraph, the president referred to "the Secretary General of the United Nations went to the Middle East"

4) Later in the speech, Bush predicted that Iraq would one day submit to all United Nations resolutions and that the "United States, together with the United Nations, exhausted every means at our disposal to bring this crisis to a peaceful end. However, Saddam clearly felt that by stalling and threatening and defying the United Nations, he could weaken the forces arrayed against him."

5) Closer to the end of the speech, Bush refers to the importance of a "credible United Nations" that "can use its peace-keeping role to fulfill the promise and vision of the U.N.'s founders."

This last line pushes us to the next level of this cluster critique. The term United Nations is linked to several other terms in the speech. These include "diplomatic" (noted in the second paragraph quotation cited above) and "peace" and related words such as "peaceful." Bush notes that both Arab and other leaders traveled to Iraq "in a variety of efforts to restore peace." The Secretary General of the United Nations, Bush said, "went to the Middle East with peace in his heart." This sentence cites both the United Nations and peace together, making the connection explicit.

Another element in this cluster of words and ideas is "sanctions," which is aligned with both "United Nations" and "diplomatic" -- and peace. Bush states: "Sanctions were tried for well over five months, and we and our allies concluded that sanctions alone would not force Saddam from Kuwait." In other words, the United Nations, in its search for peace for Kuwait, will use the diplomatic tool of sanctions.

Although "peace" appears in the speech as often as "United Nations," I am arguing that "United Nations" is the more primary of the two terms here, having precedence over "peace" since I believe that Bush is asking his listeners to focus on the formal authority of the United Nations as the font from which peace can be coaxed. Focusing on peace as the primary term would (I believe) make the speech sound more abstract and less strategic. Bush is not asking his listeners to agree that peace is a good thing.

He is asking them to acknowledge that in this particular place and time, only a unified front from the United Nations is sufficient to guarantee peace. The next reference to peace is again twinned with the idea of international alliance: Invasion has only occurred after "the 28 countries with forces in the Gulf area have exhausted all reasonable efforts to reach a peaceful resolution."

Planetary Orbits

About halfway through the speech, Bush begins to shift his use of the term peace; rather, he uses it as a type of bridge. After he has established the connection between the phrase "United Nations" and the related term "diplomatic," he begins to pair the word "peace" with its opposites. In this way, "peace" is one of the words clustered around the central term United Nations, but it also exists at the center of another cluster. One of the limitations of cluster criticism as Burke describes it is that each of the key terms is seen as essentially isolated, like a sun with its revolving planets.

But one can perform a cluster critique that is more complicated, more dimensional. Each key term has its own orbiting planets, true, and most of these have moons orbiting them. But sometimes the moons of one planet shift to another planet, and sometimes even the planets shift their loyalty and migrate at least temporarily to another solar system. In this way, "peace" as a word can be analyzed as a part of the way in which Bush supports the centrality of the United Nations in the invasion but also as a way in which peaceful and civilized nations are different from nations like Iraq.

The speech highlights the difference in ethos and action between the peaceful and the belligerent: "And while the world waited, while the world talked peace and withdrawal, Saddam Hussein dug in and moved massive forces into Kuwait." The next several references to peace are all like this in the form of contrasts:

1) Iraq created crisis while the United States pursued peace.

2) "While the world waited, Saddam Hussein met every overture of peace with open contempt."

3) The next reference to peace presents us with the most dramatic contrast: "While the world prayed for peace, Saddam prepared for war."

In the above passages from the speech, peace is put forth as a force in and of itself. It is not a by-product of diplomacy, it is not something that the United Nations works to bring about. It is not something secondary, rather it is the primary force behind the U.S. Invasion. (This is, of course, ironic, but calls to war are often cloaked in the robes of peace.) This shifting use of the word "peace" continues in the rest of the speech as Bush reconnects it with to the sense of peace-through-strength, as something that arises through an alliance of nations. To this end, Bush talks of "an order in which a credible United Nations can use its peace-keeping role to fulfill the promise and vision of the U.N.'s founders" and, near the end of the speech, he says it is his hope that "somehow the Iraqi people can, even now, convince their dictator that he must lay down his arms, leave Kuwait, and let Iraq itself rejoin the family of peace-loving nations."

Just and Unjust Wars

This is one "cluster," one that centers on the term "United Nations" and is linked to "diplomatic," "sanctions," "peace, and "peaceful." These latter two are also part of another cluster, one that is defined by opposition to war and belligerence. This is the next cluster that I will examine: The cluster that centers on the words that describe the brutality of the Iraqi invasion -- in contrast to what is painted with both irony and sincerity -- with the peacefulness of the American and Allied invasion. Although usually a cluster criticism begins with a focus on a single word, I think that it is appropriate in this case to include the range of essentially interchangeable words that Bush is using to depict Hussein and Iraq as tyrannical -- for these words are essentially interchangeable. They are all meant to portray Hussein as both brutal and less than human.

Hussein has "raped, pillaged, and plundered" an innocent nation. He is "intransigent" and "arrogant." His tactics have included "stalling and threatening and defying the United Nations." He also "brutally assaulted" Kuwait. When terms describing belligerent actions on the part of the United States and its allies, such words are mitigated. For example, the United States is pursuing "not the conquest of Iraq [but] the liberation of Kuwait."

Related to the cluster of verbs and adjectives that describe the brutality of Hussein, there is also a set of terms that seem to be more neutral, more along the lines of "just the facts, ma'am." Bush cites Iraq's "nuclear bomb potential," its "chemical weapons facilities," Hussein's "artillery and tanks" will be destroyed. Bush promises that Allied operations "are designed to best protect the lives of all the coalition forces by targeting Saddam's vast military arsenal." A few sentences later in the speech, Bush repeats these terms almost verbatim, pushing the factual claims of the justification for war to the central of this cluster: "While the world waited, Saddam sought to add to the chemical weapons arsenal he now possesses an infinitely more dangerous weapon of mass destruction -- a nuclear weapon."

Given the history that would follow in the Middle East, it is striking how Bush emphasizes the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It would, of course, be exactly the same claim that George W. Bush would make as president when he spoke to the American people about the need to invade Iraq in the Second Gulf War. Stating that one's enemy is brutal is an important claim in justifying any act of war, since clearly brutality is a bad thing. But it is also true that brutality alone is generally not considered to be a sufficient reason for a declaration of hostilities.

Thus Bush is supplementing his claim that Hussein -- or "Saddam" as he continually calls him, as if he were a child to be called only by his first name -- is a tyrant by factual claims that Iraq's possession of terrible weapons is legitimate, internationally recognized reason to invade another country that has not directly threatened the invading nation.

A New World Order

One of the most striking phrases in the entire speech is Bush's use of the phrase "new world order." This phrase can in some sense be seen simply to refer to any dramatic shift in the structure of a government -- the American Revolution, for example, brought about a "new world order." But while the phrase can be used in a straightforward, literal sense, it is more often used to refer to something fairly sinister, a takeover of a country by a sort of shadow global government, usually of a far-left nature. The phrase also has historically anti-Semitic connotations.

Bush is clearly concerned in this speech about casting the current invasion as different in every possible way from U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Bush makes this point both in terms of specific words and phrases that he uses and in the content of the end of the speech. He opens the speech by reassuring Americans that this is not a "ground war." While this is on one level simply a true statement (although grounds troops would be sent in later), it was also a statement that this would be expose the United States to the degree of casualties that the war in Vietnam had.

Bush explicitly states that this war will not be like Vietnam because in this conflict the armed forces will be supported in ways that they were not in Vietnam. This is not a continuation, nor a re-emergence, of the Cold War, he states -- although (as noted above), this was not in fact the case. And -- in another very telling choice of words, this is not going to be a return to the law of the "jungle." For anyone old enough to remember the war in Vietnam, the use of the phrase jungle warfare would immediately call up images of American soldiers dying in the jungles of Southeast Asia:

I've told the American people before that this will not be another Vietnam, and I repeat this here tonight. Our troops will have the best possible support in the entire world, and they will not be asked to fight with one hand tied behind their back. I'm hopeful that this fighting will not go on for long, and that casualties will be held to an absolute minimum.

This is an historic moment. We have in this past year made great progress in ending the long era of conflict and cold war. We have before us the opportunity to forge for ourselves and for future generations a new world order, a world where the rule of law, not the law of the jungle, governs the conduct of nations.

This use of terms that connect the current speech to a refutation of "another Vietnam" is not nearly as effective, I would argue, as the previous cluster of terms that I have analyzed. The cluster that centered around the United Nations and related ideas is, I believe the strongest.

It is always difficult when analyzing a speech to separate one's own feelings and beliefs from a more objective analysis of the strength of the rhetoric. Because I myself believe that it is important to build alliances in foreign relations, I may be more amenable to believing that this is the strongest argument in this speech. But I do believe that it is in fact the strongest argument in the speech because of the way in which Bush repeatedly used all of the terms in this thematic cluster and the ways in which he connects the different related terms here in sophisticated ways (Vilaros 740).

When in the Course of Human Events

After the citation to a "new world order," the next most striking, and in some ways discordant, citation in the speech is to Thomas Paine. When Paine, in 1776, wrote that "These are the times that try men's souls" and went on to talk about the "the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot" who both in the times of crisis "shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman." Paine was attempting to persuade those who were not yet committed to the American Revolution to join with the cause. And that cause was, for Paine, very explicitly the fight against tyranny: "Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph." Bush seems here to be counting on the fact that at least some of those who are listening to the speech will remember the full text of Paine's "Common Sense" and will thus understand that he is referring once again to Hussein's tyranny.

Connecting this implicit reference to one of the words used explicitly to convey why the American and Allied invasion is morally acceptable falls outside of the standard strategy of a cluster criticism. I think that it is fair to do so -- to include both implicit as well as explicit references to key terms. But I think that it is in this case more useful in terms of analyzing this speech to consider the broader historical references that Bush is making (Burke 45). By citing Paine, Bush is asking Americans to categorize the invasion of Iraq as morally equivalent to the American Revolution (Johnstone 64).