A RT I C L E

223

The discourse of the New World Order: out-casting the double face of threat
Discourse & Society Copyright 2004 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi) www.sagepublications.com Vol 15(23): 223242 10.1177/ 0957926504041018

A N N I TA L A Z A R
LANCASTER UNIVERSITY

MICHELLE M. LAZAR
N AT I O N A L U N I V E R S I T Y O F S I N G A P O R E

A B S T R A C T . This article suggests that a productive way to make sense of the discourse and actions surrounding the 11 September 2001 attacks, and thereafter, is to view them within the larger context of the discourse of the New World Order. This involves an intertextual analysis of President Bushs speeches since 11 September, along with speeches made by the previous presidents, George Bush Senior and Bill Clinton. Our focus is on a signicant element of this discourse the denition of a moral order, as constituted vis--vis the identication and explication of two faces of threat: Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. We propose a way of analyzing the constitution of the twin terrors through out-casting, a macro-strategy that encompasses the four micro-strategies of enemy construction, criminalization, orientalization and (e)vilication, all which rest upon a logic of binarism. We argue that such a discursive bipolarity perpetuates, in the post-Cold War international system, a blueprint for heightened difference and conict. KEY WORDS:

discourse of the New World Order, intertextuality, Osama bin Laden, out-casting, Saddam Hussein, US presidential speeches

Introduction
Several commentators have described the 11 September terrorist attacks, and the American response, as inaugurating a new strategic era or a new stage in world history (Said, 2001). While the attacks were unprecedented in terms of shock value and audacity of execution, the ensuing discourse of President Bush and his cabinet cannot be said to constitute a rupture in contemporary American and world history. In this article, we argue that the American presidential statements and actions arising from 11 September and thereafter should be viewed as part of a larger discourse on the New World Order (NWO). Although this concept was originally introduced during the administration of the rst President Bush

224

Discourse & Society 15(23)

(henceforth, Bush Senior), its enunciation is not restricted to that period. The concept, we contend, had continued resonance during the Clinton administration, and has carried on in the present administration of President Bush. Viewed historically, the NWO can be said to be a discourse-in-the-making, with the texts and practices following 11 September representing an important moment in the fuller working out of this discourse logic one that has been implicitly underway since the end of the Cold War. The aim of our article is to demonstrate that the present American response belongs within the logic of the discourse of the NWO. Following Foucault, discourse is understood as comprising a eld of related statements revealed in concrete content across time and space which produces and structures a particular order of reality. Our aim is to analyze the discursive statements constitutive of the NWO, with primary focus on those of President Bush. In so doing, we hope to demonstrate the intertextual relations of coexistence (Foucault, 1972) in the eld of statements across the three separate American administrations, and straddling the two political parties. Although each administration has had to deal with different events, and although the governments of Bush Senior and President Bush (on the one hand) and Clinton (on the other hand) have espoused and/or pursued different political agendas and priorities, the articulation of the NWO is a point of commonality for the post-Cold War presidencies. Although, in Foucaults sense, a discourse is not attributable to particular individuals in history, those in positions of institutional authority do function as key gures in the inauguration of the emergence and development of particular forms of knowledge and truths (Foucault, 1967). The ofcial public speeches in which the discursive statements of the NWO are evident deserve comment in this regard. When Bush Senior rst proclaimed the dawn of an NWO in 1991, it was a performative act (Austin, 1962). Subsequent pronouncements of a similar nature even if not explicitly referring to the expression the New World Order by Clinton and the current President Bush have helped further dene, maintain and develop the concept. The analysis for this article, therefore, is based upon a corpus of speeches and written statements made by the three leaders across three key historical moments. The set of speeches by President Bush deals with the terrorist bombing of America and its aftermath, and spans a period of one year (11 September 2001 to 12 September 2002). The Bush Senior data occurs in the context of the 19901 Gulf War, while the Clinton set involves speeches made in the contexts of American military action in Afghanistan and Sudan, and Iraq in 1998. The data are analyzed in terms of the emergent overarching elements constitutive of the NWO and, in this article, one of these elements will be dealt with in detail, together with the discursive strategies employed in its realization.1 The study provides an intertextual analysis, realized in terms of lexico-grammatical, semantic and rhetorical choices in language use. As a whole, our analysis of the NWO discourse is undertaken not for its own sake but as a critique of what is (i.e. the kinds of common-sense assumptions and unquestioned modes of thought), as established within particular regimes of

Lazar and Lazar: Discourse of the New World Order

225

truth and rationality, and the constitution of knowable objects and subjects in the process. In our study, objects and subjects can be seen in terms of the denition of the threat (the focus of this article), and the reinvention and legitimation of American superpower identity in the post-Cold War era, respectively. Before presenting our intertextual analysis of (one aspect of ) the NWO discourse, it is necessary to rst outline the recent politico-historical conditions that have made the articulation and elaboration of this particular set of statements possible.

The discourse in context

To say that President Bushs statements and campaign concerning the war on terror are predicated upon the 11 September attacks establishes the most immediate context, but it does not provide the bigger picture in which the recent actions are embedded. For this, we need to look back at the emergence of the discourse. The discourse of the NWO emerged, and continues to exist, because of a convergence of a number of factors: (i) the end of the Cold War, (ii) the determination of the United States to retain its superpower status, and (iii) the emergence and articulation of new threats. As long as the United States had been responsible for containing the Soviet Union, it had a clearly dened role and undisputed clout in international politics. With the dissolution of the Soviet threat, however, a crisis of identity emerged; no longer could America dene itself in relation to the Soviet other. Although it possessed unrivalled military might, the United States now faced industrial and economic competition from Europe and Japan in a world free of the EastWest military confrontation, and would have to compete for world inuence (Klare, 1992; Pfaff, 1991). Having been accustomed to global leadership for over 40 years, however, it was clear that the United States was unwilling to relinquish its traditional commanding role. The answer to the question Do we [the United States] want to remain a superpower? was a resounding yes (Klare, 1992: 342). During the Bush Senior administration, therefore, devising a foreign policy strategy that justied the continued relevance of American world leadership became imperative. One such approach was the geo-strategic model, which emphasized both American military leadership in countering global aggression and the maintenance of a liberaldemocratic internationalism. The identity of the United States as the sole superpower was not something that could be merely asserted; it had to be legitimated and performed periodically. The invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein in 1990 presented an excellent opportunity. Speaking of American military intervention in the Gulf, Bush Senior proclaimed that this is an historic moment . . . we have before us the opportunity to forge for ourselves and for future generations a new world order (Bush Senior, 1991a). Later that month (29 January), in his State of the Union speech, he explained that what is at stake is more than one small country: it is a big idea: a

226

Discourse & Society 15(23)

new world order where diverse nations are drawn together in common cause, to achieve the universal aspirations of mankind: peace and security, freedom and the rule of law (Bush Senior, 1991b). The implications of this noble vision were made explicit by Bush Senior in another speech (11 September 1991): recent events have surely proven that there is no substitute for American leadership . . . Let no one doubt our American credibility and reliability. Let no one doubt our staying power (quoted in Klare, 1992: 346). With the demise of the Soviet threat, the United States had found its new enemy the threat of terror in the person of Saddam Hussein. During the Clinton administration and at the present time, however, this threat has taken other specic forms. In the Clinton years, religiously-motivated political violence, particularly that of Islamic fundamentalist groups, was perceived as an escalating threat. Although state-sponsored terrorism by rogue states (e.g., Iraq, Iran and Libya) was not a new phenomenon, the shift from state actors to non-state, transnational ones as perpetrators of political violence was increasingly taken up as a serious new threat. This was reected in the increase in funds devoted to counter transnational terrorism; the United States reportedly spent more than $10 billion in 2000 alone. Also, between 1995 and 1998, the Clinton administration issued three presidential directives, which led to the centralizing of White House control over counter-terrorism operations (Simon and Benjamin, 2000). Recently, Osama bin Laden was among those heading the American wanted list, indicted for the twin bombings of embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. More recently, bin Laden and the Al Qaeda network associated with him have been targeted by the current Bush administration for masterminding the 11 September attacks. The president has expanded his focus, also targeting states suspected of harbouring terrorists and, in his 2002 State of the Union address (29 January), he further broadened the scope by identifying Iraq, Iran and North Korea as potential terrorist hotspots.

The discourse-(in)-formation
The NWO may be simultaneously read in two ways, underpinning the discourse that is in formation as New World Order and as New World Order (see also Hayward, 1994). In other words, the world order that is new is the order of the New World. Further, focusing on the semantics of order makes available a wide range of senses pertinent to the understanding of the constitutive elements of the discourse: thus, order as stability and harmony, or as hierarchy; and, as a verb, order as instruct, command and direct, or regulate, control and normalize, or, again, requisition, ask for and demand. We have identied four elements constitutive of the NWO, as evident in presidential statements in which language and actions all belong within a common/shared discursive space. Here, we are able to discuss in depth only the rst of these elements (see note 1), which we call dening the moral order. The other three elements belonging to, leading and defending the moral order are

Lazar and Lazar: Discourse of the New World Order

227

discussed elsewhere (Lazar and Lazar, in preparation). Of course, the four elements are closely interconnected, presupposing and entailing one another in a mutually constitutive way.
DEFINING THE MORAL ORDER

The NWO is premised upon a moral order dened by the United States. The political exigency of morality was evident already in Bush Seniors inaugural presidential speech: America is never wholly herself unless she is engaged in high moral principle (Bush Senior, 1989). The public moral order is built up normatively vis--vis the articulation of the aberrant other or threat which, at the same time, justies the identication, division and excision of that threat (Foucault, 1967). Who and what constitute the referent(s) and sense of threat in the post-Cold War period? During the administration of Bush Senior, Saddam Hussein was the named threat, whereas in the Clinton administration Osama bin Laden gradually lled the major role. In the aftermath of 11 September, Osama bin Laden has continued to be the face of threat, although Bush has now extended the threat to reinclude Saddam Hussein.2 How is threat articulated? In what sense(s) are Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein discursively formulated and conated as threats to the moral order? A strategy we propose is that of out-casting, a process by which individuals and/or groups are systematically marked and set aside as outcasts. Our use of the term encompasses its senses as both noun and verb, which are manifested differently in a range of specic micro-strategies as explicated later. Out-casting, the macrostrategy, is based upon the dichotomization and mutual antagonism of outgroups (them) and in-groups (us) (e.g. Bauman, 1990; van Dijk, 1992, 1995). The polarization in the present case is made to appear understandable and, indeed, it assumes legitimation because of its embeddedness in the morality trope. As President Bush makes clear, in the realm of morality there are no ambiguities; no middle ground is to be had.
ENEMY- CONSTRUCTION

Enunciating the enemy is pivotal to dening, establishing and maintaining a moral order, for the enemy is one who violates our values. The key value at stake in the NWO discourse is freedom, which in one form or another is reiterated in the presidential statements. Yet it emerges as the dening, fundamental concept mainly vis--vis expressions of opposition to it. One way this is achieved is through the lexicalization of enemy and its juxtaposition with our values, as the following examples suggest:
in every generation, the world has produced enemies of human freedom (Bush, 2001b) on September 11th, enemies of freedom committed an act of war against our country (Bush, 2001d) Saddam Hussein and the other enemies of peace (Clinton, 1998b)

228

Discourse & Society 15(23)

Freedoms role as the cornerstone of the moral order is further established through its constant depiction as a target:
freedom itself is under attack (Bush, 2001d) they have attacked America because we are freedoms home and defender (Bush, 2001b) the bin Laden network of terrorist groups was planning to mount further attacks on America and other freedom-loving people (Clinton, 1998a)

The notion of freedom predominates in the discourse, appearing as a buzz-word of universal resonance. But what does it mean? In common-sense usage, freedom may be dened as ones ability to decide and choose; how is it, then, that the adversary is construed as having no desire for freedom? On closer inspection, we nd both wider and specic meanings encompassed by freedom, sustaining a very particular understanding while exuding a sense of universal acceptability. Here is an analysis of freedom that examines the semantic eld it enters into, what it collocates with, and how it is elaborated. Semantic eld:
peace, democracy (Clinton, 1998a, 1998b) our liberty, liberty and equality, human liberty (Bush, 2002d)

Collocations:
freedom and opportunity (Bush, 2001a, 2002d) freedom and democracy (Bush, 2001b) freedom and all that is good and just (Bush, 2001a) freedom and the dignity of every life (Bush, 2002a)

Elaborating statements:
They hate what we see right here in this chamber a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other (Bush, 2001d) Ours is the cause of human dignity, freedom guided by conscience and guarded by peace (Bush, 2002d) Free trade and free markets have proved their ability to lift whole societies out of poverty so the US is working with the entire global trading community to build a world that trades in freedom and therefore grows in prosperity (Bush, 2002e)

What emerges is the understanding of freedom in the particularistic sense of western capitalist liberal democracy. Also evident in the speeches are references to peace and dignity and an association with all that is good and just. In other words, contained in the notion of freedom is a very particular politico-economic ideology that appropriates to itself attributes of righteousness. Thus Americas

Lazar and Lazar: Discourse of the New World Order

229

claim of the high moral ground is bolstered, together with the universalization of the values it espouses as normative. While the appeal to the universal has important strategic functions in de-politicizing and de-ideologizing liberal democracy, there is never any doubt that the politico-economic non-ideology in question is American. Speaking on Ellis Island on the anniversary of the attacks, Bush said that the attack on our nation was also an attack on the ideals that make us a nation. The highlighted nominal group, whose meaning was over-determined by the twin symbols of the Statue of Liberty (over Bushs right shoulder) and the American ag (over his left), can be read unequivocally as synonymous with democracy. The point is accentuated by the apposition of our way of life with our freedoms:
today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedoms came under attack (Bush, 2001a) we will not allow this enemy to win the war by changing our way of life or restricting our freedoms (Bush, 2001b)

If America is aligned with freedom, then (following the logic of binarism) the adversary cannot also be associated with it. This is implied, for instance, in Clintons statement that the bin Laden network of terrorist groups was planning to mount further attacks against Americans and other freedom-loving people (Clinton, 1998a). Indeed, the discourse upholds a clear dichotomy between those who love freedom and others who are said to hate it (and therefore by implication America):
They hate what we see right here in this chamber a democratically elected government . . . They hate our freedoms our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other (Bush, 2001d) The groups associated with him [Osama bin Laden] . . . share a hatred for democracy (Clinton, 1998a)

Where the other is excluded from having a stake in freedom, the labelling of bin Laden as a terrorist or Saddam as a tyrant becomes easily justiable. The strategy is meant to deny any appropriation by bin Laden and those associated with him of ideologically respectable terms like soldiers or freedom ghters; at the same time, it makes counter-violence an urgent task (Fortin, 1989). Expulsion from the established moral order is reinforced, particularly in Bushs statements, through the characterization of the enemies values and beliefs as deviant and morally repugnant:
Its [Al Qaedas] goal is remaking the world and imposing its radical beliefs on people everywhere (Bush, 2001d) By sacricing human life to serve their radical visions by abandoning every value except the will to power they follow the path of fascism, and Nazism, and totalitarianism (Bush, 2001d) those who believe that some men and women and children are expendable in the pursuit of power (Bush, 2002d) historys latest gang of fanatics trying to murder their way to power (Bush, 2002d)

230

Discourse & Society 15(23)

There are three points worth noting here. First, their beliefs and visions are radical and fanatical, antithetical to liberalism, and connote intolerance and irrationality. Second, there is a lumping together of their beliefs with historically well-known ideologies of oppression. The lack of differentiation makes this an efcient rhetorical ploy to emphasise how bad the Others are (van Dijk, 1994: 20). Third, enemies are depicted as driven by power (note especially the nominals the will and the pursuit). Whereas the values of America and the NWO have been de-politicized and made to appear non-ideological with freedom as a shorthand for the universal values of humanity the enemies values have been deliberately politicized and ideologized. Drawing on Derrida, Sims (1999: 19) summarizes this nicely:
It is conventional . . . to believe that ones opponent has an ideology, but that ones own side does not. Only the enemy are [sic] nasty ideologues, whereas we stand for the cause of freedom, justice, human rights, etc. From this perspective, liberal democracy is not an ideology so much as an ideal state of affairs.

The enemies will/pursuit to power indicates that their beliefs are not only different from ours but also that, alarmingly, they seek to actively destabilize and replace our moral order. This evokes a crisis rhetoric, making the threat all the more imminent and ominous. The synonyms disrupt, challenge and threat(en) are frequent in the discourse:
disrupt and end a way of life; a threat to our way of life (Bush, 2001d) freedom has been threatened by war and terror; it has been challenged by the clashing wills of powerful states and the designs of tyrants (Bush, 2002e) Iraqs threat to peace (Bush Senior, 1990a)

Further, material processes such as remaking, imposing and seeking to master strongly convey the menacing enemy intent. Note, in particular, the second example below, in which the goal is control of peoples will. The coordinate structure, the minds and souls, suggests a religiously-motivated totalitarian ideology, contrasted with the supposedly non-ideological quest of human liberty:
Its goal is remaking the world and imposing its radical beliefs on people everywhere (Bush, 2001d) There is a line in our time and in every time between the defenders of human liberty and those who seek to master the minds and souls of others (Bush, 2002d)

The crisis rhetoric, furthermore, powerfully evokes the script of a universal conict:
This will be a long, ongoing struggle between freedom and fanaticism (Clinton, 1998a) Freedom and fear are at war (Bush, 2001d) These enemies view the entire world as a battleeld (Bush, 2002a)
CRIMINALIZATION

A second aspect of out-casting in the construction of threat to the moral order is

Lazar and Lazar: Discourse of the New World Order

231

the criminalization of the political actions of the enemy. Political violence in itself is not necessarily always illegitimate: what is important is the web of signication it enters into in historically specic discourses and relations of power (Dillon, 1998). Here, criminalization once again invokes a moral and political order and an ideal of answerability, against which the actions of the perpetrator are read as deeply transgressive. Criminalization of the enemy is discursively built up in a number of ways. A straightforward means is simply to lexically designate the enemy as a criminal: from the general category criminals (Bush, 2001e) to the specic naming as murderers (Bush, 2001d) and killers (Bush, 2002a, 2002b; Clinton, 1998a). Further, through the strategy of over-lexicalization (Fowler, 1991), a proliferation of criminal actions is attributed to the enemy. Representations here encompass a range of time frames, suggesting that the threat is an enduring one. As past actions:
Afghanistans people have been brutalized (Bush, 2001d) Saddam Hussein systematically raped, pillaged and plundered a tiny nation no threat to his own. He subjected the people of Kuwait to unspeakable atrocities, and among those maimed and murdered, innocent children. (Bush Senior, 1991a)

As habitual actions:
the terrorists directive commands them to kill Christians and Jews, to kill all Americans (Bush, 2001d ) [Saddam] has used [weapons of mass destruction]. Not once, but repeatedly . . . not only against soldiers, but against civilians. (Clinton, 1998b)

As projected actions:
we know that these weapons [of mass destruction] in the hands of terrorists would unleash blackmail and genocide and chaos (Bush, 2002b)

The enemys criminal acts are represented as intentional; indeed, premeditation is one of the hallmarks of terrorist violence. As Pillar (2001) explains, such violence is the result of someones policy or decision; it is not a matter of momentary rage or impulse, nor is it accidental. The representation of calculated action is over-lexicalized in the discourse, as follows, and its methodical nature suggests that the enemy is all the more deadly (Bush, 2001d) and dangerous (Bush, 2002a, 2002b):
their mission is murder (Clinton, 1998a) the terrorists directive commands them to kill (Bush, 2001d) thousands of dangerous killers, schooled in the methods of murder (Bush, 2002a) a sense of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts (Bush, 2001d) they are determined to expand the scale and scope of their murder (Bush, 2002b) his ruthless, systematic rape of a peaceful neighbour (Bush Senior, 1991b)

232

Discourse & Society 15(23)

What makes the enemys crimes particularly heinous is the deliberate refusal to distinguish between military combatants and civilians:
the terrorists . . . make no distinction among military and civilians (Bush, 2001d) Bin Laden publicly vowed to wage war against America, saying and I quote We do not distinguish between those dressed in military uniforms and civilians. They are all targets (Clinton, 1998a)

The representation of the political criminal is further shown vis--vis characterizations of their (civilian) victims. The word innocent(s) appears frequently, both as noun and as adjective, with the additional meaning of civilians/noncombatants: thus, the murder of innocents (Bush, 2002c; Clinton, 1998a); violence against innocents (Bush, 2002c); the loss of innocent life/lives (Bush, 2002a; Bush Senior, 1990b). A similar effect can be achieved through reference to size a small and helpless neighbor [Kuwait] (Bush Senior, 1991a); or to traditionally vulnerable people civilians, including women and children (Bush, 2001d); or to the ordinariness of the targets the victims were in airplanes or in their ofces. Secretaries, business men and women, military and federal workers. Moms and dads. Friends and neighbors (Bush, 2001d). Victims are found not only outside the enemys borders, but also include internal civilian populations, which goes to show that nobody is safe from the tyranny. This enables the rallying of international support against a morally decrepit enemy:
Afghanistans people have been brutalized many are starving and many have ed (Bush, 2001d) [Saddam] . . . ring Scud missiles at the citizens of Israel, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Iran; and not only a foreign enemy, but even against his own people, gassing Kurdish civilians in Northern Iraq (Clinton, 1998b)

The horror of these crimes is heightened through a strategy that van Dijk (1995) terms concretization, which emphasizes the enemys negative acts by describing them in overly specic, graphic and visualizable terms. The purpose is not so much to describe or explain as to incite a strong affective response (Fortin, 1989) especially effective where children are among the victims:
Iraq . . . a regime that has already used poison gas to murder thousands of its own citizens, leaving the bodies of mothers huddled over their dead children (Bush, 2002a) Iraqs occupation of Kuwait has been a nightmare . . . homes, buildings and factories have been looted. Babies have been torn from incubators; children shot in front of their parents. Disappearances and graphic accounts of torture are widespread. (Bush Senior, 1990b)

The singleminded and cold-hearted pursuit of criminal violence by the enemies is made both explicable and outrageous when couched in terms of a depraved value system that has no reverence for human life; they are aligned with death and we with life:

Lazar and Lazar: Discourse of the New World Order our enemies send other peoples children on missions of suicide and murder. They embrace tyranny and death as a cause and a creed. We stand for a different choice. . . . We choose freedom and the dignity of every life (Bush, 2002a) more than anything else, this separates us from the enemy we ght. We value every life. Our enemies value none, not even the innocent, not even their own. (Bush, 2002d)

233

The enemy is depicted not only as uncaring about human life, but as positively delighting in the loss of lives. By contrast, America is seen to cherish the sanctity of life and to defend lives everywhere. America is further shown to be circumspect about killing, even in war. In the examples below, spare, minimize and unintended all illustrate this. The choice of the nominal groups, the loss of innocent lives and casualities are also euphemistic in this context. Even with non-civilians, words such as kill or murder are hardly ever used; instead, as is shown in the examples, more abstract terms are preferred:
Afghanistan proved that expensive precision weapons defeat the enemy and spare innocent lives (Bush, 2002a) our armed forces, who carried out this mission while making every possible effort to minimise the loss of innocent lives (Clinton, 1998a) and while our strikes are focused on Iraqs military capabilities, there will be unintended Iraqi casualties (Clinton, 1998b)

The giving of ones life for some important purpose is a notion that is used both of enemy and of self but of course with quite different connotations. The death of American soldiers is represented as the ultimate sacrice, a noble deed. Reference to it is accompanied by expressions of pride, honour, dedication and gratitude:
we ask a lot of those who wear our uniform . . . even to be prepared to make the ultimate sacrice of their lives. They are dedicated. They are honorable. They represent the best of our country, and we are grateful (Bush, 2001e) I am proud of all who have fought on my orders, and this nation honors all who died in our cause (Bush, 2002c)

The enemys sacrice, however, is made ignoble by the absence of positive adjectives, as well as the linking of the sacrice with terrorism and their radical visions. Further, unlike the statements above in which the actions of self-sacrice are encoded in hedged material processes (to be prepared to make) or in the middle voice (who died) which puts some distance between the actions of the American leaders and the deaths of their soldiers the deaths of the others is pointedly attributed to the terrorist leaders. This makes their sacrice involuntary or, at best, misguided:
By sacricing human life to serve their radical visions . . . they follow in the path of fascism (Bush, 2001d) terrorist leaders who urged followers to sacrice their lives are running for their own (Bush, 2002a)

234

Discourse & Society 15(23)

ORIENTALIZATION

We have identied orientalization as another discursive strategy for maintaining as core a unitary western moral order, and for out-casting the other to the periphery. It is the appropriation into the NWO discourse of a framework of persistent cultural stereotypes about non-western others, particularly Arab Orientals. Said (1978) has famously argued that Arabs and Muslims have been historically constituted by the West as strange, aberrant and inferior; the implication is that the west is normal, virtuous and superior. The political corollary of this is the relegation of the Oriental beyond the boundaries of the western-dened social and moral order, and the accompanying moral justication for the West to control and contain the unruly other. Mazrui (1994) has noted that, since the end of the Cold War, American conventional capability has tended to be disproportionately directed against the so-called third world, particularly the Islamic world. More than two-thirds of the casualties of American military action since Vietnam have been Muslims. Although we recognize Saids tendency to paint with broad brushstrokes (Ahmad, 1992; Porter, 1983), we argue that certain resilient stereotypes he outlines do surface in contemporary American presidential speeches hardly surprising, since the thinking underlying the NWO relies largely on simplistic dualisms. Features of orientalism permeate the other proposed strategies of outcasting as well but, we contend, without any one of them simply being reduced to orientalization. We present here four representative stereotypes associated with orientalism. There is, for instance, the stereotype of bellicosity, the notion that Arabs thrive in conict situations and see strife, not peace, [as] the normal state of affairs (Said, 1978: 49); this of course is antithetical to Americas expressed value of peace. Thus, the aggression and brutality of evil men (Bush, 2002e) or these enemies view the entire world as a battleeld (Bush, 2002a). A second orientalist stereotype is moral degeneracy. Across the presidential speeches, we found an over-lexicalization of sets of synonymous terms cruelty, ruthlessness, mercilessness, brutality, and absence of conscience and human decency which sustain this ethnocentric imagery:
our country was attacked with deliberate and massive cruelty (Bush, 2001b) mindless and merciless killing (Bush, 2002b) He subjected the people to unspeakable atrocities (Bush Senior, 1991a) terrorist groups are hungry for these weapons and would use them without a hint of conscience (Bush, 2002b)

The moral depravity of the other is further couched in terms of irrationality or incomprehensibility yet another stereotype:
the depth of their hatred is equalled by the madness of the destruction they design (Bush, 2002a) the murder of innocents cannot be explained, only endured (Bush, 2002b)

A third orientalist motif is that of the duplicitous Arab. Not only irrational and

Lazar and Lazar: Discourse of the New World Order

235

debased, Arabs are also credited with cleverly devious intrigues (Said, 1978: 287). The choice of the material process (to) plot, with nefarious goals, is one way in which this is highlighted:
[the terrorists] are recruited . . . they are sent back to their homes or sent to hide in countries around the world to plot evil and destruction (Bush, 2001d) terrorists and dictators plot against our lives and our liberty (Bush, 2002c)

The ability to recognize the others duplicity and cunning, however, suggests that America is even smarter than the clever enemy, delegitimizes any claim to virtue and renders their deceitful efforts futile:
And they will follow that path all the way, to where it ends; in historys unmarked grave of discarded lies (Bush, 2001d) fanatics and killers who wrap murder in the cloak of righteousness (Clinton, 1998a) war has been waged against us by stealth and deceit and murder (Bush, 2001b) we are not deceived by their pretences to piety (Bush, 2001d)

Further, the enemies duplicity is elaborated through their furtive operations, established through a semantic eld comprising lexical choices pertaining to hiding, seeking cover and the underworld. The material process of hiding anywhere (in shadows) and everywhere (e.g. in countries around the world) shows particularly how menacing and pervasive a strategem it is. Yet, ironically, that which makes the enemy sinister simultaneously depicts him as a coward, who runs for cover and tries to hide:
[the terrorists] are sent back to their homes or sent to hide in countries around the world to plot evil and destruction . . . deliver to United States authorities all leaders of al-Qaeda who hide in your land (Bush, 2001d) A terrorist underworld . . . operates in remote jungles and deserts, and hides in the centers of large countries (Bush, 2002a) this enemy hides in shadows and has no regard for human life. This is an enemy who preys on innocent and unsuspecting people, then runs for cover (Bush, 2001b)

Finally, there is the orientalist motif of the uncivilized other, someone to be restrained and tamed:
the United States of America is an enemy of those who aid terrorists and of the barbaric criminals who profane a great religion (Bush, 2001e)

Literal and metaphoric references to jungle (for example) also contribute to the untamed image:
a terrorist underworld . . . operates in remote jungles and deserts (Bush, 2002a)

Even further, there are metaphors that represent the enemy as non-human: the confrontation is then no longer between two very different groups of people but is, instead, an interspecies war. Two sets of non-human metaphors may be discerned in the discourse. One set mostly involves predatory, bestial metaphors:

236

Discourse & Society 15(23) this is an enemy who preys on innocent and unsuspecting people (Bush, 2001b; Clinton, 1998a) no peaceful international order is possible if larger states can devour their smaller neighbours . . . an Iraq permitted to swallow Kuwait . . . (Bush Senior, 1990a)

The second set implies parasitism either animal or plant:

eliminate the terrorist parasites who threaten their countries and our own (Bush, 2002a) the only way to defeat terrorism as a threat to our way of life is to stop it, eliminate it, and destroy it where it grows (Bush, 2001d)

( E ) VILIFICATION
In all of these discursive strategies, the threat(s) to the NWO are built up consistently through a process of vilifying an opponent. By coining the term (e)vilication here, we mean to highlight a particular and powerful kind of vilication, one based upon the spiritual/religious dichotomy between good and evil. As President Bush said, in the days following the 11 September attacks, this will be a monumental struggle of good versus evil (2001b). As a strategy of out-casting, (e)vilication effectively banishes the other from the moral order that is fundamentally good and godly, and invokes a moral duty to destroy that evil. The threat is constituted as evil quite simply through lexical reiteration of the word, and this occurs freely across the speeches of President Bush. For instance, the enemies activities are classied as evil (evil, despicable acts of terror; those who are behind these evil acts; Bush, 2001a). Attribution also happens at the rank of the clause: in the rst and second examples below, the enemy bears the quality of evil, whereas in the third example, evil is afrmed to be actual and extant. Collectively, these clauses imply that evil is not a theological abstraction, but rather something alive and in our midst:
these terrorists do not represent peace, they represent evil and war (Bush, 2001b) our enemies . . . were as wrong as they are evil (Bush, 2002a) we have come to know truths that we will never question: evil is real, and it must be opposed (Bush, 2002a)

Evil is also linked to the enemy through action, either the goal of the enemys activities or the object of our perceptual vision. The latter makes the threat of evil immediate and real:3
They . . . plot evil and destruction (Bush, 2001d) today, our nation saw evil, the very worst of human nature (Bush, 2001a)

America, by contrast, is on the side of good, although this is seldom stated explicitly. Instead, it is construed vis--vis an alignment with God and religion. The appeal to (the Christian) religion in politics is part of an American tradition that dates to the beginning of the republic, and it has been regularly invoked ever since. It continues to be an important element in the NWO discourse, and is

Lazar and Lazar: Discourse of the New World Order

237

worked into it by means of interdiscursivity (incorporation of a religious discourse) and manifest intertexuality (the appeal to specic scriptural expressions) (see Fairclough, 1992). The appeal is elaborated especially fully in the speeches of President Bush. Connectedness with God the epitome of all that is good is expressed in a number of ways. First, God is appropriated to validate the expressed values of the NWO: morality/freedom/liberty/equality/sanctity of life. These values can then be seen as divinely sanctioned:
this world He created is of moral design. Grief and tragedy and hatred are only for a time. Goodness, remembrance, and love have no end. And the Lord of Life holds all who die, and all who mourn (Bush, 2001d) our deepest national conviction is that every life is precious, because every life is the gift of a creator who intended us to live in liberty and equality (Bush, 2002d)

Second, the link between us and God is made through the constant invocation of blessings on the nation and all those on our side. Entreating God for blessings is a characteristic closing in the presidents speeches which, as Billig (1995) has noted, may be read as inviting God to serve the national (and the international) order. Sometimes these closings are very brief and general (Good night and God bless America; Bush, 2001a); at other times, however, the invocations are more substantial and encode specic kinds of requests or prayers for specic groups of people:
on this national day of prayer and remembrance, we ask almighty God to watch over our nation and grant us patience and resolve in all that is to come (Bush, 2001b) in all that lies before us, may God grant us wisdom, and may He watch over the United States of America (Bush, 2001d) we are prepared for this journey. And our prayer tonight is that God will see us through and keep us worthy (Bush, 2002d) tonight, as our forces ght, they and their families are in our prayers. May God bless each and every one of them and the coalition forces at our side in the Gulf, and may he continue to bless our nation (Bush Senior, 1991a)

Such examples demonstrate how the God(ly) connection is made through interdiscursivity. In the following set are examples of intertextuality, in which either references or allusions to biblical scriptures are incorporated into otherwise secular political talk. Intertextuality involves a process of recontextualization (Bernstein, 1990) in which scriptural borrowings are modied to t the contemporary political situation:
Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists (Bush, 2002a) we ght to protect the innocent so that the lawless and the merciless will not inherit the Earth (Bush, 2002c) this nation has . . . raised this lamp of liberty to every captive land. . . That hope still lights our way. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness will not overcome it (Bush, 2002d)

238

Discourse & Society 15(23)

Establishing Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein as evil is the basis of (e)vilication. Yet, they have expressly invoked Allah and Islam in justifying their actions as jihad (holy war). Thus, another necessary aspect of the (e)vilication strategy has been to disassociate the enemy from such claims to righteousness. The enemys call to religion is discredited as impious, indeed as evil.
[they] profane a great religion (Bush, 2001e; Clinton, 1998a) a fringe movement that perverts the peaceful teachings of Islam (Bush, 2001e) [they] blaspheme the name of Allah. The terrorists are traitors to their own faith, trying, in effect, to hijack Islam itself (Bush, 2001d)

Their illegitimate appropriation of religion is further shown up through two strategic discursive moves. The rst of these is through the portrayal of the others religion in clearly positive terms: Islam really is good, peaceful, tolerant and progressive, whereas the enemys actions are not. This is a politically shrewd stance, too, an attempt to avoid antagonizing Muslim allies. The positive presentation of Islam also serves to depict America as gracious, respectful, and broad-minded We respect your faith; I want the world to understand . . . (see later). As noted by van Dijk (1992), such a strategy of positive self-presentation is essential in a society in which ethnocentrism or prejudice is ofcially denounced as immoral and illegal. Further, a positive portrayal of Islam demonstrates the mindfulness of not orientalizing the other in blanket terms (see the criticisms of Said in Ahmad, 1992; Porter, 1983). While certain orientalist imagery is strategically used in NWO discourse (as we have seen), it is equally clear that Americas leaders avoid framing a war of civilization between the Judeo-Christian West and a resentful and impoverished Muslim world (Huntington, 1993; Milbank, 2003):
I want you to understand; I want the world to understand that our actions [are] . . . not aimed against Islam, the faith of hundreds of millions of good, peace-loving people all around the world, including the United States (Clinton, 1998a) We respect your faith [Islam]. (Bush, 2001e) the face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. Thats not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace (Bush, 2001c) let the skeptics look to Islams own rich history with its centuries of learning, and tolerance, and progress (Bush, 2002a)

The enemys appropriation of religion is thwarted in the discourse by purportedly speaking from the point of view, and on behalf, of the Muslim community at large. This is out-casting done not merely from the position of an outsider, but also from an insiders. In this way, the enemy is alienated from the in-group of Muslim brotherhood, disowned and cast as evil from within the faith:
the terrorists practise a fringe form of Islamic extremism that has been rejected by Muslim scholars and the vast majority of Muslim clerics (Bush, 2001e) let me quote from the Koran itself. In the long run, evil in the extreme will be the end of those who do evil, for that they rejected the signs of Allah and held them up to ridicule (Bush, 2001c)

Lazar and Lazar: Discourse of the New World Order

239

Conclusion
We have examined here one of the elements constitutive of the discourse of the NWO the denition of the moral order. This is established vis--vis threat, enunciated through four micro-strategies of out-casting, each of which contributes a different layer of signication. The over-determination of meanings, we suggest, makes the others hyper-signiers of all that is bad and aberrant. Concomitantly, following the deep-seated logic of binarism, America is implicitly set up as the hyper-signier of all that is good and virtuous. In its ability to simplify very complex issues, binarism is a useful hegemonic device. First, it establishes as a political fact the existence of clear and specic threats, in this case represented by Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. The dualism, in fact, accommodates the fudging between these different kinds and degrees of threat, to constitute a largely undifferentiated enemy an easy slippage from they are different from us to they are all the same. Second, binarism allows the representation of them and us to be sketched in clear, simple and unidimensional lines, through strategic silences. In setting up the enemies as hyper-signiers of all that is bad and immoral, the complex causes of the others actions are left unsaid and unheard. By contrast, in its self-election to goodness and morality, Americas foreign-policy duplicity is strategically unmentioned. Third, the insistence of marked polarities in the NWO discourse serves American purposes in demanding simple and unequivocal allegiances from the international community. President Bush put this plainly in his 2002 State of the Union address, when he said to the world either you are with America or you are with the terrorists. No middle ground or negotiated space is allowed in this scenario. It is noteworthy, however, that the hegemonic American discourse is not without global resistance. The broadening of the war on terror to include Saddam Hussein, for example, has received mixed international reaction. The French stance is a case in point here, but also relevant are the massive outcries from protesters worldwide, anti-war petitions and demonstrations. Ironically, the broad strokes with which the Bush administration has painted its enemies as terrorists are now used by anti-war protesters in their descriptions of America and President Bush. Also damning for American hegemony is the direct challenge posed to its claim to moral legitimacy. Speaking out against the war in Iraq, the Pope, leaders of the Church of England and other religious gures have explicitly rejected this claim. Although the dissent here was prompted specically by the war in Iraq, it has wider implications for the NWO discourse, which is premised upon a supposedly universal and divinely sanctioned morality. Moreover, the 11 September attacks in themselves may be viewed as a massive act of opposition against American hegemony and duplicity. Finally, it is worth asking the question, what is new about the discourse of the NWO? The identity of the enemy has changed and, although the discourse is not couched in terms of a clash of civilizations, America seems to be gravitating,

240

Discourse & Society 15(23)

perhaps unwittingly, towards the fullment of such a perception in some quarters. What has not changed in the post-Cold War discourse are the longstanding Christian religious undertones; while the former Soviet Union was the evil empire, we suggest that the spiritual element is now more clearly and systematically enunciated as a strategy of out-casting. What is perhaps most strikingly unchanged, in spite of the disappearance of a geopolitically bipolar world, is the maintenance of a discursive bipolarity which perpetuates difference by emphasising it. An opportunity in the post-Cold War era to imagine and implement a truly new world order has, we believe, been missed.
NOTES

1. Our original intention was to present all the elements constitutive of the Discourse of the New World Order in a single article. However, as we wrote the rst element, it became clear that just this one element was so substantial that it constituted an article on its own. The rest of the elements are discussed in another article (Lazar and Lazar, in preparation). 2. The idea of the face of threat, we want to note, has been established as much through language as through the constant and repetitive visual images of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein in the media. In a US television programme, a child quite genuinely confused the two gures, when speaking about the war on terror. The girl had meant to say Osama bin Laden when she said Saddam bin Laden. Yet the mistaken naming quite accurately depicts the twin threats of the Bush administration, which whilst shifting between the two, has embraced both as threats to the moral order. Indeed, in the quest to attack Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein, the US has sought to establish a direct connection between the two, with varying degrees of success, as will be discussed. 3. In the days following the September 11 attacks, the news media replayed footages of the collapsing Twin Towers, purporting to have visually captured on lm the horned image of the Devil in the thick smoke. In other words, Bushs statement about seeing evil may not be merely metaphoric.
REFERENCES

Ahmad, A. (1992) In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures. London: Verso. Austin, J.L. (1962) How to do Things with Words. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bauman, Z. (1990) Thinking Sociologically. Oxford: Blackwell. Bernstein, B. (1990) The Structuring of Pedagogic Discourse: Class, Codes and Control, Vol. 4. London: Routledge. Billig, M. (1995) Banal Nationalism. London: Sage. Bush, George Senior (1989, 20 January) Inaugural Address. http://www.grolier.com Bush, George Senior (1990a, 12 September) Transcript of Presidents Address to Joint Session of Congress, New York Times, A 20. Bush, George Senior (1990b, 26 November) Why We Are in the Gulf , Newsweek. Bush, George Senior (1991a) Liberation of Kuwait has Begun, in M.L. Sifry and C. Cerf (eds) The Gulf War Reader: History, Documents, Opinions. New York: Random House. Bush, George Senior (1991b, 29 January) State of the Union Speech, United States Information Service (USIS).

Lazar and Lazar: Discourse of the New World Order Bush, George (2001a, 11 September) Transcript of President Bushs Remarks to the Nation, Washington: Associated Press. Bush, George (2001b, 13 September) Bushs Remarks to Cabinet and Advisers, [Transcript] The New York Times. Bush, George (2001c, 17 September) Transcript of President Bushs speech from the Islamic Center, http://www.washingtonpost.com Bush, George (2001d, 21 September) Text of George Bushs Speech, [Bushs address to a joint session of Congress and the American people] Guardian Unlimited. Bush, George (2001e, 8 October) What George W. Bush Said, [Announcement that US and British forces have begun attacking Afghanistan] http://www.news.com.au Bush, George (2002a, 29 January) Full Text: State of the Union Address, BBC News Online. Bush, George (2002b, 11 March) Bush: America Will Not Forget , http://www. CNN.com Bush, George (2002c, 11 September) Presidents Remarks at Pentagon Ceremony, http://www.CNN.com Bush, George (2002d, 11 September) President Bushs Remarks on September 11, 2002, http://www.CNN.com Bush, George (2002e, 12 September) Our Power to Change the World, Guardian Unlimited. Clinton, Bill (1998a, 26 August) Clinton Statement in Full, [on US military strikes on Afghanistan and Sudan], BBC News Online. Clinton, Bill (1998b, 16 December) Clinton Announces Iraq Strikes: Full Text, BBC News Online. Dillon, M. (1998) Criminalising Social and Political Violence Internationally, Millennium 24(3): 54367. Fairclough, N. (1992) Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Fortin, A.J. (1989) Notes on a Terrorist Text: A Critical Use of Roland Barthes Textual Analysis in the Interpretation of Political Meaning, in J. Der Derian and M. Shapiro (eds) International/Intertextual Relations: Postmodern Readings of World Politics. New York: Lexington. Foucault, M. (1967) Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. London: Tavistock. Foucault, M. (1972) The Archaeology of Knowledge. London: Tavistock. Fowler, R. (1991) Language in the News: Discourse and Ideology in the Press. London: Routledge. Hayward, M. (1994) The Making of the New World Order: The Role of the Media, in T. Ismael and J. Ismael (eds) The Gulf War and the New World Order. Gainsville: University Press of Florida. Huntington, S. (1993) The Clash of Civilisations?, Foreign Affairs, 72. Klare, M.T. (1992) Policing the Gulf And the World, in S.J. Michalak, Jr. (ed.) Competing Conceptions of American Foreign Policy. New York: HarperCollins. Lazar, A. and Lazar, M.M. (in preparation) The Discourse of the New World Order: Securing Peace, Securing Hegemony. Mazrui, A. (1994) Global Apartheid? Race and Religion in the New World Order, in T. Ismael and J. Ismael (eds) The Gulf War and the New World Order. Gainsville: University Press of Florida. Milbank, D. (2003, 6 February) Conservatives Dispute Bush Portrayal of Islam as Peaceful, Washington Post.

241

242

Discourse & Society 15(23) Pfaff, W. (1991) More Likely a New World Disorder, in M.L.Sifry and C. Cerf (eds) The Gulf War Reader: History, Documents, Opinions. New York: Random House. Pillar, P.R. (2001) Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. Porter, D. (1983) Orientalism and its Problems, in F. Barker et al. (eds) The Politics of Theory. Proceedings of the Essex Sociology of Literature Conference, University of Essex, Colchester. Said, E. (1978) Orientalism. London: Penguin. Said, E. (2001) Suicidal Ignorance, Al-Ahram Weekly 560. Simon, S. and Benjamin, D. (2000). America and the New Terrorism, Survival 42(1): 5975. Sims, S. (1999) Derrida and the End of History. Cambridge: Icon. van Dijk, T.A. (1992) Discourse and the Denial of Racism, Discourse & Society 3(1): 87118. van Dijk, T.A. (1995) Ideological Discourse Analysis, New Courant 4: 1356.

A N N I TA L A Z A R

recently completed a PhD in politics at Lancaster University. She has taught courses in international politics at this university, and continues to do so at the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Her research interests are in international security, politics of the Middle East and US foreign policy. A D D R E S S : Department of Politics and International Relations, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YL, UK. [email: lazaramj@yahoo.com.sg]

M I C H E L L E M . L A Z A R is Assistant Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at the National University of Singapore. Her research interests are in critical discourse/semiotic analysis with a focus on politics, media and gender. A D D R E S S : Department of English Language and Literature, National University of Singapore, Block AS5, 7 Arts Link, Singapore 117570. [email: ellmml@nus.edu.sg]