The Appeal of Fear as a Rhetorical/Persuasive Strategy in Legitimizing the American War on Iraq

This paper discusses how the appeal of fear has been exploited by George W. Bush in his presidential speeches given between September 2002 and March 2003 to legitimize the American war on Iraq. Bush depended on deception, misleading, propaganda and false pretensions presented to his audience that contributed to the emergence and hegemony of the discourse of the Iraqi growing threat and danger. The paper examines, in particular, the discursive and linguistic means of deceptions and misleading by which the appeals of fear, represented by the growing threats and dangers, have been realized and have taken great influence to persuade audience of the necessity and obligation of the American future intervention in Iraq as the last option to stop the growing threats and dangers to America. These threats and dangers have been realized by the collocation of the Iraqi policy, alleged Iraq s possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and alleged Iraq s connection to terrorist groups who, as it is presented in Bush s speeches, would not hesitate to use them against America. Thus, in his efforts to get hegemony of the discourse of the inevitability of the American war against Iraq to stop the Iraqi threat and danger to America, Bush, through his political speech, shifts from describing Iraq s past actions, into describing the alleged present Iraq s growing threats that may or will take place in future if not preemptive war against Iraq will take place, into the necessity and obligation of the American war to stop the world of fear. In other words, and to legitimize the war against Iraq, Bush argues from is to must and will, from description concerning Iraq to prescription of policy to put the audience in a frame of mind that makes them more receptive to an immediate or future course of action