Culture, Crisis and America's War on Terror

Culture, Crisis and America's War on Terror
Author: Stuart Croft
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 9
Release: 2006-09-14
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 113945918X

Since the infamous events of 9/11, the fear of terrorism and the determination to strike back against it has become a topic of enormous public debate. The 'war on terror' discourse has developed not only through American politics but via other channels including the media, the church, music, novels, films and television, and therefore permeates many aspects of American life. Stuart Croft suggests that the process of this production of knowledge has created a very particular form of common sense which shapes relationships, jokes and even forms of tattoos. Understanding how a social process of crisis can be mapped out and how that process creates assumptions allows policy-making in America's war on terror to be examined from new perspectives. Using IR approaches together with insights from cultural studies, this book develops a dynamic model of crisis which seeks to understand the war on terror as a cultural phenomenon.

Cultures of the War on Terror

Cultures of the War on Terror
Author: David Holloway
Publisher:
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2008
Genre: History
ISBN:

Holloway discusses representations of 9/11 and the war on terror in Hollywood film, novels, mass media, visual art and photography, political discourse, and revisionist historical accounts of the American empire created between the 11 September attacks and the Congressional midterm elections in 2006. He suggests that the culture of the period not only prompted international crises in security, governance, and law but also points to a crisis unfolding in the institutions and processes of US republican democracy. Cultures of the War on Terror offers a cultural and ideological history of the period, showing how culture was used to debate, legitimize, qualify, contest, or repress discussion about the broader meanings of 9/11 and the war on terror.

Reign of Terror

Reign of Terror
Author: Spencer Ackerman
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 449
Release: 2022-08-09
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1984879790

A New York Times Critics’ Top Book of 2021 "An impressive combination of diligence and verve, deploying Ackerman’s deep stores of knowledge as a national security journalist to full effect. The result is a narrative of the last 20 years that is upsetting, discerning and brilliantly argued." —The New York Times "One of the most illuminating books to come out of the Trump era." —New York Magazine An examination of the profound impact that the War on Terror had in pushing American politics and society in an authoritarian direction For an entire generation, at home and abroad, the United States has waged an endless conflict known as the War on Terror. In addition to multiple ground wars, the era pioneered drone strikes and industrial-scale digital surveillance; weakened the rule of law through indefinite detentions; sanctioned torture; and manipulated the truth about it all. These conflicts have yielded neither peace nor victory, but they have transformed America. What began as the persecution of Muslims and immigrants has become a normalized feature of American politics and national security, expanding the possibilities for applying similar or worse measures against other targets at home, as the summer of 2020 showed. A politically divided and economically destabilized country turned the War on Terror into a cultural—and then a tribal—struggle. It began on the ideological frontiers of the Republican Party before expanding to conquer the GOP, often with the acquiescence of the Democratic Party. Today’s nativist resurgence walked through a door opened by the 9/11 era. And that door remains open. Reign of Terror shows how these developments created an opportunity for American authoritarianism and gave rise to Donald Trump. It shows that Barack Obama squandered an opportunity to dismantle the War on Terror after killing Osama bin Laden. By the end of his tenure, the war had metastasized into a bitter, broader cultural struggle in search of a demagogue like Trump to lead it. Reign of Terror is a pathbreaking and definitive union of journalism and intellectual history with the power to transform how America understands its national security policies and their catastrophic impact on civic life.

Never-Ending War on Terror

Never-Ending War on Terror
Author: Alex Lubin
Publisher: University of California Press
Total Pages: 152
Release: 2021-01-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520297415

An entire generation of young adults has never known an America without the War on Terror. This book contends with the pervasive effects of post-9/11 policy and myth-making in every corner of American life. Never-Ending War on Terror is organized around five keywords that have come to define the cultural and political moment: homeland, security, privacy, torture, and drone. Alex Lubin synthesizes nearly two decades of United States war-making against terrorism by asking how the War on Terror has changed American politics and society, and how the War on Terror draws on historical myths about American national and imperial identity. From the PATRIOT Act to the hit show Homeland, from Edward Snowden to Guantanamo Bay, and from 9/11 memorials to Trumpism, this succinct book connects America's political economy and international relations to our contemporary culture at every turn.

Just War Against Terror

Just War Against Terror
Author: Jean Bethke Elshtain
Publisher: Basic Books (AZ)
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2003-04-14
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780465019106

The University of Chicago political philosopher applies "just war theory" to the war on terror and concludes that pacifism is an inappropriate response to the events of September 11, 2001. 35,000 first printing.

Pakistan's Drift into Extremism

Pakistan's Drift into Extremism
Author: Hassan Abbas
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2015-03-26
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317463285

This book examines the rise of religious extremism in Pakistan, particularly since 1947, and analyzes its connections to the Pakistani army's corporate interests and U.S.-Pakistan relations. It includes profiles of leading Pakistani militant groups with details of their origins, development, and capabilities. The author begins with an historical overview of the introduction of Islam to the Indian sub-continent in 712 AD, and brings the story up to the present by describing President Musharraf's handling of the war on terror. He provides a detailed account of the political developments in Pakistan since 1947 with a focus on the influence of religious and military forces. He also discusses regional politics, Pakistan's attempt to gain nuclear power status, and U.S.-Pakistan relations, and offers predictions for Pakistan's domestic and regional prospects.

The Pen and the Sword

The Pen and the Sword
Author: Calvin F. Exoo
Publisher: SAGE
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2010
Genre: History
ISBN: 141295360X

The Pen and the Sword is the only comprehensive examination of how the media have covered the 21st century's #1 news story: terrorism and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. This is the full story-from 9/11 to the Obama doctrine-including

Disciplining Terror

Disciplining Terror
Author: Lisa Stampnitzky
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2013-04-18
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1107355184

Since 9/11 we have been told that terrorists are pathological evildoers, beyond our comprehension. Before the 1970s, however, hijackings, assassinations, and other acts we now call 'terrorism' were considered the work of rational strategic actors. Disciplining Terror examines how political violence became 'terrorism', and how this transformation ultimately led to the current 'war on terror'. Drawing upon archival research and interviews with terrorism experts, Lisa Stampnitzky traces the political and academic struggles through which experts made terrorism, and terrorism made experts. She argues that the expert discourse on terrorism operates at the boundary - itself increasingly contested - between science and politics, and between academic expertise and the state. Despite terrorism now being central to contemporary political discourse, there have been few empirical studies of terrorism experts. This book investigates how the concept of terrorism has been developed and used over recent decades.

Clinton, New Terrorism and the Origins of the War on Terror

Clinton, New Terrorism and the Origins of the War on Terror
Author: Chin-Kuei Tsui
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2016-07-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1317553527

A frequent assumption of the American-led ‘war on terror’ and its accompanying discourse originated largely with the George W. Bush Administration, and that there was a counterterrorism policy revolution in the U.S. political arena. Challenging these assumptions, through a genealogical analysis of U.S. terrorism and counterterrorism discourses, this book demonstrates a distinct continuity (and lack of change) of U.S. counterterrorism policy, from Ronald Reagan, to Bill Clinton, and through to George W. Bush. The book focuses on President Clinton’s discursive construction of ‘new terrorism’, or ‘catastrophic terrorism’, and the counterterrorism practices implemented by the Clinton Administration, while simultaneously comparing it with President Reagan’s and President George W. Bush’s approaches to counterterrorism. It shows how the war on terror can be traced to earlier periods, and that the so-called Bush revolution was largely built upon the existing framework established by President Reagan and President Clinton. Prior to the 2001 terrorist attacks, Clinton had expanded Reagan’s first ‘war on terrorism’ discourse and constructed the ‘new terrorism’ discourse, characterised by the notions of borderless threats, ‘home-grown’ terrorism, WMD-terrorism, cyberterrorism, and rogue states. Clinton’s ‘new terrorism’ discourse provided a useful framework for George W. Bush to discursively respond to the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001. Aiming to uncover the myth of President George W. Bush’s foreign policy revolution and contribute to a deeper historical understanding of the U.S.-led war on terror, it will be of great use to postgraduates and scholars of US foreign policy, security studies and terrorism studies.

Literature in Society

Literature in Society
Author: Regina Rudaitytė
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 275
Release: 2012-12-05
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 144384392X

The essays in this volume focus on the text-world dichotomy that has been a pivotal problem since Plato, implicating notions of mimesis and representation and raising a series of debatable issues. Do literary texts relate only to the fictional world and not to the real one? Do they not only describe but also perform and thus create and transform reality? Is literature a mere reflection/expression of society, a field and a tool of political manipulations, a playground to exercise ideological and social power? Herbert Grabes’ seminal essay “Literature in Society/Society and Its Literature”, which opens this volume, perfectly captures the essential functions of literature in society, whether it be Derridean belief in a revolutionary potential of literature, “the power of literature to say everything”, or Hillis Miller’s view of literature having the potential to create or reveal alternative realities; or, according to Grabes, the ability of literature “to offer to society a possibility of self-reflection by way of presenting a double of what is held to be reality”; and, last but not least, the ability of literature “to considerably contribute to the joy of life by enabling a particular kind of pleasure” – the pleasure of reading literature. The subsequent essays collected in this volume deal with complex relations between Literature and Society, approaching this issue from different angles and in various historical epochs. They are on diverse thematics and written from diverse theoretical perspectives, differing in scope and methodology.