An ethics of security

The Iraq War and the Discursive Construction of Knowledge: claims of political threat, risk, cost, and benefit, 2015

Political concepts pertaining to threat, risk, cost, and benefit are often constructed and proffered by ‘experts’ with glowing credentials and extensive investigative resources. In Gramsci’s terms, these experts are a type of “intellectual” that serves political functions. Despite the appearance of objectivity and impartiality, technical assessments within policy circles are hardly analytically neutral or value-free. In this research study we critically analyze the discourse utilized by the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) and U.S. politicians – in both public media appearances and official governmental documents – to show the methods by which appointed experts and politicians affirmed the existence of an Iraqi threat in the absence of physical evidence for weapons of mass destruction stockpiles or active weapons programs. Furthermore, the goal is to analyze how these experts and U.S. politicians created certified knowledge – that is, knowledge claims about threat, risk, cost, and benefit – that helped political leaders to justify the Coalition’s invasion of Iraq.

This is a self published draft paper discussing Rumsfeld logic and the missing Unknown Known from his original quote. Although omitted by Donald Rumsfeld this is a key clause in the set of logical options available in this logic model. Alternative strategies could have been considered if the full range of Rumsfeld logic had been utilised at the time.

2010

Before the 2003 Iraq war, the political leadership of the United States and United Kingdom had to sell the case for war to their people and the world. This was attempted through a number of key speeches that employed rhetorical justifications for the war. Two prominent justifications used during this period involved the employment of security and humanitarian narratives. The security narrative focused on claims regarding Iraq's undermining of international law, their possession of weapons of mass destruction and their threat to the world. The humanitarian narrative revolved around claims about human suffering in Iraq and the need to liberate its people. While it is widely assumed that security is the dominant casus belli in the post 9/11 world, there is much evidence to suggest that the humanitarian justifications that played a critical role in the military interventions of the 1990s were still important after 9/11. Based on an extensive content analysis of speeches by the US and UK political leadership during the year leading up to war, this research project will quantify the relative importance of each narrative and identify the main frames that were employed in their construction. It will then analyse what these results mean in the context of ongoing debates within the 'responsibility to protect (R2P)' movement over the extent of prewar humanitarian justifications for the 2003 Iraq invasion.

2004

Based on analyses of seven pre-war intelligence documents, we demonstrate that estimates of Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs were laced with ambiguities and contradictions. Yet President Bush turned this contested intelligence into a heroic rhetoric of certainty, hence dragging the U.S. into war on the basis of lies. Based on a comprehensive critique of their post-9/11 speeches and testimonies, we offer a four-step rhetorical schema for analyzing how President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell constructed these lies. We thus offer readers both a critique of Bush administration deceptions and the critical rhetorical tools necessary to recognize and decode future governmental deception. Then, focusing on the post-war revelations offered by Joseph Wilson, which in turn prompted a vicious administration attack on Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame, we analyze the labyrinthine cover-up the Bush administration has used to conceal its lies about Iraqi WMD.

2014

Smith and Nick Vaughan-Williams. Most importantly, I wish to acknowledge and thank my two supervisors: Andrews Schaap and John Heathershaw. Andrew Schaap was instrumental in supporting my original application for funding from the ESRC, and he has given more support and guidance since than I could have wished. I am ever grateful for his patient advice, good humour and dedication. John Heathershaw has also given much time and effort to the supervision of this work. John has always been a source of encouragement and supportive critique. Beyond Exeter, I have been fortunate to present and develop my work through projects and workshops. In early 2010 I was given the opportunity to join the International Collaboratory on Critical Methods in Security Studies (ICCM). This programme provided a supportive and reflective atmosphere in which to advance my research and I extend my thanks, in particular, to Claudia Aradau, Martin Coward, Eva Herschinger, Jef Huysmans, Andrew Neal and Nadine Voelkner. In 2012, I participated in the University of Reading Liberal Way of War Programme Conference; I thank Alan Cromartie for his thoughtful comments on several drafts of this research. In 2014, I was invited to participate in a conference at the European Parliament organised by the Nonviolent Radical Party Transnational and Transparty (NRPTT). The discussions and proceedings from this event helped to my conclusion to this work, and I thank Claudio Radaelli, Matteo Anglioli and Laura Harth for involving me in their continuing campaigns. Several organisation and individuals connected to the Iraq Inquiry have given me their time. Many individuals have asked to remain nameless, but their contributions in interviews and exchanges have been instrumental in guiding my research. Many others including Kate Hudson and the CND, Chris Ames, Stephen Plowden, Sir Menzies Campbell and several members of the inquiry public gallery have also given me their time. I am grateful for the generosity of them all. of the risk of harm to national security. In other words, publicity is balanced against security. The effect is to constitute a kind of blackmail in which one either acknowledges the necessity of trading-off the democratic good of publicity against the need for security, or one objects to this sacrifice and in so doing rejects security entirely. The former, those who defend security, claim the terrain of realism whilst the latter, who fight for publicity, are labelled as feeble idealists who are unwilling to acknowledge what needs to be done to Option one: the state is still a liberal democracy but practicing publicity is not what makes liberal democracy distinctive Option two: the state is not a liberal democracy security, I show how both publicity and secrecy are co-constitutive of security. Frame one: Publicity versus secrecy and security Frame two: Publicity and Secrecy co-constitute Security 'dispositifs. This framework advances the scholarly literature committed a sociological approach to securitization (Neal, 2006; McDonald, 2008; Balzacq, 2010). Fourthly, this thesis offers, for the first time, a detailed explanation of how the UK, is able to justify the endurance of official secrecy through the 'Public Interest Test'. In other words, I show how the UK justifies official secrecy in accordance with liberal values even in the face of widespread suspicion. This thesis opens up a new area of study by analysing the discursive rules that govern public inquiries and freedom of information laws. This informs the Intelligence Studies and Public Policy literature which has, more than any other scholarly literature, paid attention to the tragedy and farce of public inquiries stymied Odysseos,2010). Beyond the Academy, engaging with 'Bliar' This thesis also contributes to the public debate beyond academia about the Iraq Inquiries and the Iraq War. In order to illustrate this public debate, which also reinforces the need to reject the balance metaphor, I will now briefly describe one event from the ongoing Chilcot public inquiry. On 29 th January 2010, a committee of five privy councillors enter a purpose built room in the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in Westminster. The largest object in the room is a horseshoe shaped table swathed in a dark blue fabric and bristling with microphones, around which the committee sit. The committee are flanked on either side by inconspicuous staff, crowded around smaller tables and immersed in lever-arch folders and laptops. Facing the committee is a rectangular table with identical upholstery, 'It is worth just going to the …and I think-Blair stumbles. '-But forgive me if I mentioned a document and if you haven't …but I think you have got the options paper'. For some time, the committee have been irritated by the government's reluctance to declassify documents pertinent to their inquiry. The committee have full access to such documents, but they can't be shared with the public. The options paper is one of these classified documents but it is also, perversely, freely available. 'The March options paper is in the public domain'. Sir Roderic replies. 'You can get it on the internet'. Introduction 20 A few giggles resonate from the public gallery. The paper had been leaked on the Internet months before. Yet the Labour government now refused to declassify the document-so it could not be shared or discussed in public hearings. 'I'm not certain offhand,' Sir Roderic continues, clearly annoyed, 'whether or not it has been declassified-Sir Roderic looks searchingly toward the inquiry secretary, Margaret Aldred, who shakes her head: it's still officially a secret document. '-by the government which was elected under your leadership'. 'Right', Blair replied sheepishly. 'Maybe I will just say what it told me'. Outside of the QEII centre, crowds had gathered for Blair's hearing. Some had gathered to support the inquiry. A team of cheerleaders guided the crowd in chants, dressed in 'TOUGH QUESTIONS FOR TONY BLAIR' t-shirts. They shouted: 'Give me a W!…Give me an M!…Give me a D!…W.M.D.…No seriously, show us some!' 'If there's one thing that makes us hot, it's tougher questions, GO CHILCOT!' The cheerleaders were been hired by 38 Degrees, an online campaigning group. The night before, a 38 Degrees member visited the home of Sir Roderic Lyne to deliver a cake with an icing message, '12,150 tough questions for Tony Blair', and a petition of questions gathered by the group for the committee to ask in the hearing.

published in Satvinder Juss (ed.), Human Rights and America’s War on Terror (Routledge 2019), pp. 1-28. , 2018

Preemption was first articulated by US Secretary of State George P. Shultz during the Reagan administration when a “war on terrorism” was declared in the aftermath of the bombings of U.S. Embassy and Marines barracks in Beirut in 1983. The “Shultz doctrine” subsequently found expression in NSDD-138 that was closely modelled on Israeli counterterrorism doctrine. Following the attacks on 9/11, many of Shultz’s former colleagues in the State Department found themselves in the Pentagon where they would once more try to shape US counterterrorism policy. The counterterrorism model that they would try to shape in NSS-2002 was influenced by their experiences in the Reagan administration and the difficulties they had encountered while implementing NSDD-138. In short, the argument that is being advanced here is that the Bush doctrine that found expression in NSS-2002 is taken from the Shultz doctrine, and that the Shultz doctrine in NSDD-138 is taken from Israeli doctrine. To illustrate how the Shultz doctrine was taken from Israeli doctrine this article revisits the US intervention in the Lebanon following Israel’s 1982 invasion when the US Embassy and Marine’s barracks was bombed. Reference is made to declassified documents from the Reagan Presidential Library on the drafting of NSDD-138 and to early drafts of NSS-2002 that have been published in The Zelikow Papers at the University of Virginia. The article also makes reference to documents from the British National Archives on Israel’s raid on an Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981 when the doctrine of preemption was first articulated at the UN; The Rumsfeld Papers on the Iraq War; contemporary newspaper reports; and the report of the United Kingdom’s Iraq Inquiry. The article has been informed by discussions with senior officials who served in both the Reagan and George W. Bush administrations whom the author met in Washington.

2010

The president employed this occasion to announce a new preemptive doctrine that would guide U.S. foreign policy and ultimately serve as a rationale for the Iraq War. In choosing to deliver a commencement address at one of the nation's most venerable military academies, Bush found a perfect match for the rhetorical situation he faced and for the rhetorical situation he was trying to shape. The epideictic occasion was perfectly suited to Bush's epideictic goals, which were central in establishing a moral framework for his new foreign policy doctrine. There was an eloquence to the speech and a high-mindedness that had the potential to serve the president and the nation well. In the end, however, I maintain that this same epideictic discourse was neither enough to sustain a cogent and compelling rationale for war with Iraq nor, in the final analysis, able to confront or overcome some compelling factual evidence that would drain support for the president's monumental efforts. To advance this argument, I will (1) provide a rhetorical and political context for the speech that will aid in the interpretation and analysis of the address; (2) discuss the nature of epideictic address and appropriate a unique reading of epideictic theory to its particularized enactment in the West Point commencement address; (3) interpret and account for the rhetorical themes and strategies contained within the address; and finally, (4) try to highlight some of the significant rhetorical and political implications of presidential epideictic address under the particularized circumstances of the post-9/11 era and an ongoing but increasingly unpopular war. Approaching West Point: A Rhetorical and Political Context Just three months after the September 11, 2001, (9/11) terrorist attacks on the United States, it was clear that the president was in the process of reorienting and retooling his entire military and foreign policy to conform with a changed global environment. In remarks at the Citadel on December 11, 2001, we glimpse the evolving rationale for a new doctrine of preemption. Bush argued that the new terrorist threat posed a significant challenge to the United States and the changed circumstances demanded nothing less than major reforms "essential to victory in our war against terror." Indeed, for Bush, 9/11 shattered the national "illusion of immunity," as a "far away evil" became a present danger. September 11 had refocused the mission of U.S. foreign policy. As Bush described it, "a great cause became clear: We will fight terror, and those who sponsor it, to save our children from a future of fear." The

International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, 2015

Millennium - Journal of International Studies, 2004