Imagined Community, Orientalism and Moral Panic Concepts

Despite the several terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania, America remained strong and united. In the speech “Address to the Nation on the Terrorist Attacks”, George W. Bush, addresses the terrorist attack of September eleventh to let the citizens know they can overcome a tragic and mournful incident by remaining unified and a powerful country. The primary audience are the citizens and the family members of the ones who had died or were involved in the incident. The secondary audience are the terrorists to let them know American’s are not scared and will stand together against them. Bush uses ethos, pathos, and figurative language to encourage the citizens to be stronger, united, and feel safe.

President Bush creates a logical appeal through precedent and an immediate course of action regarding the issues at hand to both reassure the audience and gain their support for the war. When Bush states that “for the past 136 years, [wars] have been...on foreign soil, except for one Sunday in 1941,” (Bush) he reminds the audience of the rarety and significance of war being fought within America. The minimal amount of precedent in recent American history for such an occurence makes the audience perceive fighting the terrorists logically the nest step, much like Americans supported entering World War II as a result of the attack on Pearl Harbor. George W. Bush announces “the creation of a Cabinet-level postion...the Office of Homeland Security,” (Bush) which presents an immediate and obvious way terrorism is being combatted, thus reassuring the American people. Bush strengthens his support further by creating an ethical appeal.

In a period of crisis, following the devastating aftermath of the tragic events taken place on September 11, 2001 (9/11), President George W. Bush assures the citizens of the United States that they will continue to prosper in his “9/11 Address to the Nation.” On 9/11, four planes were hijacked by terrorists, two of which were directly launched into each of the Twin Towers in New York City, killing thousands of innocent people. During his speech, he explains that the United States is the most powerful nation in the world, and that it will not crumble to the hands of the diabolic terrorists that attempt to steal their freedom. Bush’s speech is designed to motivate the people of the United States to keep a positive outlook for the future.

9/11 is known as one of the most tragic events in the history of the United States. Since World War II, America had proven its superiority and had become a progressive and powerful country. The occurrence of a terrorism group entering the country, breeching security and killing several thousands of Americans took a toll on almost everyone. Not only was the safety of the public questioned, the nation’s security legitimacy was as well. Since 9/11, many debates on American policy have been sparked. However, not only has this event had an impact on policy in America, it has had a severe impact on the public’s perception of Muslim American’s. It has been fourteen years since the attack in 2001 and Muslim Americans are still facing a terrible bias and being treated with disrespect. The American society has perceived Muslims into a single group that associates them all with terrorism (Bayraktaroglu). This is stereotype leads to a negative public perception.

September 20, 2001, was the day that President George W. Bush addressed the Nation in a Joint Session of Congress following the terror attacks upon America (also known as 9/11). His speech was given to induce a specific action while at the same time addressing the Nation and Congress of the coming war on terror. President Bush’s speech was not only meant to inform but to persuade the American people to feel comforted in the light of this tragedy and acknowledge that serious efforts are being put forth to resolve the aftershock of the attacks. He aims to persuade the Nation that war is coming and that it’s the best decision for America. He advises the Nation of the coming war, leading with, “Americans have known the casualties of war -- but not at the center of a great city on a peaceful morning.” (American Rhetoric, 2001). He further advises of the impending war with the statements, “Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated” and “How will we fight and win this war? We will direct every resource at our command -- to the disruption and to the defeat of the global terror network.” (American Rhetoric, 2001). President Bush’s purpose and message of the speech was made very clear: We are going to war, and it’s going to be long with several casualties.

Former President, Goerge W. Bush, in his 9/11 Address to the Nation, clarifies the stand of the American government concerning the terrorist attack on the nation. Bush's purpose is to create a sense of stability and introduce war against terrorism. He adopts a precise and firm tone in order to provide a sense of stability to every single person living in the United States.

Recently, President Bush gave his State of the Union Address to Congress. Throughout his speech, he makes a solid case for the further unification of America throughout these harsh times. He makes a very strong argument for the retaliation of the actions committed against America. However, when he speaks of bringing the terrorists to justice, his argument falters. He has made a hasty judgement with little proof when he first began his argument.

America’s role in the world is to advance the cause of a rising global middle class— free from oppression, free from want, free from fear. But after twelve years on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan and after a global financial crisis and long recession that our people are still struggling to recover from it is understandable that many Americans would like to disengage from the world. Understandable, but not responsible. Because our country’s security—and our children’s prosperity—demand that we be more engaged with the world around us, not less. We do this primarily by making our nation more prosperous and secure here at home. And we do this by exercising our economic, diplomatic, military, and healing power around the world, in ways

According to Steven Salaita, the author of Anit-Arab Racism in the USA, “Anti-Arab racism has existed in the United States since the arrival of the first Arab in North America, but since 9/11 anti-Arab racism is, to use a cliché, America’s elephant in the living room—an enormous elephant, at that” (Salaita 7). Therefore, it is more accurate to think of 9/11 not so much as the beginning of anti-Arab racism, but rather the turning point of Arab and Muslim American engagements with race and racialization. With this said, we will focus briefly on outlining the events the led to and anti-Arab American perception before 9/11 and primarily on the American perception of people from Middle Eastern decent after 9/11.

We last met in an hour of shock and suffering. In four short months, our nation has comforted the victims, began to rebuild New York and the Pentagon, rallied a great coalition, captured, arrest, and rid the world of thousands of terrorists, destroyed Afghanistan’s terrorists training camps, saved a people from starvation, and freed a country from brutal oppression (applause).

Said, however, the academic Western conscience was granted a novel opportunity to gain insight into the area of postcolonial phenomenon and theory, and thus, intimate details regarding “the other.”30 As a result, I find that the motivations of “othering” are certainly not of a purely logical nature, but rather influenced by powerful emotions and psychological reactions. Through his book Or i en t a li sm (1978), as well as later texts, Said describes the ways in which political, cultural and social realities couple with elaborate imperial and colonial fantasies. Imperialism as an institution is associated with the operations, theory and general persuasion of a national force, generating complex power structures.31The resulting colonialism, by means of invasion and conquest, effectively realizes the agenda of imperialism, exercising dominating power over foreign territories.32Said further describes the concept of Orientalism, portraying a binary opposition, consisting of powerful Western forces33which dominate weaker Eastern counterparts. “[N]either the term Orient nor the concept of the W est has any ontological stability;” S aid concludes, “each is made up of human effort, partly affirmation, partly identification of the Other.”34 This situation was the result of quest, undertaken with the intention of generating a faulty representation of the so-called “Orient”, in order to enable

According to the editors of Foreign Affairs, Huntington’s article generated more response over a three year period than any other article they had published since the 1940s. Given the interest in, as well as the controversy over and misrepresentation of his article, Huntington decided that the prudent thing to do would be to expand it into a book-length treatment in which he would explore more deeply and document more thoroughly the thesis he propounded in his article. So the outcome was a 1996 book titled The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order.4 In this work conceived as “an interpretation of the evolution of global politics after the Cold War,” Huntington aspires, as he says, “to present a framework, a paradigm, for viewing global politics that will be meaningful to scholars and useful to policymakers.”5 Its central theme is virtually identical to that of his article, namely “that culture and cultural identities, which at Huntington is the Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professor at Harvard University where he is also the director of the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies and the chairman of the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. He was the director of security planning for the National Security Council in the Carter administration, the founder and co-editor of the journal Foreign Policy, and the president of the American Political Science Association.

The way in which Said and Huntington define culture within their texts Orientalism and The Clash of Civilisation, divulges each author’s position within and perception of both the Arab and Western Worlds. The difference in each author’s ideology and contexts - Said (a professor in comparative lit with a Palestinian background, writing in 1978, a time of conflict and devastation in the middle east) and Huntington, (an American political scientist writing at a time in which his country is at a height of its power), causes what is described by Said as “The clash of definitions” (SD). Said views culture as a culmination and product of ideologies, morals and beliefs propagated by members of society. Huntington views culture as more definite, established and finite. Said defines a specific culture in relation to others whist Huntington believes each culture is its own separate entity. Through the exploration of these contrasting views it can be interpreted that a key difference between each definition is that Said defines culture as more broad and capable of being influenced whilst Huntington views it only as a powerful influencer. This may also reflect their positions as either from the West or the Orient.

Said, then, could be considered the 'father' of post colonialism. His work, including 'Orientalism', focused on exploring and questioning the artificial boundaries, or the stereotypical boundaries, that have been drawn between the East and West, specifically as they relate to the Middle East. In doing this, Said focused specifically on our stereotypes of Middle- Easterners; however, these same ideas can be extended to include how we view all 'others.' This is the 'us'-'other' mentality that many colonizers take with them into a new country. Such simple generalizations lead to misconceptions and miscommunications, which are often the basis of post-colonial

the ‘West’ (Said, 1978:103). According to Said, the Orient is the “cultural contestant, and one of its deepest and most recurring images of the Other” (1978:1). This essentialist distinction allows the ‘Orient’ to be seen as a mystical space which is always presented as ‘other’ in contrast to the normalised ‘West’. Orientalism can subsequently be seen as a system of cultural misrepresentation which is created to consolidate “European-Atlantic power over the Orient” (Said, 1978:6). The methods of binary logic imposed via orientalist practices is systematic to the logics of