4 (52)
Though Mr. Bush never used the phrase today, the movement he endorsed is known within
the defense establishment as the “revolution in military affairs.†It takes many forms, but fo-
cuses on the development of new weapons, often designed to attack not only enemy
states, but small groups of terrorists who, like Osama bin Laden, can pose a major threat to
the United States and its allies. (Sanger 2001)
The idea of the revolution in military affairs (RMA) is more like a technological utopian dream in
the sense that it implies that technological visions such as “cyberwarriors†or technological won-
ders such as skyscrapers can overcome social problems. As we know, the public experienced
widespread despair with the attack on the Twin Towers in New York. Although the US Armed
Forces focus on fulfilling security tasks abroad, a considerable amount of military resources and
experience is applied to the American society itself. The US Army has, for example, tested spe-
cial cameras and sensors mounted on blimps to monitor suspicious activity.
The tests are designed to determine how effective the electro-optical and infrared cameras
are at detecting potentially threatening movements on the ground when attached to a blimp
yawing in the heat currents as it floats along 1,000 feet in the air at 30 knots. The equip-
ment already is used in Iraq and Afghanistan to identify enemy troop movement, but in
combat zones it is attached to a static inflatable device that looks like a giant, blimp-shaped
balloon. (Morello 2004, B01)
To understand American policies, David Campbell encourages us to look at national security
policy practices in pivotal historical moments such as the founding of the United States (Camp-
bell 1998, 91-92). My intention in this study is to briefly examine the moments that created nar-
ratives of the United States of America and from which contemporary presidential articulations
can be drawn in order to understand President Bush’s narratives. I will also deconstruct the
President’s narrative of ‘different kind of war’ conveyed to the military audience. For deconstruc-
tion purposes I will use two political philosophers, Jean-Francois Lyotard and Paul Virilio, and
their theories of narrative and technology. My intention is also to apply some observations about
the American Revolution and exceptionalism to Bush’s narratives of national security and infor-
mation technology to find out the origins of Bush’s stories. Therefore this paper is an effort to
understand President George W. Bush’s narratives of national security by viewing them through
the reality of American values and identity.
This paper focuses on the second Iraq war as part of the “war on terror,†and claims that there
are similarities with the American Revolution, which ended the British rule, and the second Iraq
war. US actions actually ended Saddam Hussein’s rule, and tried to create a modern Iraq. Both
of these “revolutionary†eras have been both exhilarating and disturbing, and they have brought
about progress for some and dislocation for others. Therefore, to understand Bush’s narrative, I
try to reveal a link between his stories and ‘different kind of war,’ and the role of ‘precision war-
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Convention