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Thus, the Bush administration has not attempted to reconfigure foreign policy
rhetoric in terms that manifest public heroism and sacrifice. Subsequent research might
reveal whether any such presidential motives for war were characteristic of Cold War
rhetoric in the service of the doctrine of containment. Notwithstanding the “bear any
burden” militancy of Cold War presidents like Harry Truman or John F. Kennedy, or the
invocation of American exceptionalism and the “crusading” character of Cold War
rhetoric, presidential motives to contain the Soviet adversary may likewise have
performed the victimage ritual without calls for the public itself to sacrifice (as I would
assert Ivie’s work demonstrates). The Churchillian sentiments with which this paper
began, and the contexts in which they may be expressed, are perhaps few indeed.