5.1 The Method

Interpretative approaches have often been criticized for proceeding in an unstructured manner that impedes traceability and scientific record. Therefore, in order to structure the analysis, the qualitative method of discourse analysis uses established techniques of content analysis in defining categories and searching for particular elements in the text (Behnke et al. 2010: 351–353; cf. Trültzsch 2009: 159f). Nevertheless, discourse analysis is not a method with a fixed set of rules. Rather, it is a problem-driven approach and its application must be tailored to a particular research question and a study’s aim (Wodak/Meyer 2010). Mostly, though, the tools of discourse analysis “do not exhaust the concept of discourse theory itself” (Howarth 2005: 318). In accordance with this, and the study at hand, CDA, as presented in section 3.2, provides an appropriate model for several reasons. First, CDA is an established model in constructivist IR for analyzing language use in social interaction and for retracing the connections between text and political structure. Second, it conforms to the research design presented here as it considers both the performativity of discourse and the ability of agents to act strategically. This fits well with the Copenhagen School’s concept of securitization, which takes into account the constitutive power of language while viewing securitizers as self-conscious actors who can be held responsible for their actions. A third reason for applying CDA is that it is critical. CDA seeks to make people aware of how discursive strategies work and how they affect our lives. After all, most people are influenced by framings that establish environments of fear, as security discourses often do. Similar to the Copenhagen School, CDA challenges these framings. It discloses what is purported as truth in discourse – or likewise what is purported as inherently necessary or reasonable action – and points to other possible interpretations or alternative measures that have been excluded from debate. Since political discourses shape our social reality, CDA provides a means with which to contribute to the reactivation of critical awareness within these narratives. This also underlines the relevance of this book’s topic in critically investigating how the violation of established rules such as international human rights law was rendered possible. In saying that, it should be clear that this book takes a normative approach. The aim is to contribute towards sharpening the consciousness of discursive power (in politics) and the responsibility that comes with this due to its effects on social life. Again, this is in line with the Copenhagen School’s intentions presented above. The following briefly outlines the analytical framework that is applied in the empirical part of this book. The structure of the analysis draws on Balzacq (2011c: 35f) and Titscher et al. (2000: ch. 3).

5.2 Who Acts?

To begin with, it is essential that the actors which the analysis will focus on are specified and that this choice is explained. In line with the Copenhagen School’s concept, there are two important groups of agents in securitization processes: securitizing actors, and audiences. The first constitute the security issue whereas the latter either accept and reproduce it, or foster alternative framings. For the study at hand, the securitizing actors under scrutiny are George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, the former and the current president of the United States, respectively. The definition of ‘the relevant’ audience is more problematic as the target group proves to be diverse. Therefore, three to four groups were chosen. The following sets out the reasoning behind this selection.

• – The Presidents: The aim of analyzing the speech acts of former President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama is to investigate how they constructed a security narrative that permitted, or, respectively, required the termination of, particular emergency measures. Capitalizing on the presidents’ speeches conforms to the Copenhagen School’s approach since it means focusing on the state and its authoritative elites. However, this also means that the approach used in this book could face similar critique to that aimed at the Copenhagen School. As discussed previously, instead of preserving a narrow view of security and developing further representations of the powerful, discourse theory generally abandons the predominance of the state (Hansen 2000; Mills 2004: 140; Neumann 2008: 66). Nevertheless, there are good reasons to analyze the presidents’ speeches and proceed as described. After all, with regard to U.S. foreign policy, considerable discursive power rests with the presidents who possess the legitimacy to speak and act on behalf of the people. Their discursive power is generated by their democratically legitimated status which increases both their defining power in conceptualizing and framing issues and their ability to achieve social acceptance for their interpretations and the meanings they constitute. Consequently, they are in a position to control and dominate a discourse from the beginning. This development is enhanced by a president’s easy access to mass media and permanent media presence as a natural consequence of the office he or she holds. Intensive media coverage grants high dispersion and circulation of presidential interpretations. Therefore, if politics is largely embodied by the struggle for defining power and the implementation of what is defined as desirable or necessary, political elites in general and presidents in particular are equipped with good prerequisites (Lazar/Lazar 2004: 224; Domke et al. 2006: 292; Keller et al. 2011: 9). This is even more so in times of crisis when the president is expected to reassure the people and to develop appropriate responses. The president, therefore, is a key figure in security policy. Moreover, as Leroy Dorsey (2002: 5) has observed, the “modern presidency has shifted from a largely administrator-based to a more rhetoric-based institution.” Obviously, today the president is not only the commander-in-chief but also the “Communicator-in-Chief” (Rozell 1995: 85) and as such the “Interpreter-in-Chief” (Stuckey 1991) who constitutes national identity and shapes the perception of the political environment and its requirement for particular policies (Hart 1987: 45; Campbell/Jamieson 1990, 2008; Neustadt 1990; Stuckey 1991, 2004; Bostdorff 1994; Dorsey 2002; Zarefsky 2004a, 2004b; Coe 2007: 377).

In addition, the realm of security is exemplary of what has been discussed above: security is a field of highly exclusive discourses in which the number of authorized, legitimate speakers is significantly limited. The president’s influence on discourse in this case is magnified because it is the president who has access to expert knowledge, information about and from the secret services and strategic reasoning that might remain concealed from the public. In addition, the public, in turn, often has little means to instantly verify statements made about security/foreign policy issues (Manheim 1994: 127). Therefore, in the realm of foreign affairs and security politics, presidents have special powers to dominate a discourse, which, for example, is demonstrable from the Bush administration’s framing of 9/11 as an act of war. However, the U.S. president as commander-in-chief also has the institutional power to wage war; this of course has actual effects at the national and international level (Winkler 2006: 4f; Edwards 2009: 457). Having said that, it is clear that George W. Bush and Barack Obama are not of interest as private individuals, but as representatives and heads of a government that determines the political course. In fact, as additional readings show, the speeches of, for example, National Security Advisors or the Secretaries of the Departments of State, Defense, and Justice largely confirm the presidents’ contents and linguistic constructions. That these speeches are only rarely included in the analysis is due to operational reasons: first, additional data did not seem to be required to further substantiate the analysis; and second, the corpus had to be restricted to a manageable size. In this sense, feasibility led to a focus on the text production of the most powerful agent of the U.S. government: the president. With regard to his power to define issues, recontextualize them and thus lead to changes in meanings and social structures, the president is out on a limb. It is reasonable therefore to constrain the analysis by and large to the president’s speeches.

It should be clear by now, that the approach applied here assumes a president’s agency in terms of shaping discourse. Nevertheless, the question remains whether text production is always strategic and used to accomplish certain objectives. As has been mentioned in the chapter on securitization, the Copenhagen School holds people responsible for the way they talk. By calling politicians to account for the way they frame things, intentionality is ascribed to their actions. This position is adopted in this book although it is recognized that there are limits to intentionality. There are points of normalization in language use where we lose our awareness of particularly recognizing something in the way it is framed (van Dijk 1997b: 7–9). Hence, in analyzing discourse, there is no way of finally proving that an author is in control of every single word and that every utterance is strategically employed with regard to the aspired consequences. Nevertheless, discourse can be seen as mostly intentional. If new framings occur repetitively they obviously cannot be classified as verbal accidents. This is even truer with respect to writing, since it is less spontaneous and thus more controlled than spoken text. In the political realm, where actors are trained in rhetoric and presentation techniques, it is self-evident that language is mostly used purposefully. Language is aimed at changing opinions and achieving certain goals, although there is no guarantee that a speaker’s utterance will indeed influence the listener as intended and alter his/her attitude. Understood in this way, political language is a “calculated design” that aims to increase the chances of success in particular political struggles (Fairclough/Wodak 1997: 259; cf. Gronbeck 1998: 50; Wodak/Reisigl 2001: 386; Jackson 2005: 2; Coe 2007: 383; Edwards 2009: 458). In consequence, it should be possible to assume that George W. Bush and Barack Obama spoke deliberately and purposefully, even if most presidents do not prepare their speeches by themselves and are therefore not the sole originators of their talk (Wodak 2009: 2). Presidents, however, do know about the importance of their speeches and it is very likely that they cooperate with speechwriters or at least edit speeches and thereby authorize them. Above all, presidents can be held responsible for what they say due to the numerous repetitions of the same constructions and contents in their speeches. These iterations would certainly not occur if the presidents did not mean to say what they say. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that the presidents apply certain discursive strategies in their speeches.

• – The Audience: According to the Copenhagen School’s concept, the audience should also be considered. It is the audience that marks securitizations as intersubjective processes, and the reproduction of certain framings by the audience helps particular meanings become dominant. However, although the audience is vital in securitization, the discussion above highlighted how difficult it is to determine which audience is relevant. Besides that, different audiences are important for the research question at hand, and this introduces a complexity to the topic that can only be dealt with in a rudimentary manner in this study. Although Guantanamo-related policies are part of the ‘War on Terror’ and thus of a macrosecuritization, international audiences are not taken into account in this study. Nonetheless, even by restricting the analysis to domestic audiences, an in-depth analysis of all major groups’ reactions to the presidents’ framings is still beyond the scope of this book. This also applies to an investigation into their societal positions of power and relative impact on security discourse. Nevertheless, the analysis sets out to provide an overview of the responses to the security conceptions of President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama. Four specific societal groups were chosen for the analysis.

The first group consists of the public and the media. This group is the most comprehensive and represents the main recipient of governmental statements. However, in this regard, the media function in different ways. They are multiplicators of presidential positions as well as a voice of the people, or, at best, they are independent and critical observers and commentators. The second group is much more specific but potentially even more important for the presidents and the implementation of the presidents’ political courses: Congress. It is therefore important to investigate how the representatives and senators in the Capitol respond to a president’s security discourse, the more so, as Congress has the power and duty to keep the government in check. The third group is delicate as it is the operating apparatus itself, which is headed by the president and commander-in-chief. It comprises the government with its departments and offices as well as the military and secret services. As mentioned earlier, securitizing actors are also part of the audience and this marks the process as truly reciprocal. Although presidents put forth particular framings and interpretations, there is reaction within the apparatus towards these conceptualizations, including clear support but also rejection. Since the people within the apparatus are important for the operationalization of the president’s policies, their positions on presidential framings are also important. Finally, in the case of Bush’s security discourse – but not that of Obama – the position of the Supreme Court is also regarded. This is certainly a special yet highly influential audience as it can determine the legal scope for political action. The Supreme Court rendered critical judgments on Bush’s detention and interrogation policies after 9/11, which is why it is incorporated in this study.

5.3 What is Said and Done?

The discussion above defined the actors under analysis; this section, in contrast, turns to the kind of action that will be examined. First of all, the analysis looks at the security narratives of George W. Bush and Barack Obama and investigates their framings of identity and threat. Moreover, in line with the Copenhagen School’s concept, the policies related to securitizations that were announced and/or enacted are investigated, as well as audiences’ positions toward these proceedings. For an overview of the analytical steps involved, see Table 5.1. This triad of securitization, political action and the audiences’ role represents the link between language use and political practice as presented by the Copenhagen School.

In a first step, the study details what President Bush and President Obama said, that is, the kind of threat scenarios they constructed. With regard to the topics and arguments that made up the scenarios, coding the corpus resulted in three main categories: the American ‘self’ (see sections 6.1 and 7.1); the terrorist ‘other’ (see sections 6.2 and 7.2); and the nature of the ‘threat’ to America’s national security (see sections 6.3 and 7.3). These categories structure the discourse analysis and are examined in the context of speeches made by both presidents; they also provide for a comparison of the discursive constructions constituting the speeches. This includes an analysis of what is said, how it is said and which implications come with what is said, that is, the political actions that seem necessary or legitimate due to these constructions. The examination of these framings and of the argumentative structure of the text reveals how issues are presented as objective facts and how proposed (re-)actions were portrayed as rational. Since rhetoric potentially enhances the persuasive power of arguments, the use of presentation techniques will also be taken into account. To this end, the content is analyzed with regard to the choice of wording (including rhetoric and stylistic devices such as imagery, alliteration, and repetition), as well as text cohesion and principles of reasoning. The analysis is guided by the following questions (Fairclough 1992: ch. 3, 2003; Keller et al. 2001: 148, 155; Wodak/Reisigl 2001: 385):

• – How are the identities of ‘self’ and ‘other’ named and referred to linguistically?
• – What kind of characteristics, traits, qualities and features are attributed to ‘self’ and ‘other’? How does this position them to each other?
• – How does the conceptualization of ‘self’, ‘other’, and ‘threat’ relate to history and/or to other discourses?
• – What is stressed and reiterated? What is silently implied or concealed?
• – What kind of argumentation scheme is used by President Bush and President Obama when referring to the ‘threat’ posed to America’s national security? In what way is this based on the framing of ‘self’ and ‘other’?
• – In how far does this make relevant political action look reasonable, necessary and justified?

In carving out these features and thus the interplay of identity and threat construction, the analysis exposes the logic that informed the presidents’ operations to satisfy security interests. It thus provides plausible answers to the questions of how the violation of national and international rules became possible and in how far Bush constituted the establishment of Guantanamo and the application of ‘harsh interrogation techniques’ as a justified means of providing security to the American people. In addition, the analysis demonstrates how Obama, in contrast, argued for Guantanamo’s closure and the termination of the harsh interrogations. Through the juxtaposition of Bush’s and Obama’s conceptualization of ‘self’, ‘other’ and ‘threat’, it becomes clear in how far Obama altered the security narrative and thus enabled a transformation of political action to take place.

Table 5.1: Levels and units of the present securitization analysis.

Following the inspection of the presidents’ framing of ‘self’, ‘other’, and ‘threat’, the analysis moves on to develop an understanding of how these representations tied in with the presidents’ narratives on the rule of law (see sections 6.5 and 7.5). It sets out how President Bush tried to redefine established laws in order to raise the limit for detention and interrogation, and it illustrates how President Obama demanded a return to the rule of law. All these features shaped the scope of what was constructed as appropriate political action. Consequently, the discussion also outlines which political actions were indeed taken. In surveying this matter, the following questions are addressed:

• – What kind of detention and interrogation policies were implemented or, respectively, terminated by President Bush and President Obama?
• – How do these actions and policies relate to their framings as put forth in their security discourses?

In this sense, this book takes a ‘practical turn’ in line with the ‘linguistic turn’ (Neumann 2002). Whereas many studies fall short of examining “the operationalization of discursive categories in the activities of governments” (Milliken 2001: 150), the empirical part of this book seeks to contribute to this examination. In so doing, it demonstrates whether and, if so, how discursively created latitude was used to enact concrete political action.

As outlined earlier, however, the audience takes on a vital role in securitizations. Therefore, in a further step, the study focuses on the audiences’ stances and investigates in how far they supported the presidents’ political courses (see sections 6.6 and 7.6). As mentioned above, three to four groups of audiences are looked at, including the public and the media, Congress, the operating apparatus and, in the section on George W. Bush, the Supreme Court. In relation to the questions set out above, the guiding questions for this part of the analysis are:

• – How do the audiences react to the presidents’ framings of ‘self’, ‘other’, and ‘threat’? Are these framings accepted and reproduced, or are they contested?
• – How do audiences react to the redefinition of laws or, respectively, the demand for a return to the rule of law?
• – How is the topic of torture debated?
• – Do the audiences participate actively in security discourse, or are they passive? Do they remain silent on the subject?

This analysis illustrates in how far the audiences gave way to the political courses of the presidents. In addition, it sheds light on the question of how a particular mode of reasoning as presented in security discourse becomes dominant – or fails to do so. Since the analysis of the audiences will cover larger time spans than other sections of the analysis and includes law and verdicts passed with hindsight, it is placed at the end of the respective empirical chapters.

5.4 In Which Context Does it Take Place?

Since text is never isolated but embedded in contexts which enable and constrain it, the context needs to be considered. Although this book does not investigate contextual features in great detail, they do form part of the analysis in various ways. This begins on a micro level by examining wordings and arguments and their immediate “text-internal co[n]text” (Wodak/Reisigl 2001: 385), that is, their surrounding field of repetitions, similar utterances, intensifying attributes, implications and so forth. Moreover, the intertextual relationships of statements are also considered. These aspects of historicity and intertextuality are particularly relevant to the American founding myth and the Second World War; both presidents referred to these in their narratives. Last but not least, the speeches are viewed in the political context as effective at the time of their presentation. In practice, in the case of President George W. Bush, this was the (immediate) aftermath of 9/11, a period characterized by shock and fear. The predominant meta-narrative of the ‘War on Terror’ was constructed in the weeks and months after these attacks, and it clearly reached into Obama’s term. Although at the beginning of Obama’s first presidency, the financial and real estate crisis in the United States was the stronger topic in public, the discourse of the ‘War on Terror’ continued, and supposedly hampered Obama’s ability to close Guantanamo.

While there are obviously different levels of context, the analysis is not divided into these levels. Rather, this outline is simply meant to provide an overview of what is considered. In general, focusing on the context is important since it reduces ambiguity by limiting the spectrum of possible readings of a text. Consequently, it increases the probability that meanings and interpretations correspond and lends plausibility to the inferences that are drawn from the analysis (Fairclough/Wodak 1997: 279; Wodak/Reisigl 2001: 385).

5.5 Data Selection

With regard to the analysis of the securitizing actors George W. Bush and Barack Obama, the corpus of texts consists of public speeches and official statements delivered by them within a year-long period of their presidencies. In Bush’s case the time span begins on the day of the terror attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., on September 11, 2001. This point was chosen because it constitutes the fierce ignition of the ‘War on Terror’-narrative in the course of which a detention center for ‘enemy combatants’ was established at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay. The time span from September 11, 2001 to September 11, 2002 therefore impressively shows both how President Bush constructed the ‘other’, and how Guantanamo and the inhuman treatment of the captives held there was conceptualized as justified and necessary to ensure the security of the American people. In the case of President Obama, the time span of investigation begins shortly before his first inauguration and hence covers the whole of 2009. The dispute about the need for and justification of the detention center at Guantanamo Bay was an important topic during his presidential election campaign and remained fairly strong during his first year of his presidency.

The text selection was carried out in terms of relevancy and to ensure dispersion of the texts. Thus, the corpus consists mainly of speeches that were covered by the mass media, including inaugural addresses, addresses to the nation, state of the union speeches, radio addresses, interviews, press conferences, keynote speeches during travels abroad, and other official statements and announcements that were made, for example, at societal events. In order to extract the final sample, a few hundred texts were scanned.74 In general, data mining was undertaken in the rubrics of foreign affairs, security policy, and defense policy. However, since there is no archive that specifically provides Guantanamo-related texts, the research was also undertaken with the help of key words such as ‘Guantanamo’, ‘Cuba’, ‘terror’, ‘torture’, ‘detention’, ‘interrogation’, ‘combatant’ and ‘waterboarding’. The transcripts of speeches were used for the analysis, most of which were published on the official websites http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov and https://www.whitehouse.gov. Other main sources were http://www.presidentialrhetoric.com/speeches/bushpresidency.html as well as http://www.obamaspeeches.com, and http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu.

Although the analysis of the presidents’ narratives is based on speeches and statements that they gave within one year, the view provided of the enactment of policies and especially of audience reaction is broader. There are two main reasons for this. First, the presidents’ discourses were examined in great depth in order to closely reconstruct the kind of threat scenario and logic the presidents were trying to establish; this, however, could not be done for the other empirical parts. Thus, in contrast to the analysis of the presidents’ speeches, which draws almost solely on primary sources, the material used in the other parts includes secondary sources that focus on larger time spans. Second, reactions by the audiences, especially in terms of law-making and court verdicts were often delayed. In order to consider them, the period of investigation had to be expanded. In sum, for the investigation of Guantanamo-related policies and the role played by the audiences, the analysis is based on scientific literature that addresses public opinion on the matter, legislative processes in Congress, disputes within the apparatus about the right course, and the conduct of the courts. In addition, statements and reports in the media are used from TV channels like ABC, NBC, CNN and Fox News and from newspaper and journal articles from the Washington Post, The New York Times, Newsweek, The New Yorker, The Atlantic and others. Opinion polls conducted by Gallup or the media have also been included.

It is obvious that the role played by the audiences will need further and more detailed investigation, but this goes beyond the reach of this study. With regard to the presidents’ construction of identity and threat, however, this book affirms that the text corpus under consideration is representative of the time span that is used for the analysis. Nevertheless, as noted earlier, discourses are always under construction, and are embedded in a web of discursive relationships with no clear beginning or end. Thus, the material analyzed embodies a part of a larger whole. It is evident that discourses on security needs, terrorist threats, conceptions of ‘self’ and ‘other’, human rights and related topics have a longer history in the United States and are more intertwined with current discourses than will be covered in this book. It would always be possible to take a step backwards or in a different direction. Furthermore, even within the boundaries drawn for data selection in this study, there will always be texts that have been missed or left out. Nonetheless, according to scientific standards, research can be considered complete if new texts provide no further information. The sheer number of findings and the countless reiterations of similar identity and threat formations suggest that the core lines of argumentation have been captured. In fact, even more reiterations of the same kind exist than are listed in the empirical section, since texts are only provided with one reference even if particular wordings and phrases were repeated many times in the same text. Therefore, the sources drawn upon are deemed to show the logic on which George W. Bush, Barack Obama and their administrations acted. Consequently, this substantial material should be considered adequate for the provision of scientifically valid, reliable inferences (Holsti 1969: 142f; Milliken 1999: 234f, 2001: 144; Jørgensen/Phillips 2002: 172, 207; Blatter et al. 2007: 36; Dunn 2008: 92; Matt 2008: 585f). Nevertheless, as discussed above, by applying an interpretative approach, the validity of scientific findings is not definite since other interpretations might be possible. After all, analyzing discourse means interpreting it on the basis of knowledge that is rooted in discourse itself. There can therefore be no claim to truth. In an attempt to warrant validity, however, this study provides traceability in the usage of sources and interpretations; it accords with the premises of the chosen discourse-theoretical approach, and it develops plausible, logically coherent answers; this raises the hope that they will also be convincing to others.

5.6 Limits of Study

In view of the complex construction of reality, there are limits to this study that need mentioning. First of all, having outlined the theoretical principles of ‘radical’ constructivism in previous chapters, the question arises where to start. A world of mutual constitution provides no clear starting point, neither do discourses. In fact, to begin at one point and to look for what follows from it might appear as if the starting point were taken as given, and as if reasoning were linear and close to traditional causality (Hurd 2008: 306). This is the more so as requirements of operationalization meant that the complexity of the approach had to be reduced. As a consequence, it can only shed light on one of many intertwined parts of the construction of reality. This makes it important to emphasize once again that the world is mutually constituted by structure and agent even if the study of the presidents’ speeches might seem to give prevalence to the agentic side. The implemented policies have retroactive effects just as the (re-)actions of the audiences.

In terms of limits, it has already been acknowledged that the study falls short of an in-depth analysis of the diverse audiences that could be considered as relevant with their reproduction or rejection of the presidents’ discursive constructions. The focus instead has been placed on developing a profound exploration of how President Bush and President Obama spoke security and thereby enabled and constrained particular actions. Moreover, it is assumed that the effects of the presidents’ discourses on policy-making are far-reaching and are far more complex than can be analyzed in this book. In the case of President Bush, this was apparent, for example, in the restraints placed on the liberties of U.S. citizens and immigrants in the course of the U.S. Patriot Act; in the case of President Obama, it became noticeable in the redrawing of foreign policies towards Muslim countries. Similarly, by looking at U.S. foreign policy in terms of detention and interrogation, Guantanamo is just one of several U.S. confinement facilities that could be of interest. There are, however, good reasons to focus on Guantanamo. First, soon after its establishment Guantanamo became an object of contestation and led to international reactions in terms of discussions, protests, and, as the argument goes, terrorist recruitment; second, because of this and the fact that Guantanamo was visible and present to the public, it was more frequently referred to in security discourse than other remote detention centers, not to mention those that were kept secret. Third, in terms of detention and interrogation techniques, Guantanamo became a model that was copied by other centers such as the one in Abu Ghraib; and fourth, as is encountered at the time of writing, the detention center at Guantanamo has become a lasting issue of U.S. foreign policy. In contrast, although the level of outrage over Abu Ghraib was tremendous in 2004, this scandal now belongs to the past; Guantanamo is still operating.

Last but not least, this study does not aim to discover the true inner motives behind the presidents’ conduct nor does it elucidate whether the presidents always believed in what they purported.75 The focus is simply on what they said and in how far this seems to have had an effect.