September 11 and the rise of political fundamentalism in the Bush administration: domestic legitimatization versus international estrangement?

Abstract

This article explores the tension between the role of religious language as a domestic legitimising device for the Bush administration and its adverse impact on Washington's foreign policy image. It argues that President Bush's political fundamentalism after 9/11 has become a major obstacle to effectively addressing the challenge of international terrorism. It examines the interface between religion and the traditional idea of US exceptionalism, considers the political rise of the Christian right in American politics since the 1970s, shows how 9/11 served as a transformative event in the emergence of political fundamentalism in the White House and explores the impact of the construction of President Bush's ‘war on terror’ policies on the domestic and international environments. The conclusion acknowledges a substantial gulf between the domestic and international responses to President Bush's brand of political fundamentalism, but concedes that these differences have been narrowing over time.

Keywords:

• 9/11
• Religion
• Political Fundamentalism
• Secularism
• US Foreign policy

Introduction

Americans are a free people, who know that freedom is the right of every person and the future of every nation. The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to humanity.1

Although it may sound like the pronouncement of a Puritan idealist at the birth of the American republic in the eighteenth century, the words above were spoken by President George W. Bush just before the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Such language was symptomatic of a broader trend – the increasing use of religious imagery by the Bush administration in its political pronouncements. After the trauma of 9/11, the Bush administration constructed a distinctive form of rhetoric to articulate its policies in the ‘new war on terror’. The language was grounded in a conservative religious outlook, characterized by absolutism, a divine hand in history and a sense of American manifest destiny, but also took on a clear political expression and application. David Domke thus coined the term ‘political fundamentalism’ to describe the new fusion of evangelicalism and foreign policy activism that characterized the Bush administration after 9/11.2

This article explores the tension between the role of religious language as a domestic legitimizing device for the Bush administration and its adverse impact on Washington's foreign policy image. While the President quoted Psalm 23 on the evening of September 11 (‘Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me’),3 he also announced a ‘crusade’ against evil five days later.4 To be sure, the political fundamentalism of the Bush administration did provide many Americans with a clear moral compass at a time of great uncertainty in the nation's history. But it also sharply constrained reasoned debate in the US and played a big part in shaping a post-9/11 climate that, in turn, permitted the invasion and occupation of Iraq – a development that has had a disastrous impact on America's global standing. In projecting American interests after 9/11, the Bush administration emphasized binary conceptions of reality, in starkly black-and-white terms, which drew boundaries between insiders and outsiders.5

We will argue that President Bush's political fundamentalism after 9/11 has become a major obstacle to effectively addressing the challenge of international terrorism. The article proceeds in five stages. The first section examines the interface between religion and the traditional idea of US exceptionalism. The second section considers the political rise of the Christian right in American politics since the 1970s. The third part shows how 9/11 served as a transformative event in the emergence of political fundamentalism in the White House. The fourth section explores the impact of the construction of President Bush's ‘war on terror’ policies on the domestic and international environments. Finally, while the conclusion acknowledges a substantial gulf between the domestic and international responses to President Bush's brand of political fundamentalism, it contends that these differences have been narrowing over time.

Religion and US exceptionalism

The notion of ‘US exceptionalism’ refers to an informal framework that organizes American society and America's place in the world. It endows Americans with a pervasive sense of faith in the uniqueness, immutability and superiority of the country's founding liberal principles, and also the conviction that the US has a special destiny among nations. The founders of America saw the country as a new form of political community, dedicated to the Enlightenment principles of the rule of law, private property, representative government, freedom of speech and religion, and commercial liberty. According to Siobhan McEvoy-Levy, American exceptionalism does not have the coherence of an ideology nor has it been codified as a means towards some definable political end, but it ‘operates as a sort of filter’6 through which ideas on domestic and foreign policy are passed.

America's religious tradition has been a key influence on the country's sense of exceptionalism. The country was founded on a basis that was Christian, largely Protestant and with strong Puritan and Calvinist beliefs. It should be stressed that America's religious tradition is one of voluntary association. America was the first country ‘to found itself without an official cult, without an official protector God’.7 The First Amendment of the US Constitution not only separates church and state; it guarantees the free exercise of religion. According to Garry Wills, ‘the separation of church and state did two things. It unleashed evangelical feelings and it tempered them. It tempered them with reason and rationality.’8 Today, America is one of the most religious countries in the Christian world. Nearly two centuries after Alexis de Tocqueville declared that ‘there is no country in the world where the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men’ the observation still holds.9 According to a 2007 Newsweek poll, 91% of American adults say they believe in God.10 Christians far outnumber members of any other faith in the country, with 82% of the poll's respondents identifying themselves as such. All this is in stark contrast to the recent experience of religion in Europe. According to the 1990–3 World Values Survey, the percentage of Americans who said that ‘religion is very important’ (53%) was one the world's highest and compared with 16% in Britain and 14% in France.11

The historical association between religion, predominantly Protestant sectarianism, and political freedom in America has given US exceptionalism a certain moral imperative. In the view of Seymore Lipsett, ‘Americans are utopian moralists who press hard to institutionalise virtue, to destroy evil people, and to eliminate wicked institutions and practices. A majority even told pollsters that God is the moral guiding force in American democracy. They tend to view social and political dramas as morality plays.’12 A pronounced tendency toward moral absolutism has thus underpinned the widely held belief that America is a chosen nation, a sort of Protestant Jerusalem. The notion of manifest destiny is deeply ingrained in American exceptionalism, and reflects the idea that the settlement of the American continent was part of a predestined mission, which was guided by providence. Clearly, the notion of American exceptionalism goes well beyond uniqueness – a distinction to which many nations could lay claim. As Daniel Bell has noted, ‘the idea of exceptionalism … assumes not only that the United States has been unlike other nations, but that it is exceptional in the sense of being exemplary’.13 That is, the US thinks of itself as a special nation, a ‘city on a hill’, a country blessed by God's will and one with a moral and religious mission in the world. Celebrating the anniversary of the Constitution in 1987, President Ronald Reagan noted in this regard, ‘The guiding hand of providence did not create this new nation of America for ourselves alone, but for a higher cause: the preservation and extension of the sacred fire of human liberty. This is America's solemn duty.’14

A consciousness of being exceptional has also had a significant impact on the evolution of US foreign policy. On the one hand, exceptionalism was used, particularly in the period up to 1941, as a justification for avoiding American involvement in the entangling alliances and quarrels of the so-called ‘old world’.15 This ‘go it alone’ or isolationist stance assumed that the US remained a political model for emulation, but insisted that the US must limit its global responsibilities to safeguard its internal and external freedoms. For instance, the US Senate declined to support US membership of the League of Nations organization in 1919.

On the other hand, a sense of exceptionalism inspired the US, especially with the attainment of superpower status after 1945, to embark on a quest to improve the world. By sponsoring and leading multilateral institutions, the stated aim of the US was to transform an anarchic, conflict-prone world into an open, international community under the rule of law, in which countries could maximize their common security, economic and political interests.16 US support was critical to the creation of the United Nations, and without US engagement in post-war Europe through the Marshall Plan and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) it is difficult to conceive of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) or the European Union.17

To be sure, American exceptionalism has not been the only factor shaping the course and conduct of US foreign policy. During the Cold War years, hard-headed realism, based on the overwhelming US desire to avoid a disastrous nuclear war with the USSR, regularly kept exceptionalist impulses at bay. Such pragmatism manifested itself during the 1956 Hungarian uprising, the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, the Nixon–Kissinger policy of détente with Moscow in the early 1970s and President Reagan's willingness to sign the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) agreement with Mr Gorbachev's Soviet government. Moreover, in the 1960s and 1970s, American exceptionalism was weakened by events like Vietnam, Watergate, civil disturbances, the oil shock and the Iranian hostage crisis.

The growth of the Christian right in America

If religion has strongly contributed to the national conviction that America has a unique moral status and role to play in world affairs, it should be noted that American religion itself has shifted increasingly towards a socially conservative paradigm. Tumultuous events in the 1960s – mass protests against the Vietnam War, racial de-segregation in the southern states, the sexual revolution and the rise of feminism – combined to challenge traditional American values founded on Christian principles.18 Alarmed by the emergence of a liberal counterculture, a number of conservative groups actively mobilized themselves under the umbrella of the Christian right to resist this trend.

The new Christian right was spearheaded by the Southern Baptist Convention, consisting of some 16 million members. In 1972, the Convention endorsed ‘biblical inerrancy’ or the belief that the Bible is the word of God and thus should be taken literally.19 Subsequently, the Southern Baptist Convention confirmed its opposition to abortion and homosexuality, and stated that women should submit to the will of their husbands.20 At the same time, the congregations of conservative churches were growing strongly. The Southern Baptist Convention grew by 16% and the Assemblies of God experienced a 70% growth rate. In contrast, more liberal churches such as the United Presbyterian Church and the Episcopal Church saw a decline in numbers of 21% and 15%, respectively.21 By the 1980s, in terms of congregation size, evangelical churches represented the vast majority of the 25 largest churches in America.22

The rise of the Christian right had a political impact. In 1964, Republican candidate Barry Goldwater failed to win the White House, but began the process of realigning his party's fiscal and social policy to appeal to a growing conservative Christian constituency.23 In the 1970s, Christian conservatives became active in local politics. Amongst other things, they opposed a gay rights referendum in Florida, campaigned against public school textbooks in Virginia and succeeded in rebuffing the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in 1972. In many ways, the defeat of the ERA provided a platform for a ‘conservative countermovement to feminism in particular and liberalism in general’ to operate under a ‘pro-family’ banner.24

Nevertheless, America's first evangelical Christian president, Jimmy Carter – who captured 51% of the evangelical vote in the 1976 presidential election – proved too liberal for many on the Christian right. But the Republican presidential candidate Ronald Reagan took full advantage of this political unease in 1980. He won a landslide election victory by adopting a hardline anti-Soviet stance, pledging to get ‘government off the backs of the American people’ and shrewdly tapping into the country's sense of manifest destiny. For many on the Christian right, the Reagan presidency seemed to epitomize the resurgence of America's traditional values.

The Christian right was less enthusiastic about George H. W Bush as the Republican nominee in the 1988 presidential contest. But with the help of his ‘born-again’ Christian son, George W. Bush, Bush senior won 81% of the evangelical Christian vote and saw off the challenge for the White House from Democrat Mike Dukakis.25 However, as president, Bush senior did not hide his skepticism of what he called ‘the vision thing’, a factor that alienated many Christian conservatives, and his subsequent defeat at the hands of Democrat Bill Clinton in 1992 set the stage for major changes within the Republican Party during the 1990s. Lingering frustration with the centrist orientation of the Bush senior presidency and loathing for the perceived liberal immorality of the Clinton White House facilitated the emergence of a highly influential group known as the Project for the New American Century (PNAC). Many of the key figures in this neo-conservative group went on to become leading figures in the two Bush administrations between 2001 and 2008. They included Vice-President Dick Cheney, former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and former under-secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz.

The PNAC drew heavily on the ideas contained in a Defense Planning Guidance (DPG) document that outlined the US's political and military mission in a post-Cold-War world. The document was leaked to the New York Times in early March 1992. The DPG stated that the ‘first objective’ of US defense strategy was ‘to prevent the re-emergence of a new [superpower] rival’. Fulfilling this goal required that the US ‘prevent any hostile power from dominating a region’ of strategic significance.26 Another new theme was the use of pre-emptive military force against possible adversaries. As a result, the PNAC advocated the active pursuit of US global primacy, and condemned President Clinton's policy of containment towards ‘rogue states’ like Iraq.

From the mid-1990s, the PNAC called for the overthrow of Saddam's regime. In January 1998, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld, along with others associated with the PNAC, wrote President Clinton a letter saying that if Saddam acquired weapons of mass destruction he would pose a threat to American troops in the region, to the US's strategic ally, Israel, to the moderate Arab states and to the supply of oil.27 What was striking about the PNAC stance was the core assumption that the security interests of the US and Israel in the Middle East were identical, a position that reflected the close ties of virtually all neo-conservatives and prominent Christian evangelicals, including Gary Bauer, Jerry Falwell, Ralph Reed and Pat Robertson, with the pro-Israel lobby in the US. Many such supporters believe Israel's rebirth is the fulfillment of biblical prophecy and back its policy towards the occupied territories. Failure to do so, they believe, would be contrary to God's will.28

The Bush administration, 9/11 and the rise of political fundamentalism

When George W. Bush became president in January 2001, there was a clear strengthening in the direction of policies promoted by the PNAC group and the Christian right. The new Bush administration rejected the notion of ‘nation-building’, embraced the traditional view that security was fundamentally determined by the military means of sovereign states and sought to promote ‘a distinctly American internationalism’ in the world. Convinced that President Reagan had successfully used power and ideas to win the Cold War in the late 1980s, Bush's PNAC supporters argued that America had a unique historic responsibility in the post-Cold-War era to maintain unrivalled power and spread freedom and democracy.

Prior to 9/11, the Bush administration renounced the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, unsigned the Rome Treaty creating an International Criminal Court, withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and rejected the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. These moves, in the words of one conservative commentator, Charles Krauthammer, confirmed that the Bush administration only engaged in multilateral endeavors ‘when there is no alternative’.29

Meanwhile, on the domestic front, the new Bush administration seemed to immediately challenge the traditional line of separation between church and state in American politics. President Bush became the first president to declare that his favorite political philosopher was Jesus Christ.30 No other president had said that. Moreover, many of the political appointments in the first Bush administration reflected the new emphasis on faith. John Ashcroft, attorney general during Bush's first term, seemed to have few reservations about mixing his fundamentalist Christian views and running the Justice Department, which by definition deals with issues such as abortion, the death penalty, civil rights and the selection of judges;31 Rod Paige, secretary of education in both Bush administrations, openly expressed his preference for children to attend Christian schools ahead of public schools;32 and other officials with conservative Christian links included Commerce Secretary Don Evans, who had attended Bible study lessons with George W. Bush in Midland, Texas, and Karen Hughes, a close and long-time political adviser to the President.33 Finally, the Bush administration launched a number of policy initiatives to expand the role of religion in government. These included controversial measures such as making federal funding available for certain faith-based welfare groups and spending millions of taxpayer dollars on abstinence-only education in the field of reproductive health policy. It was in this context that the faith-oriented Bush administration was severely shaken by the suicidal terrorist attacks of September 11. In the space of one deadly day, America experienced what could be called a bonfire of the certainties. ‘All of this was brought upon us in a single day – and night fell on a different world,’ as President Bush put it.34

The most militarily capable nation in the world was powerless to prevent attacks on its soil against the very symbols of US power and prestige by a transnational terrorist group, al-Qaeda. While the loss of 3000 civilians was not huge by the brutal standards of the ‘new wars’ of the post-Cold-War era, it was a stunning blow for the world's sole superpower. For more than 50 years, American governments had assumed that no enemy would attack the country because of fear of an overwhelming retaliatory strike. September 11 abruptly ended that sense of security within American society. Some commentators, like Stephen Walt, have called it ‘the most rapid and dramatic change in the history of U.S. foreign policy’.35 It was almost as if ‘language itself appeared to collapse along with the Twin Towers’, as Richard Jackson put it;36 other observers spoke of a ‘void of meaning’.37

For many Americans, the most frightening aspect of 9/11 was its lack of clear definition. The amorphous and shadowy nature of the new terrorist threat meant it could potentially strike anywhere without warning. In the aftermath of 9/11, there was a greater sense of vulnerability within the US than at any time since the beginning of the Cold War. Life as normal had been interrupted by a new form of insecurity, and from now on it was not only the United States but the whole ‘civilized world’ that was vulnerable and might be attacked by terrorists. In the words of Colin Powell, terrorism represents ‘[a] threat to the very essence of what you do’,38 while the President adjures ‘[a] threat to our way of life’ and a ‘threat to the peace of the world’.39 A CBS News survey one year after the attacks revealed that 50% of those interviewed felt uneasy or threatened from terrorist attacks, 62% thought about the attacks every week and 90% agreed that ‘Americans will always have to live with the risk of terrorism’.40 The unprecedented level of insecurity and uncertainty immediately after 9/11 had the potential to generate a major crisis of political confidence in the Bush administration.

After all, the Bush administration had presided over what was the greatest failure of US intelligence since Pearl Harbor. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 involved an astonishing level of planning and coordination. Yet the Bush administration believed prior to September 11 that it had more pressing problems on its foreign policy agenda than international terrorism, despite repeated warnings about the al-Qaeda threat from officials like Richard A. Clarke and John O'Neill. These problems included perceived mischief-making from Russia; great power rivalry with China; and the need to counter the perceived threat of ballistic missile attacks from ‘rogue states’ through the establishment of a National Missile Defence (NMD). The economic effects of this high-level political failure were also apparent to most Americans. September 11 damaged a key part of the US financial structure, and the New York Stock Exchange itself was closed for four days. The effects of the terrorist attacks also spread across the airline and aircraft industries to have an impact on the whole economy. It was only in 2005 that the airline industry returned to pre-9/11 levels.

The initial response of the Bush administration to the events of 9/11 had a dual character. On the one hand, the Bush leadership moved rapidly to intertwine ‘conservative religious faith, politics and strategic communication’41 and thus moved toward a form of political fundamentalism that ‘offered familiarity, comfort, and a palatable moral vision’ to a shell-shocked and troubled public. Declaring an all-out ‘war’ on what was called ‘global terrorism’, President Bush characterized the conflict as a long struggle between ‘good and evil’ and said, in a speech that was delivered from the pulpit of the National Cathedral, that the US now had a responsibility ‘to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil’.42 The juxtaposition of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ symbolized a major theme in Bush's addresses to the nation in the first year after the terrorist attacks. This was evident in his speech to Congress on 20 September 2001 (‘Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them’),43 his State of the Union address in January 2002 (‘I know we can overcome evil with a greater good’)44 and his speech at West Point in June 2002 (‘We are in a conflict between good and evil, and America will call evil by its name’).45 So by declaring ‘war’ against terrorism, Bush created the political scope for the further erosion of the wall of separation between church and state in America. Fundamentalisms, it has been noted, often arise or arose in times of crisis, actual or perceived; and wartime, as Clausewitz acknowledged, provides a definition of a crisis where fanaticism can grow.

In the aftermath of September 11, the Bush administration sought to ratchet up the image of American exceptionalism. President Bush merged a Christian worldview with American political concepts, a new political fundamentalism, that emphasized the country's moral superiority over its terrorist adversaries. In a revealing interview given to the Washington Post in late 2001, President Bush claimed it was American values that came under attack on 9/11 – freedom and liberty – but argued that such values were not purely American. ‘[T]hese are God-given values. These aren't United States-created values.’46 Apparently, Mr Bush was saying that to spread American values in a troubled world was to be on the side of God and to resist them was to oppose God. President Bush promised ‘to whip’ terrorism and confidently predicted the US would ‘lead the world to victory’ in the new war on terror.47 He also said the new war against terrorism ‘is the calling of the USA, the most free nation in the world’.48

On the other hand, the Bush administration did seem to briefly distance itself from the unilateralism that it was pursuing before the terrorist attacks. It quickly secured a wide measure of international support for a ‘global assault against terrorism’. A UN Security resolution, 1368, was unanimously passed just 24 hours after the attacks in New York, Washington, DC and Pennsylvania. Moreover, the Bush administration worked energetically to forge a global coalition against terrorism. President Bush stressed the US-led ‘war on terror’ was not a war against Muslims or their religion and endorsed the idea of a Palestinian state, but argued most members of the ‘civilized world’ understood ‘that if terror goes unpunished, their own cities, their own citizens may be next’.49

Indeed, multilateral diplomacy played an important role in ensuring the US's military defeat of the Taliban regime and destroying much of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda infrastructure in Afghanistan. China encouraged its old ally, Pakistan, a neighbor of Afghanistan, to respond positively to Washington and move away from its previously close ties with the Taliban regime. Thereafter, Pakistan played a key role in facilitating the US offensive against the Taliban. Furthermore, Russia was a source of intelligence on Afghanistan for the US and an important link with the Northern Alliance anti-Taliban opposition group who did a lot of the fighting on the ground. The support of President Vladimir Putin also helped the Bush administration to secure access to vital base and air support facilities in Uzbekistan for the Afghan campaign.

But the Bush administration's encounter with multilateralism was soon undermined by the rising momentum of political fundamentalism in Washington. Within days of the September 11 attacks, Wolfowitz and I. Lewis Libby, the Vice-President's Chief of Staff and National Security Adviser, had begun calling for unilateral military action against Iraq, on the grounds that Osama bin Laden's transnational al-Qaeda network could not have pulled off the attacks without the assistance of Saddam Hussein's state apparatus.50 However, President Bush did not back such calls until regime change was achieved in Afghanistan in late 2001.

In his State of the Union address in January 2002, Mr Bush invoked theological terms to describe Iraq, Iran and North Korea as an ‘axis of evil’, and warned that he would ‘not wait on events’ to prevent them from using weapons of mass destruction against the United States.51 But many of America's allies doubted the wisdom of alienating Iran from the West, and also questioned the alleged involvement of Saddam Hussein's regime in international terrorism. Moreover, just four months after the Bush administration declared itself keen to build alliances and collaborate closely with its friends in the war on terror, the speech did not even mention America's allies.

To some extent, the consolidation of political fundamentalism in the US was linked to the revival of the ‘Clash of Civilizations’ theory. For many Christian conservatives, the Clash theory provided the new template for US foreign policy. A number of prominent Christian right leaders used the extremist beliefs of the 9/11 terrorists to attack Islam in general. Pat Robertson maintained that Muslims ‘were worse than Nazis’,52 while Jerry Falwell's characterization of the prophet Mohammed as a ‘terrorist’ provoked a riot in Sholapurin that killed nine people and injured 100.53 Meanwhile, Franklin Graham, the man President Bush chose to swear him in at his inauguration in January 2001, denounced Islam as ‘a very evil and wicked religion’.54 At the same time, Reverend Jerry Vines, a past president of the Southern Baptist Convention – a conservative Christian movement with strong ties to the Bush administration – denounced the prophet Mohammed as ‘a demon obsessed paedophile’.55 Further, many Christian Zionists believed that 9/11 confirmed the essential correctness of the view that the biggest threat to the US came from the forces of radical Islam.

Such rhetoric could not help but shape the political climate in which White House policy was framed during the ‘war on terror’. The likes of Robertson, Falwell and Vines were seen as influential figures in the conservative Christian movement, a key constituency of support for the Bush administration; especially when President Bush himself had friendly relations with a number of these religious leaders. On occasions, President Bush has publicly used terms favored by Christian conservatives, like ‘Islamofascism’, to characterize terrorist threats.56 His administration has also shown itself to be willing to listen to the policy concerns of the Christian right on key strategic issues. For example, in 2004, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, concerned that the Bush administration's policy towards the Palestinians was too sympathetic, encouraged their supporters to send 500,000 emails to the White House.57 Within days, there was a change of policy as the White House moved to support Israel's unilateral disengagement plan in Gaza despite the fact it challenged the Road Map for Peace initiative.

A further indication that Mr Bush's strain of political fundamentalism was in ascendancy came during his commencement address at West Point in June 2002. ‘We face a threat with no precedent,’ he told assembled graduates, going on to describe the convergence of highly destructive modern technology with shadowy terrorist groups who could not be deterred with conventional means because they have no fixed territory or population centers. Reiterating a new commitment to pre-emption, Mr Bush said, ‘We must take the battle to the enemy and confront the worst threats before they emerge.’58

Domestic legitimization or international estrangement?

In the aftermath of September 11, the President and his close aides constructed a stark picture of the post-9/11 world that help would justify the ‘first war of the twenty-first century’. In the short term, President Bush's strategy of political fundamentalism proved very successful. Using familiar religious terminology to ‘guarantee the continuity of the community’,59 the Bush was able to institutionalize the ‘war on terror’ with the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security and massive increases in defense spending.

By presenting a world conveniently partitioned into binaries of ‘good’ and ‘evil’, the Bush administration was simultaneously defining itself as good and those who were terrorists or opponents of the Bush government as evil or bad. In using binaries of ‘good/evil’ and ‘us/them’, the Bush administration attempted to entrench what Niebuhr terms ‘a social myth’, a ‘a culturally embedded narrative that distinguishes a nation from others, justifies its existence, and establishes a sense of collectivity’.60 The attempt to promote a particular way of talking about the US after 9/11 served as an important political legitimizing device for the Bush administration.

It enabled President Bush to project ‘moral clarity’ in a confused and uncertain setting. Psychologically, the ‘war’ declaration signaled that the Bush administration had decisively regained the initiative, a development that, in turn, helped to rally an anxious American nation. Whether the Bush administration really believed that its projection of political fundamentalism represented an accurate grasp of the post-9/11 global scene or whether it was a deliberate distortion to maximize domestic support remains a moot point.

Starting with the President's two addresses on September 11 and before a joint session of Congress on 20 September 2001, binary constructions, rooted in a Christian fundamentalist worldview, juxtaposed the terms ‘freedom/liberty’ and ‘evil’ at opposite ends of the political spectrum. In his speech on September 11, the President declared,

Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts … Thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror.61

As a response to 9/11, political fundamentalism performed two important functions for the Bush administration. First, it served as a diagnostic tool:

Americans are asking, why do they hate us? They hate what we see right here in this chamber – a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms – our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.62

According to the Bush administration, it was the ‘evil’ character of the terrorists that led to the attacks of September 11. Such attacks were portrayed by President Bush as the ‘curse of terrorism that is upon the face of the earth’63 and the work of ‘terrorist parasites who threaten their countries and our own’.64 The 9/11 attacks were characterized as ‘the scourge of terrorism’ by Colin Powell65 and as ‘a cancer on the human condition’ by Donald Rumsfeld.66 The use of religious metaphors in this political language enhanced its emotional appeal. As Smith has shown,67 the ability of one discursive strategy to succeed against others is first and foremost based on its linkages with institutions that retain some degree of authority throughout a crisis, and its iterations of previously normalized traditions. This is certainly the case with the growing influence of religion in American society. Since ‘freedom’ and ‘liberty’ were proclaimed as God-decreed values for all nations, President Bush reasoned that 9/11 was not just directed at America, but at the democratic Western world in general. On this view, terrorism was simply the latest version of the murderous ideologies of the twentieth century that had threatened the free and peace-loving Western world.

Second, political fundamentalism had a prescriptive role. If the Bush administration now found itself engaged in ‘a fight to save the civilized world’68 it could pledge to do ‘whatever it takes, whatever it costs’69 to win this struggle. The assumption that it is possible to wage a war on terrorism implied this was essentially a military problem to be dealt with through state-on-state actions. President Bush observed,

Terror unanswered cannot only bring down buildings, it can threaten the stability of legitimate governments – and you know what – we're not going to allow it.70

Textual analysis accurately unveils this bifurcation of the world into protagonists and antagonists in Bush's speeches, the latter being represented as malign and evil. Critical linguists call this mechanism ‘overlexicalization’, meaning that antagonists are lexicalized in various ways. Though sometimes strange to non-American ears, the Bush administration's tough language went down well at home. It signaled that the ‘war on terror’ was a new type of war where the old rules did not always apply. Mr Bush's description of Osama bin Laden as being wanted dead or alive and Mr Rumsfeld's recommendation that certain al-Qaeda forces in Afghanistan should ‘either be killed or taken prisoner’71 were both examples of administration statements that sat uncomfortably with international humanitarian law, but also signaled the administration's unbending determination to fulfill America's moral mission and defeat what Attorney General John Ashcroft called ‘barbarous’ forces threatening the civilized world.72 By confronting and punishing the terrorists, President Bush said, ‘the United States will use this moment of opportunity to extend the benefits of freedom across the globe’.73

Political fundamentalism certainly helped to galvanize domestic support for the Bush administration. The House of Representatives, following the Senate's lead, gave final congressional approval on 15 September 2001 to a resolution authorizing George W. Bush to use ‘all necessary and appropriate force’ against the perpetrators of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. At the same time, President Bush consistently had popular approval ratings in polls hovering the 90% mark during the early stages of the ‘war on terror’. Indeed, seven months after the attacks on Washington and New York, a survey by the Pew Research Center showed that most Americans (83%) approved of the US-led military campaign against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.74

All this provides insight into a major gulf in 2003 between American attitudes towards the Iraq invasion and those of the rest of the world. In the US, there was majority support for the use of force in Iraq. Contemporary opinion polls showed that just under two-thirds of Americans supported military action against Iraq. Furthermore, 56% said that getting UN support for action against Iraq was ‘Desirable, but not necessary’.75 Apparently, many Americans believed that Saddam's regime was somehow involved in the events of 9/11 – the fact that Saddam publicly applauded the terrorist attacks in Washington and New York immediately after them probably reinforced this perception – and seemed willing to accept the various justifications put forward by the Bush administration for the invasion. These included the claims that Saddam had secretly stockpiled weapons of mass destruction and could make them available to al-Qaeda, as well as the notion that the US could introduce democracy to Iraq and thereby reform the Middle East region at large. The latter idea represents President Bush's political fundamentalism in its most simplistic form.

However, in many other countries, there were huge public demonstrations – including in Britain, Washington's most stalwart ally – in the build-up to the Iraq invasion. In most countries, a majority opposed the intervention in Iraq. In France and Germany, opposing the US stance paid dividends in terms of domestic political support. The character of the US occupation has only served to confirm international opposition. At Abu Ghraib, as at Guantanamo Bay, high-flown US rhetoric about liberation and democratization have collided head-on with the reality of sordid – and possibly systematic – abuses against those in American custody. Nevertheless, during the 2004 election campaign, both George W. Bush and John Kerry pledged to continue to aggressively fight the war on terror. Moreover, it was Bush's more fundamentalist visionthat held sway. When Kerry suggested that the US should undertake a ‘global test’ of legitimacy before launching foreign interventions he was immediately attacked by the Republican camp, which said that he would effectively give a veto to the international community over US actions.76 The susceptibility of the US public to the brand of political fundamentalism put forward by the Bush administration can be explained in several ways.

Religion, as we have seen, appears much more important to Americans than to other Westerners. According to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2002 some 59% of US citizens say religion plays a central role in their lives. This is approximately twice the percentage of self-avowed religious people in Canada (30%), and an even higher share than in Japan and Western Europe.77 Religion can therefore play a unique role in constructing a ‘good war on terror’, since it can override the reluctance to destroy life. In the history of humankind, many wars have been fought in the name of God; life has been taken and ‘just war’ theories have been developed on religious grounds.

The leadership style of President Bush also appealed to many Americans at a time of ‘war’. A purported belief in plain speaking, ‘moral clarity’, ‘gut instincts’ and strong faith have all been hallmarks of President Bush's decision-making style. His constant populist message of America first has coincided with America's unprecedented dominance of the international stage. For some, President Bush's apparently boundless faith in America's ‘war on terror’ represented a source of comfort and strength, and the promise of ultimate victory over ‘the bad guys’. At the same time, by depicting the conflict with terrorism as a struggle between ‘good and evil’, the Bush administration has contributed to a political climate in the US that discouraged any serious wide-ranging debate about why America was the object of the hatred that prompted 9/11. Moreover, groups or individuals who have tried to raise this issue have found themselves stigmatized and often portrayed as unpatriotic or anti-American.78

While the US is the world's only superpower, and as such is a pervasive presence in international relations, it has been resistant to some aspects of globalization.79 It was ranked fourth in the 2005 A.T. Kearney/Foreign Policy Globalization Index. However, that high ranking had more to do with technological connectivity – the US ranked first in this dimension – than its economic, political and personal connections with the rest of the world. In terms of economic integration, a category that measures trade and foreign direct investment as a proportion of GDP, the US ranked 60th out of 62 countries. With respect to political engagement, which measures participation in international organizations, contributions to UN peacekeeping operations, international treaties ratified, and government transfers, the US ranked just 43rd. Finally, in terms of the personal contact category, which measures international travel and tourism, international telephone traffic, and cross-border transfers like remittances, the US ranked 40th.80 Thus, in the context of global integration, the US performance is distinctly uneven. It ranked first in the number of Internet hosts and the number of secure servers, but lagged far behind many other countries in categories assessing global economic, political and personal linkages.

However, if political fundamentalism has played a key role in framing President Bush's ‘war on terror’, it is clear that it also bears considerable responsibility for the deterioration of America's global standing. The wave of horror and sympathy for the victims of September 11 that spread across the world immediately afterwards has virtually evaporated. The decline began with President Bush's ‘axis of evil’ speech in January 2002 and rapidly accelerated after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

As German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said, ‘The phrase “axis of evil” leads nowhere.’ In a similar vein, French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine said that Europe was ‘threatened by a new simplistic approach that reduces all the problems in the world to the struggle against terrorism’.81 In 2007, Gordon Brown, the new prime minister of Britain, made it clear that he disapproved of the phrase ‘war on terror’ as a description of the global campaign against terrorism.

A survey published by the Pew Global Attitudes Project in 2005 found sharp drops in America's favorable ratings abroad. In Britain, the US received a 58% favorable rating – down from 83% in 1999/2000. In France, the drop was more precipitous – just 37% gave the US a favorable rating, down from 62%. Sentiments were even more pronounced in Muslim countries. In Turkey, Pakistan and Jordan, Washington scored 30%, 21% and 5%, respectively. More startlingly, the Project found a yawning gap between US self-perception, and those of other nations. Seventy percent of Americans said that the US takes the view of others into consideration either ‘a great deal’ or ‘a fair amount’. The equivalent figures in Great Britain, Germany and France were just 36%, 29% and 14%, respectively.82 By 2007, the fall in the US's global reputation had reached catastrophic proportions. A British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) World Service survey of more than 26,000 people across 25 countries found that only 29% believed that the US is having a positive influence internationally. It found that 68% believed the US military presence in the Middle East provokes more conflict than it prevents, 73% disapprove of President Bush's handling of the Iraq War and 60% oppose Mr Bush's approach to Iran's nuclear program.83

How has the political fundamentalism of the Bush administration undermined international support? Amongst other things, the binary construction of reality has encouraged disproportionate reliance on American military power in this ‘war’. As a consequence, the Bush administration has been seen by many in the international community to have neglected the political battle to win ‘hearts and minds’ in this struggle. In other words, there is a strong perception outside the US, and increasingly within it, that the Bush administration has tended to focus on the symptoms—disrupting and defeating the al-Qaeda network – rather than eliminating the political causes of terrorism with a broader range of policies.

In addition, the Bush administration declared war on terrorism after 9/11 without clearly defining who or what the enemy was. The Bush administration has been unable or unwilling to distinguish between what might be called value-driven terrorists like al-Qaeda and territorially motivated insurgents who oppose perceived foreign occupations in places like Chechnya, the West Bank and Kashmir. Moreover, the Bush administration's overwhelming preoccupation with defeating ‘evil’ after 9/11 has been widely seen as weakening Washington's adherence to human rights and the rule of law. These principles lie at the heart of the liberal democratic system and play a key role in distinguishing democratic rule from the activities of terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda, which are dedicated to destroying such norms. Yet the apparently faith-driven Bush administration has felt free to disregard these key principles in places like Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib during the ‘war on terror’. The danger here is that political fundamentalism replicates the norms of Islamic terrorism.

Conclusion: is the new political fundamentalism sustainable?

After the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, the Bush administration embraced a new cognitive framework – political fundamentalism – that presupposed a stance of moral superiority. Combining Christian terminology with political strategy to frame a new ‘war on terror’, political fundamentalism initially proved effective in solidifying public support for the Bush administration. The national crisis triggered by September 11 provided an unusual opportunity, in a religious country, for a new binary discourse that projected a black-and-white image of the world. By reducing the complexities of the terrorist challenge to a battle between ‘good versus evil’, the Bush administration gave many Americans a sense of comfort and confidence in anxious times. And this almost certainly contributed to the re-election of George W. Bush in 2004, despite clear signs that the ‘war on terror’ was already faltering.

Domestically, political fundamentalism mandated a shift away from open discussion and humility towards authoritarianism and arrogance. In this context, many politicians felt constrained from making substantial criticisms of the ‘war on the terror’ on the grounds that they might be seen as disloyal or un-American. On several occasions, the White House explicitly warned dissident voices in the Republican and Democratic Parties that such views were unpatriotic at a time when American troops were fighting and dying in places like Iraq. Indeed, the challenge of the Democrat Senator John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election confirmed that the scope for political opposition had been significantly limited by the impact of political fundamentalism. Kerry's criticism of the US-led invasion of Iraq was largely confined to questioning the implementation of a decision that he had earlier supported.

Internationally, political fundamentalism in the White House became a major obstacle to the US coming to terms with the globalized security environment of the post-Cold-War era. If 9/11 demonstrated anything, it was that extraordinary power can no longer guarantee invulnerability. But since early 2002 the Bush administration, confronted with the interdependent nature of the new strategic era, has remained in denial and persisted with faith-based unilateralism. This, in turn, has helped sanction the unlawful use of force, including torture, as well as giving the administration the self-belief to cherry-pick intelligence and ultimately mislead the American people and the global public on the rationale for invading Iraq. Such a record has culminated in a disastrous loss of international respect for US leadership.

For a while, there was a significant gulf between the domestic and international attitudes towards the Bush administration's political fundamentalism. But that gap now seems to be narrowing. Since 2005, President Bush has witnessed a dramatic slump in public support in the US for his conduct of the ‘war on terror’, especially in Iraq. His job approval ratings in February 2007 sank to 32%, matching his lowest-ever ratings, according to an AP-Ipsos poll.84 But it is unclear whether the Bush administration will address this credibility problem, or indeed whether it sees that there is a problem at all. Judging by its partisan response to the 2006 Iraq Study Group, Israel's military campaign in the Lebanon in July 2006 and Iran's commitment to develop nuclear energy, the Bush administration seems to believe that it is the presentation of its policies, rather than their content, that is the problem as far as domestic and international perceptions are concerned. But certain things are clear. Political fundamentalism in the US is losing domestic support, and if militant Islam fundamentalism is to be reversed or checked there will need to be a return to an America ‘where the separation of Church and State is absolute’85 and where there is renewed capability to build and sustain multilateral support in the international arena.

Notes

1 White House, President Delivers ‘State of the Union’, The US Capitol, 28 January 2003, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/01/20030128-19.html (accessed 23 April 2007).

2 David Domke, God Willing? Political Fundamentalism in the White House, The ‘War on Terror’, and the Echoing Press (London/Ann Arbor: Pluto Press, 2004).

3 White House, Statement by the President in His Address to the Nation, 11 September 2001, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010911-16.html (accessed 15 December 2003).

4 White House, Remarks by the President upon Arrival, South Lawn, 16 September 2001, http://www.whitehouse.gov/ news/releases/2001/09/20010916-2.html (accessed 10 October 2007).

5 Manfred Brocker, ‘Zivilreligion – missionarisches Sendungsbewusstsein – christlicher Fundamentalismus? Religiöse Motivlagen in der (Außen-) Politik George W. Bushs’, Zeitschrift für Politik 50, no. 2 (2003): 119–43; Andrew Norris, ‘“Us” and “Them”: The Politics of American Self-Assertion after 9/11’, Metaphilosophy 35, no. 3 (2004): 249–72.

6 Siobhan McEvoy-Levy, American Exceptionalism and US Foreign Policy: Public Diplomacy at the End of the Cold War (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 23–5.

7 Garry Wills and Joanne J. Myers, ‘Head and Heart: American Christianities’, Carnegie Council, http://www.cceia.org/resources/transcripts/0006.html (accessed 20 November 2007), 2.

8 Ibid.

9 Seymour Martin Lipset, American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword (New York: W.W Norton, 1996), 63.

10 ‘Newsweek Poll: 90% Believe in God’, http://www.yoism.org/?q = node/320 (accessed 20 November 2007).

11 Cited in James Gibney, ‘Globalization, American Exceptionalism and Security’, in Globalization and Conflict: National Security in a ‘New’ Strategic Era, ed. Robert G. Patman (London/New York: Routledge, 2006), 87.

12 Lipset, American Exceptionalism, 63.

13 Daniel Bell, ‘The “Hegelian Secret”: Civil Society and American Exceptionalism’, in Is America Different? A New Look at American Exceptionalism, ed. Byron E Shafer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 50–1.

14 Ronald Reagan, cited in Frances Fitzgerald, Way out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars and the End of the Cold War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), 24.

15 James C. Hathaway, ‘America, Defender of Democratic Legitimacy?’, European Journal of International Law 11, no. 1 (2000): 121–33.

16 Stewart Patrick, ‘Multilateralism and Its Discontents: The Causes and Consequences of US Ambivalence’, in Multilateralism and US Foreign Policy: Ambivalent Engagement, ed. Stewart Patrick & Shepard Forman (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner 2002), 7.

17 Gibney, ‘Globalization, American Exceptionalism and Security’, 79–94.

18 Ruth Murray Brown, For a Christian America: A History of the Religious Right (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2002), 20–1.

19 Lloyd Geering, Fundamentalism, the Challenge to the Secular World (Wellington: St Andrew's Trust for the Study of Religion and Society, 2003), 23–6.

20 Samuel P. Huntington, Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004), 345.

21 Ibid.

22 John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America (New York: Penguin Press, 2004), 83–4.

23 Ibid., 47–62.

24 Brown, For a Christian America, 16–21.

25 Micklethwait and Wooldridge, The Right Nation, 98.

26 Defense Planning Guidance for the 1994–9 Fiscal Years (draft), Office of the Secretary of Defense, 1992; New York Times, 8 March 1992; David Armstrong, ‘Dick Cheney's Song of America: Drafting a Plan for Global Dominance’, Harper's, October 2002, 78.

27 Frances Fitzgerald, ‘George Bush & the World’, New York Review of Books, 26 September 2002, 4–6, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/15698 (accessed 20 September 2004).

28 John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, ‘The Israel Lobby’, London Review of Books 28, no. 6 (2006): 8.

29 Charles Krauthammer, ‘The Bush Doctrine: ABM, Kyoto and the New American Unilateralism’, Weekly Standard, 4 June 2001, http://www.weeklystandard.com (accessed 10 December 2002).

30 Huntington, Who Are We?, 354.

31 Micklethwait and Wooldridge, The Right Nation, 261–2.

32 Peter Singer, The President of Good and Evil; the Ethics of George W. Bush (New York: Dutton, 2004), 110–11.

33 Micklethwait and Wooldridge, The Right Nation, 146.

34 White House, Address of the President to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People, 20 September 2001, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010920-8.html (accessed 20 November 2003).

35 S.M. Walt, ‘Beyond bin Laden. Reshaping U.S. Foreign Policy’, International Security 26, no. 3 (2001–2): 56; Dirk Nabers, ‘Culture and Collective Action: Japan, Germany and the United States after 11 September 2001’, Cooperation and Conflict 41, no. 3 (2006): 305–26.

36 Richard Jackson, Writing the War on Terrorism: Language, Politics and Counterterrorism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), 29.

37 David Campbell, ‘Time Is Broken. The Return of the Past in the Response to September 11’, Theory and Event 5, no. 4 (2002), http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/theory_and_event/v005/5.4campbell.html (accessed 22 January 2005).

38 US Department of State, Remarks to the National Foreign Policy Conference for Leaders of Nongovernmental Organizations, Secretary Colin L. Powell, 26 October 2001, http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2001/5762.htm (accessed 20 March 2004).

39 White House, Address of the President to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People.

40 Domke, God Willing, 13.

41 Ibid., 6.

42 White House, President George W. Bush, National Day of Prayer and Remembrance for the Victims of the Terrorist Attacks on September 11, 2001, 13 September 2001, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010913-7.html (accessed 14 July 2007).

43 White House, Address of the President to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People.

44 White House, ‘President Delivers State of the Union Address’, 29 January 2002, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/01/20020129-11.html (accessed 20 December 2003).

45 White House, ‘President Bush Delivers Graduation Speech at West Point’, 2002, 20 June 2002, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/06/20020601-3.html (accessed 20 July 2003).

46 George W. Bush, cited in Claes G. Ryn, America the Virtuous; the Crisis of Democracy and the Quest for Empire (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2003).

47 George W. Bush, cited in www.news.telegraph.co.uk, 14 September 2001 (accessed 25 September 2001).

48 White House, ‘President Unveils “Most Wanted” Terrorists’, Remarks by the President during Announcement at the Federal Bureau of Investigation Headquarters, Washington, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/10/20011010-3.html (accessed 23 April 2007).

49 White House, Address of the President to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People.

50 Armstrong, ‘Dick Cheney's Song of America’, 81.

51 White House, President Delivers State of the Union Address.

52 Pat Robertson, Nov. 11 Statement by Pat Robertson on The 700 Club, 14 November 2002, The Official Site of Pat Robertson, http://www.patrobertson.com/PressReleases/bushresponse2.asp (accessed 10 October 2007).

53 Esther Kaplan, With God on Their Side: How Christian Fundamentalists Trampled Science, Policy, and Democracy in George W. Bush's White House (New York: New Press, 2004), 13.

54 Franklin Graham, cited in ‘Cover Story: Anti-Islam’, PBS, 20 December 2002.

55 Jerry Vines, cited in ‘The Fight for God’, Economist.com, 19 December 2002.

56 BBC News, 12 August 2006.

57 Geering, Fundamentalism, 44.

58 White House, ‘President Bush Delivers Graduation Speech at West Point’.

59 Ernesto Laclau and Lilian Zac, ‘Minding the Gap: The Subject of Politics’, in The Making of Political Identities, ed. Lilian Zac (London/New York: Routledge, 1994), 11–39.

60 Reinhold Niebhur, cited in Domke, God Willing, 91; see also Norris, ‘“Us” and “Them”’, Metaphilosophy 35, no. 3 (2004): 249–72.

61 White House, ‘President Outlines War Effort’, 17 October 2001, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/10/20011017-15.html (accessed 8 March 2004).

62 The White House, Address of the President to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People.

63 White House, Remarks by the President upon Arrival.

64 White House, ‘President Bush Delivers Graduation Speech at West Point’.

65 US Department of State, Remarks to the National Foreign Policy Conference for Leaders of Nongovernmental Organizations, Secretary Colin L. Powell, 26 October 2001, http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2001/5762.htm (accessed 20 March 2004).

66 Ibid.

67  Anna Marie Smith, Laclau and Mouffe. The Radical Democratic Imaginary (London/New York: Routledge, 1998), 168.

70 White House 2001b.

68 White House, Address of the President to a Joint Session of Congress, 2001b.

69 White House, President Bush: ‘First Priority is the Military’, 2002f, 23 January 2002, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/01/20020123-13.html. (accessed 10 October 2007).

71 Cited in Brian Whitaker, ‘Raising the Double Standard in Afghan War’, The Guardian, 26 November 2001, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/nov/26/afghanistan.worlddispatch (accessed 10 September 2007).

72 US Department of Justice, Attorney General John Ashcroft Testimony before the House Committee on the Judiciary, http://www.usdoj.gov/ag/testimony/2001/agcrisisremarks9_24.htm (accessed 20 March 2002).

73 White House, The National Security Strategy of the United States of America (Washington, 2002).

74 Pew Research Center, Americans and Europeans Differ Widely on Foreign Policy Issues (Washington, 2002).

75 Polling Report, The Harris Poll. Aug. 9–16, 2005: Iraq, http://www.pollingreport.com/iraq9.htm (accessed 23 April 2007).

76 MSNBC, 3 October 2004.

77 Pew Research Center, Pew Global Attitudes Project (Washington, 2002).

78 The Guardian, 27 April 2005.

79 James Gibney, ‘Globalization, American Exceptionalism and Security’, in Globalization and Conflict: National Security in a ‘New’ Strategic Era, ed. Robert G. Patman (London: Routledge, 2006), 79–94.

80 Anonymous, ‘Measuring Globalization’, Foreign Policy, no 148 (2005): 54.

81 International Herald Tribune, 7 February 2002.

82 Pew Research Center, ‘Global Opinion: The Spread of Anti-Americanism’, 2005, http://pewglobal.org/commentary/pdf/104.pdf (accessed 23 April 2007).

83 The Guardian, 23 January 2007.

84 International Herald Tribune, 9 February 2007.

85 John F. Kennedy, cited in Lord Longford, Kennedy (London: W.H. Allen, 1976), 51.