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Abstract
As with all wars, the U.S. military invasion of Iraq in 2003 needed to be portrayed as a just war in an attempt to garner support and legitimacy, domestically and internationally. The United States was acting as hegemonic power in the international state-system and, in light of this role, had imperatives and tools in creating the argument for a just war that differed from those used by nonhegemonic states. The United States acted extraterritorially by diffusing a message of moral right. Arab resistance to the war was evident in the construction of the United States and its leadership as immoral, precluding its ability to wage a just war. This article focuses on the Arab response by analyzing the portrayal in Arab newspapers of the imminent war on Iraq. Sixty-five newspapers of the Arabic language (plus the Iraqi news agency), published in seventeen Arab countries, of which four were Iraqi newspapers, were consulted for the purpose of this study. Interpretation of the geopolitical rhetoric within newspaper reports and political cartoons published in Arab newspapers highlights the way that arguments of morality and immorality were connected to understandings of territorial sovereignty and hegemonic extraterritorial influence into territorial sovereign spaces.
Acknowledgments
We thank Audrey Kobayashi for her encouragement and careful editing. We are also grateful for the comments provided by the reviewers and their role in improving our initial submission. Finally, thank you to the editors of the Arab newspapers who granted permission for the reproduction of the cartoons.
Notes
aA weekly magazine.
Source: Quotes and factual information from Country Information file, U.S. Department of State at http://www.state.gov/p/nea (last consulted December 2003).
Postwar developments disregarded, such as troops withdrawn from Saudi Arabia (August 2003), training of 30,000 Iraqi police cadets in Jordan for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, and radical change of relations with Libya (December 2003).
MEPI=Middle East Partnership Initiative to support civil society; TIFA=Trade and investment Framework Agreement; USAID=U.S. Agency for International Development; USNAEP=U.S.-North African Economic Partnership.
1. Our task is not to provide an evaluation of whether the war on Iraq met criteria that would classify it as just or unjust. For such a debate see CitationCarter (2003) and CitationKaplan and Kristol (2003), and special issues of Antipode (vol. 35, no. 5, 2003) and Arab World Geographer (vol. 6, no. 1, 2003). For academic considerations regarding the United States' actions in the post-9/11 world see CitationÓ Tuathail (2003) and a special issue of the journal Geopolitics (vol. 8, no. 3, 2003). Instead, our focus is the rhetoric used by policymakers and opinion makers in their efforts to persuade the public of the justness or unjustness of the war.
2. For a full discussion of just war theory see CitationWalzer's (2000) seminal text, plus its use by CitationJohnson (1984), CitationOrend (2000a, Citation2000b), and Temes (2003).
3. See CitationOrend (2000c) for the same assumptions in Kantian just war theory.
4. The survey includes four Iraqi newspapers online (Al-Thawra, Al-Iraq, Al-Jumhuriaya, and Alef-ba [a weekly magazine]) and the Iraqi News Agency report of 15 March 2003.
5. The Al-Jazeera website (www.aljazeera.net) poll survey of 16 March 2003 (2:42 p.m. EST), involving 41,571 respondents, provides instructive results on how the Arabic-speaking readers of their website viewed this summit: 68.9 percent saw it as council for declaration of war; 25.8 percent as an attempt for finding an alternative to war; 3.2 percent as retreat from the war; with 2.2 percent undecided. Indeed the bombing started 19 March 2003. To relate the protests and bombing to just war theory, see CitationJohnson (1984), CitationOrend (2000a, Citation2000b, Citation2000c), CitationRengger (2002), and CitationTemes (2003).
6. The four Iraqi newspapers surveyed were the most popular Iraqi newspapers at the time and all were placed under the surveillance of the government. Al-Jumhriya (English translation: Republic) was the official Iraqi government newspaper and speaks on its behalf; Al-Thawra (English translation: Revolution) was the official newspaper of the Al Ba'ith party; Al-Iraq (after the name of the country) belonged to a Kurdish group loyal to Saddam Hussein's government; and Alef-ba (after the first two letters in the Arabic language alphabet) weekly was issued by the Iraqi Ministry of Information. There were two other popular Iraqi newspapers at the time but they were not included in our survey: Al-Qadisiyya was the Iraqi Army newspaper and Babel was managed by Uday Saddam Hussein, the oldest son of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
7. In our survey, websites of newspapers were consulted every third day beginning on 3 November for newspapers in Arabic, on 4 November for newspapers in French, and on 5 November for newspapers in English.
8. On 8 November, Syria, holding a temporary seat in the Council, surprised many by voting in favor of a UN Security Council resolution and making the UN vote unanimous.
9. Similarly, though Sudan does not have a border with Iraq, the country scores above average, probably a reflection of U.S. involvement in the conclusion of the Sudanese civil war.
10. The two characteristics are often conflated in Arabo-centric perceptions of the Moslem world.
11. Three major Kuwait newspaper websites (Al-Qabas, Al-Watan, and Al Seyassa) were surveyed on 16 March 2003.
12. In the Qura'an, references imply that the left-hand is associated with evil, and in Arab culture use of the left-hand is often related to carelessness.