President Bush's efforts to justify his Iraq policy has its roots in the Cold War and earlier conflicts according to a Maryland assistant professor in the university's communication department and an expert on political rhetoric.
Shawn Parry-Giles says President Bush's nationally televised speech Feb. 26 included elements of the domino theory popularized during the Cold War and also the Marshall Plan that helped rebuild Europe after World War II. Parry-Giles says President Bush has his own domino theory: "Bush is now suggesting that peace in the region is dependent on a stable and free Iraq," she says. "The assumption is that if Iraq falls to tyranny, the entire Middle East is de-stabilized."
Parry-Giles says the Cold War analogy gets shakier in other respects: "There are not visible signs of aggression as there were in the first Persian Gulf War or during the Cold War. Bush is facing greater resistance because he has to make the case for war without the benefit of such compelling evidence, which explains why he is having to work so hard to convince the world community that war is justified."
Shawn Parry-Giles: Director of the Center for Political Communication and Civic Leadership, assistant professor of communication, affiliate assistant professor of women's studies.
Expertise: Contemporary, historical and political discourse; rhetorical, feminist, and media criticism. Her latest book is The Rhetorical Presidency, Propaganda, and the Cold War, 1945-1955.
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